I know we've got a tight schedule here, so I'm going to be in trouble if I don't keep us on track here. We can chat all day. We have Éric Jobin from Industrial Alliance. He's the CFO and Chief Actuary. Where I've been kind of starting out, the discussion is kind of open-ended, big picture, three or four strategic priorities that the management team is spending a lot of time focused in on and why. I know there's some defined kind of goals that you guys have, but maybe I'll just kind of put it there, and then we can kind of drill down from there. Yes, thanks, Doug. Pleased to be with you today for this first event. Really, what is top of mind right now for the management is all about capital deployment. It is really topical. We've just closed a big acquisition on the wealth side. We want to continue our growth journey. Capital deployment is really the key piece. Organic growth initiatives, we have many of them ongoing in lines of business and in centralized client experience. Those are really keeping us busy as well. Operational efficiency has been quite topical over the last couple of years. After entering into the journey of transformation and important IT investment, it was important to get some additional KPIs to help us navigate through those additional investments and make sure that we deliver value on top of those investments. That has been quite topical. Delivering the benefits on those IT investments that we've been doing over the last couple of years, and also the accretiveness on the acquisition that we've made. We confirmed various acquisitions last year. We're now entering year two. We are making sure that we deliver and execute the plans. Stephan is just starting off. That is a pretty busy schedule. There's a lot going on. Some of this we're going to kind of dig into in the discussion. I wanted to start just on the financial side, going to your core EPS growth target at 10%, which you're more than above that this year, year to date, 22%. 6% of the target is organic, and 4% is from various initiatives. I think you've outlined some of those initiatives. The RF acquisition now being accretive year one will kind of contribute to that. Some buybacks will be contributing to that. When you think about that 4% component, can you kind of break that down a little bit more granular and in terms of the levers you can pull to kind of drive that 4%? No, interesting, because I just spoke about organic growth initiatives. We have a lot ongoing there, whether it's on the operational efficiency initiatives to keep improving and get better at doing things in all lines of business, or collecting the benefits of the IT investment and the important technology investment we've been making over the last four or five years is key as well. Those are two things. On top of, like you mentioned, on the 4% piece, there is, as discussed at the investor event, there is an embedded, let's say, NCIB target in there that contributes to the 4% as well. Yeah, that was $300 million, I think. That will flex based upon the other initiatives. Yes. Is that the right way to think of it? The flexible thing will be contributing to the + of the 10% +. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing I always like to ask is you are 22% year to date. Your target is 10%. Is there areas that we should be thinking about that are over-earning this year such that we don't get too far over our skis in terms of expectations for next year? Or is this a good base off which to build? No, I think it's a good base on to build, because we had some very good experience gains aligning in Q2, you're right. Those are experience gains. The baseline is pretty solid. Where we are really working on as well is on the dealer side in the US. We want to improve that business. We've stabilized the profitability, and it starts improving. Growth is coming as well. This is a baseline we want to push upward. OK. Because, yeah, your U.S. Division, if I've got my math right, was up 36% year to date. Yep. This is kind of pushing that further up. Yeah. On top of that, let's keep in mind the improvement in the accretiveness of the acquisition as well. The baseline, Vericity will start to be accretive early next year. Stephan will contribute with the wealth as well. Those will improve the baseline as well for next year. Just to outline, you've got the RF acquisition. You've got Vericity coming through. You've got the improvement in the U.S. extended vehicle warranty side. There's lots of different items that are the key contributors to that. Yeah, absolutely. OK. OK, so then we'll come to core ROE. You target 17%. You're well above this or not well above this, but you're above this. Last quarter annualized, you're well above it. On an LTM basis, you're above this. You've switched the makeup and mix of the business to be more capital light, especially with the RF acquisition. When you look out five years or so, what's the core ROE that this business should be able to generate? Yeah, first, I'll just make an adjustment. We said 17% +. I knew. OK, so that's inclusive. I add + here too. I said +. Let's just keep that in mind. We're confident that we're really happy. We just moved our most recent 15% guidance up to 17% + in February. We thought in February that this was a reasonable guidance for 2027. Fortunately, we had some pretty good development so far this year that made us move ahead of plan on this one. Those things are mostly related to macroeconomic stock market. Doug has been really great this year. It's contributing on the wealth management side and everything. If everything stays the same, this will continue to contribute in the coming years. Experience gain has been exceptional in the second quarter also of the year. That contributed to move forward the achievement of our 17% +. There's still room to improve over that in the coming years. When we look at potential capital deployment activities with acquisition and NCIB, we think that we can do better than that. As a rule of thumb, remember in the investor event, we had a rule of thumb that was talking about a billion more capital deployment is contributing roughly 1% on the ROE. That gives you an idea of the potential and the ongoing. That's where I was going next, because you did bring up capital deployment. You have $1.3 billion of excess capital. When you think about what metrics do you debate internally when you decide between M&A and buybacks? We always favor M&A. When you look at our story in the past, we've been very successful in compounding shareholder value over the years. This is because of our history of acquisition over the last 25 years, achieving more than 70 acquisitions. This contributed to this significant buildup of compounding shareholder value. This is quite an important metric to follow. Favor M&A. And given what you see right now in the market environment, is there more opportunity on the M&A side? Yeah, there is always. We always look at opportunities. Yeah, of course, we're really happy with what happened last year and this year. There may be other opportunities as well. Really, plan A, as I refer, is to deploy through acquisition. Plan B is to return shareholder value to shareholder through NCIB. On this, we're flexible. Depending on the opportunities, we're really flexible. The NCIB a couple of years ago was about 7%. For you to know and for people to know, we've just reviewed our formula over the last week. We're increasing the pace again of NCIB in these days. That's another tool that we have in our toolbox. I was going to say my question was going to be, how long are you comfortable sitting on $1.3 billion? We don't want a pile of cash. Yeah. That's clear for us. We don't want to dilute ROE and pile up cash. It feels like ramping up on the buyback. Yeah, that's why we've been reviewing our formula. Yeah, OK. We've done some work on the US extended vehicle warranty market. I mean, it's gone through some challenges through COVID, but a lot of things went through challenges through COVID. It's a high ROE business. It's a fragmented business. It's an area where you've got experience in Canada and different areas, and creditors are more in Canada. The question is, what's holding you back from being more acquisitive in the US extended vehicle warranty business? Yeah, I guess first, we're really happy with the change we've made over the last couple of years. Heading into the pandemic, it was a quite turbulent period. Timing was not great. At least it allowed us the opportunity to make the right fix to the business model, bring in new management with a different culture, adjusting the culture, adjusting the technology behind the scene. We used that kind of crisis, COVID crisis, to reinforce the business model. That's what we're starting to see the benefit of today. We want to make sure that before we swing for a bigger acquisition, we want to make sure that we have turned the corner. The adjustment we've made to the business model, repricing, cultural change, and management, that we have the right mix of. We're in pretty good hands right now. Sean made great hiring on that front with John Lodenslager. John has made a few changes. We are getting where we want with that business. Before swinging for the big one, we want, let's say, a couple of quarters or a year to make sure that we are OK with the solutions. We will be happy to go bigger. It does not mean in the short term that we cannot do any small tucking. Small tucking is less disturbing than bigger files. That is how we see it. As an outside observer, is there something that we should be looking at that would kind of give us kind of a signal that you're kind of hitting your mark on the U.S. extended vehicle warranty business from a financial perspective? Yeah, I think the key point will be growth in the coming quarters. Like sales or business growth? Yeah, sales. We've made adjustments in the pricing. We lost a couple of clients because of that, because of course, when you bring in changes, sometimes it brings a bit of volatility. We are really confident with the solutions that we've put in place. The way the business model is set up, when sales will pick up with the adjustment we've made, it will be a pretty good signal. OK. It doesn't seem like from a capital deployment, you're kind of there yet on the U.S. extended vehicle warranty. The other one would be U.S. life insurance, where you've been acquisitive. We went back way back. When you built this with American Amicable and Golden State, you proved it out. Then you've layered on top of it. Someone like me that's covered the life insurance space a long time, U.S. life insurance expansion, it could be in banking too, but can be a bit of a dirty word. I'm sure you get questions on this. Why is this a good market? Why is it so attractive? Why is the U.S. life insurance market so attractive? I know you're not in secondary guarantee UL, or you're not in variable annuities and all that stuff. What really attracts you to that marketplace? That's an interesting question. I'll start with an anecdote here to give you a bit of context. At the time when we decided to go south of the border with a real footprint with a company in the U.S., I was in the acquisition team. I worked there for a couple of years. I mentioned it at the investor event. At the time, I was helping the EVP that went into the U.S., our former leader, Mike Stickney, to scan the market and identify potential market and targets. What drew our attention with American Amicable was that it was an opportunity for us to build on our strengths, which is the know-how of managing life insurance. First thing. Second thing was about our strength also on distribution management. American Amicable business model is relying on important distribution relationships with IMOs. We were quite excited. I would say finally, the other criteria we had in mind is that we did not want to compete head to head with big names in the U.S. like MetLife, Prudential. We wanted a niche market that was reinforcing on our strength and deliver value. Guess what? That company was selling about $25 million a year in 2010, and it is now selling over $225 million a year. Very successful growth story out there, building on the highest trend foundations. Any thought of product extension in the U.S.? Yeah, that's always top of mind. With American Amicable, for example, this year, we've put in place a bit of saving products, like a Power Product, an Indexed UL, for the same target market, though, because we want to keep the same distribution relationship. For those that had a little bit of savings and wanted to do a bit more estate planning, there was a need for that. We have just launched those products in the U.S. over the last 12 months. Those are two very good and recent examples. OK. I'm going to pull us back higher level out of the U.S. market and go back to Canada, because I don't think we talk enough about Canada. And it's still a big part of your overall business. It feels like you've got some of your competitors that are looking and waking up to the opportunity in Canada. Great-West has talked about the SEG Fund market. Manulife, with their strategic refresh, has talked more about the mass insurance market in Canada, which is where you compete. Thoughts on increased competition in Canada in those particular segments or just frankly in general? Yeah, in fact, let's be specific. Our target market is mass market. Manulife is talking about this now. The Canadians in general are underinsured in Canada. We have LIMRA studies that talk about this. 50% of the Canadians are underinsured. Plenty of room to grow. That being said, there could be growth opportunities for peers as well. The key thing with the mass market is really to meet a number of critical characteristics to be successful in that market. Those require years of buildup, which means infrastructure to be efficient. It requires technology as well. These days, we say that one out of two policies that iA issues is issued automatically. We have, over the years, transformed traditional underwriting with algorithm underwriting that is made by those algorithms. It takes years to build those. What's even more important is building distribution relationships. That's the key piece, the masterpiece that requires a lot of time to build up as well. Those three things make it timely. It requires time and money to invest and experience. With all of that, iA has been building that story for years in Canada. For our peers that want to enter that market, they need to be as performant as we are right now in that market segment, because it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, and I assume you're not seeing any pressure at this point. Not at this point. Even we heard about Canada's intention on the SEG Funds, but we don't really see it. Going to the RF transaction, and you're going to be graded here because someone has these sticking up. This isn't your first acquisition in the distribution space. You have a history of doing acquisitions in distribution. You have experience doing it. It's in different areas, like dealers and stuff like that. What is the history of your acquisitions in the distribution space? How has that helped you kind of formalize the acquisition of RF and your thinking about the opportunity with RF? Yeah, we've always been looking at distribution. It's part of our DNA to build. I just spoke about the importance that distribution plays as within iA DNA. It's not any different for wealth. This is something we care a lot about. We have a lot of interest. We see that we can build something profitable. We can scale technology. Technology costs and compliance costs are really, really increasing. When you scale up those businesses, it allows us to be more competitive year after year with scaling benefits. That's quite important. It's all about when it's something to acquire, but you need to be perfect at execution. You need to look at the missing, well, the gaps that a potential target has. Stephan had identified with RF a number of gaps that they were seeing they had. We had a number of gaps on our end. When we looked at this and the combined forces of our model with their model, it was really delivering more than 1+ 1. It was really positive for them. It was positive for us as well. We look at all of these things when we look at acquisition. What does it bring to us? What do we bring to them as well? Five years from now, what will define the success of the RF acquisition? Yeah, first, I'll say meeting the execution and the CFO. Meeting the financial target is quite important. I know that Stephan, we're in good hands. Stephan has been, since the day after the announcement of the acquisition, Stephan hit the road. He met everybody and did great in retention. Meeting the financial target is quite important. Building on and leveraging capabilities with revenues and other parts of iA, like insurance sales and so on in that market, will be a key success criteria. Will you provide revenue synergy targets at some point in time? Yeah, we did not think about that. Maybe that's something I will talk with Caroline. Keep in mind that when we talked about the acquisition and the accretiveness, we said that the improved EBITDA synergies will come about 50/50 between revenue and cost synergies. On the revenue side, Stephan has a number of things that he wants to tackle for revenue synergies. Like it allowed us to improve the geographical footprint in Canada because we were not exactly in the same cities. Also, another example is that it provides us, the RF acquisition provides us, an opportunity to recruit bank advisors. That's really the key. With Stephan, with the model and the wealth model we had in place with financial advisory and the independent model, we were far with that independent dealer model or advisor model to be able to recruit easily advisors from banks. We needed a step in between that was a softer lending space for bank advisors. For us, that will be a good opportunity to even scale further the business model of RF. We have just over a minute left. I am going to have to be kept on time here. What I will do is pass it over to you for some key messages. Maybe there is something you want to address that we have not addressed or talked about in our discussion. Yeah, sure. For us, the next year, I would say, Doug, what will be top of mind for the next year is really deploying our capital. That's really the key. We want to deploy capital through acquisitions, through NCIB. I just said that we have just announced the increase of the NCIB. We want to optimize capital as well. We've done great in the last couple of years, tweaking and optimizing our capital structure. That will be a key aspect as well. Most importantly, deliver the benefits on the acquisitions that we've made and on the important investments. Those are the key things. All of this with maintaining our great story about organic growth internally and building those distribution relationships. You got through a whole discussion without talking about anything actuarial. Yes, great. Thankful to everybody. Thank you very much. We really appreciate your participation in our inaugural conference here. Thank you very much, and have a great rest of the day. Thank you. Thank you, Doug.