Good morning. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference Operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ClearView Wealth Limited half year 2023 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Mr. Simon Swanson, Managing Director, you may begin your conference. Thank you for joining us for ClearView's half year results briefing. I'm here today with Athol Chiert, ClearView's Chief Financial Officer. In a moment, we'll take you through the investor report. First, I'll provide a general overview and business update. There will be time for questions at the end. Turning to slide 3, this is a strong result reflecting business momentum and improving favorable market conditions. For the half year, ClearView reported an AUD 16.3 million underlying net profit after tax, up 31% on the previous corresponding period. We are particularly pleased with the improving profit margins in our core life insurance business. Life insurance is the main driver of performance, with the segment posting a 46% increase in underlying net profit after tax. This was partially offset by the wealth management business. ClearView's strong half year 2023 performance was underpinned by a number of factors, and these factors will continue to drive long-term growth. First, ClearView was a first mover in the life insurance product repricing cycle. In 2021, we launched our next generation life insurance product series, ClearView's ClearChoice, which is focused on improving customer outcomes and long-term sustainability. We are pleased with the performance of ClearChoice, which is highly rated and well-supported by our distribution network of over 4,000 financial advisors. We're also starting to see benefits from our multi-year transformation strategy. Over the past few years, ClearView has ramped up its investment in people, processes, and technology to ensure we continue to meet the evolving needs of our customers and remain easy to do business with. Our significant investment in transformation during a period of uncertainty through COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and the breakout of inflation sees us strongly positioned to capture opportunities from the improving life insurance market. After a difficult period for the life insurance industry, signs of revival are emerging. The industry's recent return to profitability follows positive structural and regulatory changes, including capital charges, product changes, and repricing of historical portfolios. Ongoing structural and regulatory reform, including the potential for more accommodative policy settings under the Quality of Advice Review, will continue to buoy market conditions. Today, ClearView also announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell its managed investment business to investment management and technology company, Human Financial. Last year, ClearView commenced a review of our wealth management business to determine the best way to take that business forward. From that review, we believe a strategic partnership with Human Financial will deliver better outcomes for customers, including greater product choice, improved investment performance, and a better customer experience. Under the proposed deal, ClearView will acquire a 40% stake in Human Financial, allowing us to maintain an exposure to the attractive wealth management sector while also ensuring our focus is on lifting life insurance profitability and market share. I will now hand over to Athol to talk about our half year 2023 result in more detail. Thank you, Simon. The slides on page six and seven provide a snapshot of our results. For the half year period, our life insurance underlying NPAT increased 46% to AUD 19.4 million, reflecting the solid growth in in-force premiums and new business sales, the increasing interest rate environment, and the positive claims and lapse performance relative to the underlying assumptions. Our strategic stake in Centrepoint Alliance also contributed AUD 1.7 million to the group's result, although the wealth management business continued to be a drag on performance. As Simon mentioned, our ongoing investment in people, processes, and technology is starting to materialize into strong financial performance. Our focus is on high quality earnings and profitable growth with our flagship product series, ClearView ClearChoice, priced for sustainability whilst delivering value for our customers. The ClearChoice product has been well accepted with both increased new business flows as well as a gain in market share over the half year period. ClearView has also commenced in January 2023, the next phase of its current cycle of premium rate increases and will continue to progress on our transformation journey. Slide eight shows how ClearView has extended its position as a key challenger. Our share of advanced life insurance in-force premium has been steadily climbing, and since 2021, when we shifted our focus back to growth, we have seen a material uplift in new business market share to circa 8%. While our market share has been improving, even more importantly, so has our underlying NPAT margin, which increased to 12.1% for the half year period. Backed by a strong recurring revenue base and solid capital position, ClearView is ideally positioned to benefit from structural and regulatory tailwinds in a rising interest rate environment. The graphs on page nine show ClearView's net surplus capital position of AUD 14.6 million and AUD 476.7 million in net assets, which are backed by cash and highly rated securities. You'll also see on page 10 that during the half year period, our life insurance Embedded Value increased by circa 5% to AUD 570 million. Overall, the group Embedded Value is AUD 583.5 million or AUD 0.902 per share, including franking credits. I'll now hand back to Simon to outline some key business highlights and to take questions. Thank you, Athol. I think the past two years at ClearView can be best summed up by two words: simplification and transformation. This is supported by a relentless focus on margin management, so that we continue to build a highly focused life insurance business in a recovering market. The sale of our financial advice business to Centrepoint Alliance in 2021 and the proposed divestment of our wealth management business will result in a simpler ClearView that is focused purely on extending our position in the life insurance market. We are excited about pursuing a strategic partnership with Human Financial, who we have been working closely with over the past two years to deliver our innovative wealth management client and advisor portals. We believe that together we can build a differentiated and profitable wealth management business that combines Human Financial's technology and asset management platform and ClearView's distribution capabilities. Importantly, our customers will benefit from a large, experienced team of investment professionals and a dedicated management team to drive performance and efficiency. For our proposed 40% strategic stake in Human Financial, ClearView will continue to participate in the wealth management sector as we do in financial advice via our strategic stake in Centrepoint Alliance. We are pleased with the performance of Centrepoint Alliance, which is now Australia's third largest licensee, and this half made a positive contribution to ClearView's financial performance. Looking ahead, we'll continue taking advantage of improving market conditions due to the strong half year 2023 result. FY 2023 full year underlying NPAT guidance, excluding the Centrepoint Alliance contribution, is increased from the range of AUD 28.5 million-AUD 30 million to the range of AUD 30 million-AUD 32 million. Our decision to invest through the cycle during periods of uncertainty has strengthened our ability to effectively compete. Over the past year, we have been ramping up our focus on new business and expanding our distribution footprint while maintaining a laser-like focus on margin management. This is a high quality, resilient business. We have a large and growing revenue base. This underpinned our performance during the pandemic years and continues to drive momentum. The indexation benefit that is built into our contemporary products ensures that our customers are covered against the rising cost of living. Their benefit amount automatically increase each year without the need to undergo additional underwriting. Furthermore, the associated impact of age-based premiums alongside our latest cycle of price increases is expected to substantially offset cost inflation pressures and underpin ongoing growth. Thank you very much, and I'll hand back to take some questions. Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the question and answer roster. Your first question comes from the line of Glen Wellham from MST Financial. Your line is open. Yeah. Good day, guys. Well done on a great result. In particular, obviously, the life business is performing very well, and I really like the slide on slide eight showing market share and the growth in market share for new business. You've got that at 8.4% at the moment, and you note the peak was around 9%. I suppose, looking forward to next year, do you expect to exceed that peak going forward? Can you give us a bit of a outline on what your competitive advantage is on that new business relative to your competitors out there? Well, thanks, Glen. Obviously, we'd like to be increasing our new business market share, but we also would like to continue to increase our in-force by managing our lapses, well. Our view is that we should have strong growth in our in-force premiums, which will be a combination of good new business growth as well as maintaining a good look at our lapses. I think that and the expanding margins is how we look at the future. All right. Also on the wealth management, obviously there's a slight drag on this result on, for the wealth management business, obviously, the sale's gonna tidy that up. Just how quickly is that all gonna tidy up in terms of conditions precedent for that deal to go ahead? I sort of note that there is a few conditions precedents in the footnote to happen. Also the AUD 1.5 million of so-called stranded expenses in that business, how long does that continue for? I'll take the first half, and Athol can take the second half of that. Our objective, Glen, is to have this all tidied up in the second half of this calendar year. Obviously there are conditions precedent. The good news is that we have worked with Human Financial for the last couple of years. They've done some great work for us, particularly around technology, and I think the addition of Athol Chiert, CIO will be fantastic for Human Financial. We're very pleased to have a 40% stake in it, and we do see a good contribution from them as we've had in the Centrepoint Alliance deal. I'll ask Athol to talk about the stranded costs. Thanks, Simon. I think, Glen, that's probably the level of stranded costs you should assume going forward. mainly relates to rent, some IT and some insurance related costs. I think our caution is when that gets allocated now to the life insurance segment, it doesn't flow dollar- for- dollar through profit because there's the deferral effect, potentially through some acquisition costs. Ultimately, you know, you would times that by 70% and then assume a deferral component to understand the profit impact of those stranded costs going forward post the sale of the wealth business. Great. Thanks for that. Your next question comes from the line of Phillip Pepe from Shaw and Partners. Your line is open. Hi, guys. Congratulations on a good result, and thanks for taking the question. Just on new business sales have obviously been volatile over the last 12 months given the changes to the industry. Good job on getting 9%. Have we seen them stabilize now? Like, how have they tracked post the half year end? Obviously, given our self-guided guidance, have things normalized in January and February to date? I think what's actually happened, Phillip. Well, first, thank you. The second thing is the sales in the comparative period in 21 were boosted by the changes to Income Protection. It was a kind of last rush to get sales through. The sales in 2021, in a sense, were overstated. We're expecting things to pick up. I think we're at the bottom of the cycle, to be frank, and we would expect a slow, steady building up of new business. I would say that should the Quality of Advice Review get executed, that could actually have a substantial impact positively. Excellent. If I could sneak in a second one. Where are you on the bond curve in terms of average maturity? Are you benefiting from interest rate rises or copping a bit of pain? What's, what's the outlook like on the investment portfolio? I think overall and underlying NPAT level, interest rates and rising interest rates is positive for us, Glen. I think we earn more on, I mean, Phil, we earn more on our physical cash and capital that backs the life insurance business at the same time, on Income Protection claims. When you discount that back based on real rate, effectively, your claims cost reduces because of the PV of that. Overall, we benefit from that. Our insurance premiums themselves are inflation-linked, and that in combination of the price rises, we feel like we're protected as well from the inflationary pressures on the cost side. Yeah, all in all, Phillip, it's actually, it's all good news. We're really on that front. Excellent. thank you and well done again. Yeah. If you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Simon Swanson, I turn the call back over to you. Thank you very much. I'd like to thank everyone on the call for their support, and look forward to keeping in contact on the progress of ClearView. Thank you very much.