Hey, good morning, everyone, and welcome to day 2 of Scotiabank’s 27th Annual Financial Summit. It’s my pleasure to introduce our first guest speaker today, David Harney, President and CEO of Great-West Lifeco. Morning, David. Nice to see you. Morning, Mike. Thanks for joining us. Yeah. Last year when we spoke, you were, I think, only a couple of months into the CEO role. I’d love to ask you just how that first sort of year has gone. Obviously, it’s been a very good run for Great-West. Maybe talk about some of the highs and lows and what investors should be excited about going forward. Yeah, I started the first of July last year, so I’m just over a year in the role now. Yeah, it’s been a spectacular first year. So, fantastic business performance. So a big thanks to my team for that. They've made my entry into the job very easy. But it’s been a very enjoyable first year. It’s a fantastic and interesting time to be in North America with all that’s going on at the moment. Toronto is a fantastic city as well. I love the sports here, and probably the Blue Jays last year was the big highlight, and that was a lot of fun. Awesome. I’d love to maybe start on just the ROE. Yeah a great trajectory. You’ve sort of catapulted to the top of the list among your peers in Canada. Yeah. Maybe just talk a bit about the sustainability of that ROE. I think you had 19.3% last quarter. And I do have to ask, given that you’re already at your sort of medium-term target here, are you thinking about maybe changing it for a higher target at some point? Yeah, that progression has been fantastic. We set the 19% target just April last year at our investor day. I think it was 17.5% at the end of 2024, 18.2 then at the end of 2025, and then 19.3. It’s probably just a little bit quick, or it nearly bring bad luck if we reset the target so quickly, just seeing as we set that 19% last year. But the trajectory of that is very good, and it’s going to continue. It’s driven obviously by the earnings growth and the strong capital and cash generation that’s behind that earnings growth. That earnings momentum is going to continue, particularly on the capital light businesses. They’re about two-thirds of our earnings now. Over our planning period, we expect capital light earnings to grow to be in excess of 70%. That’s probably going to drive ROE expansion, to be honest. The only thing that would pull it back, obviously, aside from earnings, is potential M&A activity. Our target in that is 15%. That’s probably just one of the reasons we would leave it at 19 for now and just give us a bit of room on that front. Got it. I’d love to get into the business lines, but maybe start off with an AI question. You haven’t published an official target like some of your large cap financial peers have. Just in thinking about how AI drives insurance and financial services towards that sort of, turns minutes into seconds, the operating model gets a lot more efficient. Can you talk about where investors would maybe expect to see that in your financials initially, and how it sort of cascades into the operational side in terms of where you’re going to get efficiencies? Yeah. We haven’t published targets like some of our peers and, I suppose others have published sort of value targets. I think the numbers that have been sort of published on that, they look very achievable, I’d say, from our point of view, and we would have similar aspirations for our own business. I think in time, even the targets that have been put out there by other companies will be well exceeded. I think the core thing for us is though, you can put a value target or something like that on it. It’s how does it translate into our medium-term targets and how does it translate particularly into earnings growth and EPS growth. I’ll talk a little bit about the sources of value in a moment. They’re certainly there. But it will take investment and it will take time. Some of it clearly will go back to customers. I think just working it through on how much goes into maybe a new EPS target will take us a little bit longer. From a targets point of view, we’re probably happy that we have very ambitious targets, like with 8%-10% EPS growth target that we’re exceeding. I think from a targets point of view, we’re fine. Just on the sources of value then, they are really substantial, and they touch all parts of the business. Customer service. We have long-term products. That means we typically operate maybe a bit slower than other parts of the financial services industry if we compare ourselves to the non-life insurance side or the banking side. For me, our service delivery is not as quick as it should be. I think that can turn into a much greater sort of intuitive, simpler experience for customers, and that will drive our revenue growth. There's very strong demand for our products, but the easier we can make them for people, the more we’re going to drive growth. That investment and experience then will drive efficiency. All of that on the customer service side will drive growth and drive down the efficiency ratio. There’s a huge part for our cost then that are just in the back office and the running of the business, the management of the balance sheet, the financial reporting. AI is going to be of huge assistance there as well in just modernizing the business and making it more efficient. It’s going to support all of the medium-term targets that we have, and it’s a journey over years. I do talk to my team about turning us into a minutes and seconds organization. The sort of irony about it is it’s going to take us a couple of years to be a minutes and seconds organization. But we’re firmly on that journey now. Are you thinking about maybe putting out a target at some point in the future? I think more of what we would probably share, like we were thinking about this, I think maybe next year we can have a deeper discussion about it. It is probably maybe the size of the investment we would be making and the opportunity and the timelines and how people might see that come through the different metrics. We are working across all areas as other companies are. AI is very much alive now in financial services. It is there in call centers. Agentic AI is there in the customer service processes behind the call centers. It is there in the management and the supervision of the business, and the capabilities just keep improving every year. Awesome. Thanks for that color. Maybe diving into the businesses. I have to start with Empower, the retirement business. This has been a really strong trajectory. You have crossed CAD 2 trillion in workplace client assets in Q2. It looks like your margins that are at a high now, just under 35%. Maybe talk about the margin trajectory from here. Obviously, it is a very scalable business, and you have got some efficiency gains ahead, as per some of the recent commentary from yourself and from Ed. Yeah. What is the margin trajectory look like? What should investors expect in the medium term? Yeah, it is in a fantastic position at the moment. I think our operating margin was just over 30% on the retirement side for all of 2025, and it is 34.7% now for Q2. Ed and the team have done a fantastic job on integrating the acquisitions that we made over the last number of years and really building a sort of single platform that we bring out to the market. I suppose we are reaping some of the rewards of just the fantastic integration work that was done there and building that single platform. I think one area where we need to continue to invest is on the brand side. I think 34.7 operating margin for retirement is probably higher than it will be for the full year. There's a little bit of just timing on expenses in that, and brand investment just being an example, but that's an area we'll continue to invest in. I probably expect some fallback on that number for the full year. There are lots of things that are going to drive a continued improvement in the operating margin. Our cost per participant will continue to reduce. That's just from the scale of the platform that's there already. As AI comes more into the business, that's going to drive down cost per participant. We're expanding our product all of the time, and a lot of our new products help expand margin as well. There's obviously pricing pressure within the market, but the market is already at a fantastic value point for customers. Margin pressure is there, but it's probably eased a little, if anything, over the last number of years. I think we'll have all of these positives that will support expansion of the operating margin. There'll be continued investment in the brand, which will pull back on that a little bit. North of 35%, continued modest improvement on that is a perfectly reasonable end destination for people to expect. Probably just a little bit fallback, and say, from where we are for the full year this year. Okay. On the inorganic opportunities, I think Milliman was sort of framed as a strategic deal. Yeah. A little bit of cost synergies there, but it sounds like it's more of a revenue opportunity as you sort of plug some holes that might be there in your product breadth. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah. It was a $340 million US acquisition to generate mid-teen returns. So that mid-teen level will feed into the earnings. The synergies were less there because we were acquiring a business that had some amount of defined contribution 401(k) clients, but it is primarily a defined benefit administration platform. We didn't really have that capability. We had to sort of outsource that as we won clients that were looking for a bundled offering. So, our win rate in the market is incredible. We had new plan wins of over $20 billion last year. We are on track for that again this year. We have won over $200 billion in clients, or almost $200 billion in clients, since the MassMutual acquisition. But the one gap we have is particularly clients that have legacy defined benefit and defined contribution and are looking for a provider that can provide both, and we have that now. So, that will drive even better win rate experience in the market, and that was the key reason behind the decision. It just adds to the capabilities that we have been adding to the business. OptionTrax on the stock admin was another very similar example. Okay. Fair to say, you are still obviously looking for inorganic opportunities as well, different sizes, even large deals are- Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. We have appetite for all sized deals, up to large deals. Our criteria there are, it has to be strategic fit, add scale. We have to be very confident about hitting that 15% IRR target, and we have to be very confident around execution on it. Awesome. In terms of just the market right now, obviously still a consolidation dynamic. Is it still the same dynamic where some of the smaller competitors are maybe struggling a little bit and the consolidation hasn't really gone away? No, it's still there. It's still an incredibly spread out market. Obviously, ourselves and Fidelity are by far and away the two largest players. But still, not dominant market share. So that just shows how spread out the market is. The dynamic in the market in the last number of years is, all the market share gains are in a very small number of the larger players. That's where the business is going. The smaller players are declining in market share, so that means that consolidation dynamic is going to continue to be there. Okay. Particularly, I'd say with AI and the investment that's required in it, and just even the amount of resources it takes to go through and re-engineer all of your processes, it's very hard to do that type of thing unless you have scale. So, the scale dynamic becomes even more important than it has been in the past. Got it. Then maybe on the personal wealth side, so Empower, again, record margin in the quarter, slightly over 40%. You've got the launch of the private markets option, the partnerships that you've recently announced, a lot of exciting strategic initiatives. Yeah. Maybe talk about what that means in terms of the margin and where that could potentially gravitate to in the coming 2-3 years. Yeah. Look, it's amazing that the wealth business in the U.S., that's still a young business for us. It's only a number of years old, obviously seeded out of our existing business there and some acquisitions. But it's still a young business. So, for a wealth business to be that young, it's already past $100 billion in USD assets. But for a business that young to be at a 40% margin is just incredible. And the reason for that is, and the huge advantage that business has is, its access or its closeness to customers in the retirement business. And that means our cost of customer acquisition is much lower than broader wealth markets. So, that gives us an absolutely huge advantage. Now, probably similar to the retirement business, 40%, we probably don't expect it to be at that for the full year. Ed is doing a fantastic job managing expenses overall. There is a little bit of timing. There probably will be a little bit of fall back in that this year. But again, the trajectory there is upwards and we'll get to 40% pretty soon, I think, for a full year, and get beyond that. It is just that closeness to the retirement business. We do a fantastic job for those customers, as they say, for retirement with us. Every year then more and more of those customers are choosing to stay with us after retirement. Okay. On that rollover capture, any update you can give us? I know you're somewhere around 15% is what's been quoted. You've got obviously ambitions to get that number meaningfully higher over time. I know it does take a long time, and you want to sort of gravitate toward where your large- Yeah, it takes a long time. It's all about building up relationships with customers as they're saving, whether it's in the workplace. It's about the number of products you have with them. It's about the brand awareness. So, it takes time to build that. We'd got up to sort of net inflows in the wealth business of close to CAD 3.5 billion for Q3 and Q4 at the end of last year. That would've been a rollover rate in the high teens. Ed did sort of lay out a restructuring that we talked about in our calls earlier on this year, just in getting the wealth business and the advisor population closer to the retirement business and greater integration and earlier calls and earlier interaction with customers. That's pulled back the net flows with CAD 1.8 billion for Q1 and Q2 of this year. That's brought that rollover rate back to sort of circa 15%. So, over the next sort of short number of quarters, we'll see sort of improvements back up to the levels that we were at. Then, it sort of continued journey on then into rollover rate of in the 20s, mid-20s, high 20s. The best in the market sort of operate at 40% plus levels. So, these are long-established players. Everybody knows the biggest that have that product spread that I talked about and that brand awareness that I talked about. That's the same journey that we're on. And in terms of the platform, the wealth platform, where does it sit today? Are there any areas that could use some improvement, whether adding new capabilities or- Yeah. The one- Is it just the marketing? Product capability is our retail brokerage offering is not as strong as we like. So, that would be an area of investment for us. And then from, say, from a service point of view, it is probably executive financial planning. I think that is where we can add more capability as well. So, these are sort of very obvious and natural areas for us to add on. As I said, the business is still a very young business. It is only a number of years old. So, we are very happy with the build-out that is there, and these are the areas that we will continue to develop. That build-out can be either in-house or inorganic? It can be, yeah. Absolutely. We have one of the largest technology teams in the industry, so we have fantastic sort of in-house build capabilities. These are areas where you can make acquisitions. What we showed with OptionTrax and Milliman is the type of add-ons and capabilities that you can bring in through acquisition. We are very open to that. Okay. Awesome. Might we see Empower in the next Super Bowl ad? Can I say that? A reasonable chance, yeah. I will say next year, particularly if the Broncos got to the Super Bowl, it would be fantastic. There is something very special about the Super Bowl next year. I think it is the first Super Bowl that is going to be on Valentine's Day, and that is a holiday weekend in the U.S. I think there was record Super Bowl audience this year, and everyone is super confident there is going to be an even- Okay bigger audience next year. If Ed was to pick the Super Bowl next year, it would be a good year to pick it. It is fair to say that the marketing aspect is a big part of how you are going to drive awareness and build those. It is huge. Brand is so important, and particularly in our industry because what brand really does is it gives customers confidence to make decisions. We have a fantastic product offering. We do a great job, I think, in helping customers save for retirement, saving at the right level and being in the right sort of investment products. I think there is something very particular about our customer set then as well, because they are saving for retirement. They have built up wealth, and that wealth is to help them live then in retirement, and they have to draw down that money in a particular way, in a sensible way. Because we are so close to them and are the people that have helped them sort of build up that, I think we are the best company to help them post-retirement then as well. Brand just makes it easier for customers. It gives them the confidence to stay with you. It's hugely important for us, but hugely important for customers as well. Got it. Thanks for that color. Maybe switching over to Europe. Maybe talk a bit about the optimization in Europe and where things sort of stand right now in terms of strategic direction. You've got a decently diversified business in Europe, but different pockets where you maybe want to be bigger in and other areas where you perhaps don't want to participate in as actively. Maybe talk about the Europe segment and where it goes from here. Yeah. Europe is like all of our businesses. Anything we're in at the moment, we want to be bigger in it. That's a fantastic position for the company. We're not in any product line or sort of market at the moment that we don't want to be in, and that just gives us incredible focus as an organization. That's the same in Europe. There were a number of lines in the U.K. that we didn't have scale, and we've exited out of those. The portfolio across Europe, we're very happy with. Absolutely fantastic broad position in Ireland. Incredible market share. That economy is growing, continues to grow very, very strongly, and that's driving that business forward in Ireland. We're in a great position there. Within the U.K. then, we have a great insurance franchise, both on the sort of workplace insurance, very similar to what we have here in Canada, and then within the annuity space on the retail annuity side, and increasingly on the bulk annuity side. The U.K. is the biggest of the three businesses in Europe because it's an insurance franchise. The sort of balance sheet there is very important. It's a Solvency II balance sheet first, LICAT balance sheet second, just how you manage that is very important, and that's where we've invested quite a lot over the last number of years on that capital optimization program. We've delivered CAD 2 billion of value already and another about CAD 1 billion to go there. As well as that just capital benefit, it does improve our competitiveness on the new business side. Obviously, that market, and particularly on the bulk annuities, is competitive, and there's a good number of players there, but we still like the return outlook there. That's certainly going to be a market that we're going to continue to participate in. Then Germany is a smaller market, but I think with a lot of sort of opportunity there. But the near-term opportunity continues to be Ireland and the U.K. In terms of the bulk annuity business in the U.K. Yeah How big is that opportunity when you think about your position in the market, where it could go from here, or just the market more broadly. Seems like there's some traction there. Yeah. I think bulk annuities will be a share of our overall sort of capital supported business. We still want the and the highest growth will come from the capital light business. As I said, they're about 66% of earnings in aggregate. That will grow to over 75%. So we think about bulk annuities probably alongside the reinsurance business. So there'll only ever be a certain proportion of earnings we look to target in that space. So I'd say we're maybe at 50% to two-thirds of our sort of capability on the bulk side. But we're not looking to be a market leader in that space in the U.K. Okay. Thanks for that color. That's helpful. Maybe on the Canada business, a bit of a decline the last couple quarters. I think it's the LTD that was noted in terms of what's been impacting that. Can you talk about that dynamic? I mean, cyclical versus something that will sort of normalize over time as repricing. How do you sort of get over that hump? Yeah. It's something I think we still have to work through and just see the experience for a few more quarters. Insurance experience has been very strong for us for the last number of years. Overall insurance experience for the group for the first half of this year was still a positive number, albeit not quite at the full level of last year. Canada the last few years has been a very big contributor to that overall positive insurance experience, and we have seen a pullback in the Canadian experience this year. Obviously, the Canadian experience is a mixture of group experience and individual experience, and then within the group experience and the individual as well, you have sort of morbidity/disability experience and mortality experience and others. There is volatility and movement around. But I suppose behind those numbers, what we're seeing is a pullback in the long-term disability experience. There is evidence that that's not just us, it's there in the broader market as well. I think everybody just on that line had seen very good experience post-COVID. It is possible that there is sort of a pullback in that experience now. Group disability experience is made up of the number of new claims that come onto your book, and then how long those claims stay on the book, because most people are it is a long-term illness, but people recover and do get back to the workplace. I suppose the suspicion is, but it'll take a little bit more time to see whether this is right or not. There's no real dynamic that should drive higher level of new claims, but we could be in an environment where just the return-to-work experience is not as good as it can be. That might be from, we're just in a post-COVID experience now. There's more pressure on people to work in the office, and that actually has a dynamic on disability experience. Then, business sentiment is a little lower than it has been in Canada for reasons that people will understand. Again, that can create dynamics on return to work. There's a suspicion that is there now, and we're in a slightly different period. But as you say, we'll continue to judge these. These are repriceable contracts, but it's probably a bit early to be forming decisions on pricing on that yet. Okay. On CRS, I think that's an area of interest for a lot of investors, along with Empower. CRS has been growing very, very strongly. Very, very high ROE. Yeah Capital light. You sort of transition that business. Maybe talk about that transition and where it goes from here, just in terms of the potential sort of run rate growth that you can extract from that line. Yeah. The business is made up of two prime buckets. One is just sort of direct risk transfer from insurance companies and then the other side is capital support. It is that capital support that's seen the very strong growth over the last number of years. We've reduced the amount of P&C reinsurance that we write, and that's probably a little further out of the market even when we write it now than it has been in the past. We've exited out of writing new sort of direct mortality reinsurance in the U.S. as well. The growth has come from the capital solution side. Very similar to the way we are as an organization, very focused on capital generation as well as the earnings growth. That's a dynamic now that's in the insurance industry. All insurance companies are very focused on being efficient from a capital point of view and having good sources of that capital. Insurance companies can equity raise, they can long-term borrow, or they can reinsure. When it comes to raising capital, reinsurance is one of the most efficient ways that you can do it. We have seen very strong demand for products that we have been selling for a large number of years. That has been driven by regulatory changes in Europe and in Asia, and then just growth in markets, particularly, say, the health insurance market in the U.S. So that has driven a very strong demand on that side of the business. Yeah. Okay, awesome. On capital deployment, I think since you became CEO, you have progressively gotten a bit more of an appetite for buybacks. There is obviously a negative hit to book value, and you are trading at three times book right now. How does that play into your decision-making in terms of your appetite for buybacks? Yeah. We have no desire to build up long-term cash, so buybacks will continue to be one of our capital deployment tools. Obviously, the share price has done spectacularly well over the last year, but buybacks continue to be accretive, so they will continue to be a tool. I think we did CAD 1.6 billion in buybacks this year. We have signaled, I think we have done CAD 925 million of buybacks in the first half of this year. John has signaled a total, including the Milliman, of at least CAD 1.6 billion for this year. So we continue to weigh our options. M&A has to be at the right price and has to be at levels where we are very confident about execution. The right M&A can be very good and very accretive. But buybacks will continue to be a tool. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. That is great. Maybe I will turn it back over to you, David. Any key messages you want to leave with investors? No. As I said at the start, it has been a fantastic first year, so I want to thank all the support we are getting from the investment community and from my own team. If the next 12 months is as good as the last 12 months, I will be a very happy person. Awesome. Thank you very much, David, for your insights. Yeah. Thanks for joining us today, and really appreciate your time. Okay. Thanks a lot, Mike.