Okay. Just checking. Are we live? You are live. Outstanding. It's a pleasure to introduce Fred Crawford today, the President and COO of Aflac. Fred has been in a number of positions prior to joining Aflac. He was CFO of Lincoln National, CFO of CNO, and the performance has always been excellent, and the same is true for Aflac, the company, over the last 20-plus years, and it's just compounded at a phenomenal double-digit rate, and we're interested in learning more- Sure about how that could possibly happen going forward. On that note, I'd love Fred to just kind of kick off and talk to you about EPS growth potential. The EPS adjusted and excluding FX were up 11% in 2020, following about 7% in 2019. I know there was lower utilization of benefits this past year, particularly in the U.S. Yeah, just kind of curious, what are you thinking about long term in terms of EPS growth potential, Fred? Sure. Well, as you know, Andrew, we moved away from more specific EPS guidance for a few reasons for that. It wasn't really necessarily just related to the pandemic, also, as you know, the whole industry is soon going to be adopting new accounting, and with that, we're all working through the application of the new accounting and thinking about that from an EPS. As a result, what we did move to, though, is giving much more color, we think, and helpful color on earnings drivers so that you can piece together the puzzle when it comes to EPS. What I can tell you is, from an earnings driver standpoint, if you look at Japan, we would expect to continue with relatively stable pre-tax margins. They've been in the 20%-22% range, and we think that stability will continue. That is a stable pre-tax profit margin on modestly lower revenues. We still have paid-up policies that stop paying their premium over a set period of time. We also are running down our first sector savings book, given the interest rate environment in Japan. Those weigh modestly on revenue growth, obviously expecting declines in the short run in low single digits. As you move to the U.S., a little more compressed pre-tax profit margins, largely because of the stepped-up investments we're making in driving our new growth initiatives, which include Dental and Vision, group benefits or so-called true Group Life and Disability, and then direct-to-consumer. Those investments will weigh down on pre-tax adjusted earnings for a temporary period of time until they build to a level of scale where they start turning the corner and contributing to earnings. Those things obviously, together with low interest rate environment, I should say, we expect relatively stable net investment income going forward. The reduction in interest income related to low rates offset by continuing to build some of our loan portfolios and our alternative asset portfolios. Relative stability there. All told, what that says is, yes, you expect due to the level or pace of investment and some pandemic-related impact to revenue, some weakness in operating earnings or adjusted earnings, as we call it. That offset by continued robust cash flow and capital conditions and the deployment of that capital to protect and defend and create more stability around EPS going forward. That's actually the tack we're taking. We're asking our investors to be patient with us when it comes to pre-tax earnings while we go through this period of investment and setting the stage for future growth. While we're asking you to be patient, we're being proactive on the capital side, both in the way of share repurchase, but also, more importantly, looking hard at the dividend, now having experienced a lot of confidence in our free cash flow, particularly our ability to, as you pointed out, maintain earnings and free cash flow strength, as a supplemental health insurance company in the midst of a global pandemic. If you were to come to me three years ago and say, "What's your nightmare from an industry perspective?" I would tell you, well, the good news is I'm not really fearful of low for long interest rates the way many in the life sector are. I'm also not particularly fearful of equity markets volatility, and what that can do with more retirement-based platforms. But I'm a morbidity play, and a pandemic or a major health event is something I have to pay careful attention to when managing our capital. This has been a great test on that dynamic, and particularly how supplemental products hold together during pandemic conditions. Obviously, we've seen a great impact to our sales platform, but from a pure earnings and capital strength and financial quality and risk management and stress testing, we've been very pleased with how we've navigated. That's given us and our board further confidence in the free cash flow generation of the company and resulted in the nearly 18% increase in our dividend on the back of 37 years of increased dividends. We feel very good about our financial position, but we've got to see recovery in sales in a post-pandemic environment. Fred, near term, there could be some volatility in earnings, but longer term, is there kind of a number that you aspire to in terms of EPS growth, or maybe it's too early to say? Generally what I would say is this, you should anticipate that capital management will continue to be a strong both buffer and promoter of EPS development. What you'll see is operating earnings will start to gradually turn from being a headwind to a tailwind as we make our way through this investment period and into growth. As we make our way through our five-year plan, you'll start to see that kick in. What we ultimately want to be able to do from an EPS standpoint is obviously combined a nice, stable, low beta, okay, growth in operating earnings coupled with an ability to deploy capital in a way that creates more EPS growth opportunity. That's ultimately the goal and our five-year strategic plan and where you see us building to that, we would hope that by 2025, we're certainly in a position where those types of numbers are coming through. In the meantime, we've been able to defend EPS underneath some of these underlying factors, including investments in our platform and even revenue pressure in Japan. We would expect to continue to defend EPS currently and EPS growth rates as we go forward. Got it. As you expand, in which areas are you looking to kind of be bigger? In 2020, about 70% of Aflac's earnings were from Japan, with the remaining 30% in the U.S., Fred. Where could you be in, say, five years? Right. Where do you want the mix to be? It's a good question in that it raises a couple of very interesting things to talk about. Japan. We have 25-plus million policies in place in Japan. Japan, as you know, it is a shrinking population. It is a somewhat stagnant economic condition. They're trying to change that and address that, but it's been years of more stagnant dynamics. There are certain catalysts that stand behind our products in Japan, most notably being the shift of financial burden onto consumers in Japan. That shift may in fact continue. There's discussion of continued shift of co-pays onto consumers in Japan as they struggle with the economic reality of robust universal healthcare. Those types of things, even an aging population speaks to a level of strength in our business model because as you age, obviously you get much more aware of the importance of supplemental health products, particularly in Japan. There are some underlying catalysts that support our industry and support our company, particularly a third sector positioned company like ours, medical and cancer, as we go forward. What's very important is as we look for growth opportunities in Japan, we have to preserve the two most important components of Japan to the value of our company. That is, one, robust, reliable, consistent cash flow generation as a mature and well underwritten and strong risk profile company. The second thing we need to preserve is it delivers us arguably the lowest cost of capital in the industry. We want to make sure that as we look for growth opportunities in Japan, we don't run the risk of undermining those two fundamental value propositions to the company. For example, yes, it's always tempting to go into first sector savings products, whether it be currency products or what have you. As we explore elderly care protection, we need to be wary of where we would be willing to underwrite and where we wouldn't. The care products, as they call it in Japan, are supplemental in nature. They're not to be confused with long-term care, but like any elderly care type protection, you want to be very careful on the underwriting. Even though it may not sound like robust growth opportunities in Japan, realize we're at all times trying to defend cash flow and the low cost of capital while we look to expand. Therefore, what we are doing is rotating that capital out of Japan into the holding company where we are either making investments in building out the U.S. platform where we see much more opportunity, and much more insurable interest or so-called blue ocean type opportunities in our space, and/or delivering back to the shareholders for a healthy return, or creating options for future growth through our venture capital investments and alliances that we have formed. Even some of the alliance expansion and global investments is designed around driving future opportunities to leverage that platform. The primary shift will be we are absolutely investing to build the percentage of earnings in the U.S. and that should result in a gradual shifting of earnings and revenue towards the U.S. and lowering the percentage in Japan. I would say lowering the percentage in Japan, not because Japan is shrinking. Rather, there would be much more pronounced growth in the U.S. Obviously, as you know, that's through those major initiatives around dental and vision, Group Life and Disability, and what those business opportunities bring in the way of halo effect to growing our core voluntary businesses in the U.S. That's really the shift. I would not hold your breath and think about us entertaining businesses outside our core competency, both from a geographic standpoint, and from a product extension standpoint. The reason I say that is because I think that it's very important for us to remain focused and to invest our capital in a way that can easily be leveraged at a relatively low risk of capital investment. When we look internationally or we look into new areas of growth, we're doing it through the venture fund so that it's contained to a $400 million fund. It is granular. It is much more of an investment play than it is a managerial play. What we get in that venture capital fund is we learn a lot that we can bring back to our core business. There may come a day where there are opportunities, much like we found 45 years ago in Japan, in an international platform. We don't subscribe to the notion of sending our capital internationally when we have so much opportunity to build in the U.S. That makes sense. I like that term, blue ocean. I haven't heard that one before, so. You got to be really careful when you use that term, right? That is, well, what are you talking about? For us, the blue ocean has always been, we have 470,000 corporate clients in the U.S., 400,000 of them are small businesses. They employ less than 100 people. The great insurable interest that exists out in the marketplace in the employer-based work site, supplemental health territory, and frankly, dental and vision, is in the small business sector. We're there, and we're there with a unique model. It's interesting. That unique model has been disproportionately hurt during the pandemic. Right? Agent-driven small business, that's in the crosshairs of the pandemic. Reduction in face-to-face sales. Even enrollment is done face-to-face in a small business, how do you get your agents inside small businesses during a pandemic? It's difficult. Small businesses, as you all know, they're the ones that have taken the brunt of the economic impact. The stock market has done perfectly well, if there was such a thing as a small business index, it would be doing poorly. Helped a little bit by stimulus, not a lot of it. It's that same unique business model that also uniquely positions Aflac for a blue ocean opportunity where we can deliver more of these products to the untapped middle and small marketplace. It's a bit of a blessing and a curse during a pandemic, it's part of our business model that we believe in and offers a lot of opportunity. Interesting. Fred, here's an interesting one. You look at Aflac stock year to date, and it's down 7%. You look at the S&P 500, it's up 20%, but a lot of the life insurance sector names were up pretty materially, probably 8%-12% zone. What do you think, going forward, might be the potential catalysts to Aflac seeing favorable stock price performance? Well, everything is relative, as you know, and the way you positioned it is the right way. You mentioned at the introduction that I've been at a few different insurance companies over my career and in the position of CFO. What I tend to tell investors is, the good news is we're not exposed, relative to the sector, to low for long interest rates, nor are we exposed to equity market volatility. At times, the bad news is that we're not exposed to low interest rates, and we're not exposed to equity market volatility. If rates are viewed as recovering over time and generating better spread opportunities for spread players in the market, and if equity markets continue on their march, defying gravity in many cases, I would say, then you're going to find a low beta morbidity-based player, like Aflac, going to, on a relative basis, underperform some of those metrics. There's that dynamic, and that's our business model, and we've signed up to it, and we like it. Okay? In terms of catalysts driving performance going forward, we believe there's really two keys to driving value right now. One is short-term and one is longer-term. In the short term, we absolutely need to recover in a post-pandemic environment. That first sign of recovery, I believe, is going to be sales, and it's going to be sales in the eyes of our investors and as a leading indicator of the company. In Japan, you're needing, obviously, pandemic conditions to improve, but you're also needing Japan Post to recover and rebuild from its glory point, before falling into difficulty. In the U.S., it's largely pandemic recovery in the short run, and then over the long run, you have to build upon these investments that we've made in 2019 and 2020 to set the stage for executing on those platforms. It's easy to say sales recovery, but realize what's embedded in sales recovery. What's embedded in that is you have come out the other side of the pandemic with no damage done to your franchise. Okay. You've come out the other side of the pandemic with a recovering and rebuilding Japan Post, you've come out the other side of the pandemic with a viable platform in the U.S. where products are filed and ready to go. They're loaded onto systems with agents and brokers trained and educated. You have sales forces in place. They have digital tools that allow them to operate in a modest pandemic environment or an improved dynamic. The table is set, the first sign of those payoffs working, including product introduction in Japan, is in the sales. It's easy to say sales improvement, but I think what you and I know, Andrew, you from covering our company for quite a while, is that it's not really just sales. It's what that says about the overall model and its progression. That's what we're focused on. That's what we believe to be the catalyst. I can't peg a stock price for you. That's your job. Clearly, the catalysts are delivering on that storyline and that strategic plan. Maybe, Fred, just kind of shifting to the sales topic in Japan, maybe you could give us a view of how you're seeing 2021 to shape up in terms of potential growth, then the longer term. You've got the new cancer rider in- Yeah the fourth quarter that came out, the new medical product in this first quarter, maybe a little color around that as well. Let's talk about Japan first. One common denominator in both Japan and the U.S. is that we see pandemic conditions as continuing in the first half of the year. We study the dynamics just like all of you are studying the dynamics, there'll be some mornings where you see very promising signs of reduced cases, vaccines starting to come out. We had yet another vaccine, I think, approved today in the news for rollouts or a third vaccine being rolled out. In Japan, they're only at around 470,000 or so cases in Japan, with 7,500 fatalities. While Japan is a very concerned community with states of emergency in play, they are seeing a reduction in cases. They have a very low level of cases and mortality dynamics. We see signs that the notion of a second half of the year being more robust than the first half of the year from a pandemic standpoint seems to make sense to us and seems to be tracking that way. The second major issue in Japan beyond the pandemic is Japan Post. Japan Post had a press conference on February 9th, what was very promising in what they said is that they were reopening Japan Post Insurance. They were reopening 80 company-owned offices, sales offices that cater to corporate clients. The term corporate offices or corporate sales offices in Japan is their terminology for a work site. These are offices that are dedicated to typically major corporations and selling insurance into their employees at the work site. They reopened 80 of those offices. Those same 80 offices were taking inbound or what I would call reverse inquiries, if you will, people phoning up proactively and requesting insurance policies. They're not proactively going out to sell, but they are processing inbound inquiries over additional insurance policies. More important than the specifics of that announcement is just the announcement itself. What it tells us is that they indeed have made great progress on their so-called apology tour, meaning going out to existing clients, formally apologizing, and restoring the relationship with those individuals, that they've made good progress on that. They're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel in the form of opening up certain offices under Japan Post Insurance. What we have said is we would expect them to be on a track to sort of reopen again, in a traditional sense, their post offices for the sale of Aflac Cancer policies in the second half of the year or by the second half of the year. If that comes earlier, so be it. Right now, the best we can tell is we think we're in alignment with their planning by saying the second half of the year, but we'll have to monitor that going forward. That's the Japan dynamic. Future growth in Japan is related to product. We introduced a simplified cancer rider in the fourth quarter, and that has done well. It served to kind of prop up Cancer Insurance, but realize Cancer Insurance is going to ebb and flow based on Japan Post. That's a cancer-only alliance. They are a substantial piece of our cancer sales in Japan. We need to see them recover. When they do, they also will be afforded this simplified rider package, which we think will do well in the post office system. We introduced a new medical product in January. As we mentioned on our fourth quarter call, we only had two weeks under our belt. We're very experienced at product launches in Japan, as you know, on the medical and cancer side, years and years of experience. We can tell early on whether there's traction in the product and whether we're seeing that traction and excitement. What Dan commented on is we were seeing only a few weeks into January that it was responding. The product was responding in a way that we would normally hope for it to respond, even in a pandemic environment. We think that holds promise. We'll have to see how the rest of the quarter tracks. Then we'll comment on that. The early days felt good to us. As we go long range in Japan, it's really going to be about whether or not we can develop a viable, what we would call third pillar, if you will, to our third sector lineup. We're a cancer medical cancer medical company. At some point in time, we need either income products, which are more disability in nature, or care products, which are sort of supplemental elderly care type coverage. We need those markets to develop in a way, in a robust enough way, and risk-adjusted way that they can offer us additional opportunities behind cancer and medical. We have those products in place. We have development underway. We've yet to really promote it and drive it in the marketplace, and that will be something we'll address over time. U.S., similar story pandemic-wise. First half of the year, a little more navigating the pandemic, particularly the first quarter. Realize we're still up against a very difficult comparable. The first quarter last year was essentially a traditional quarter through about mid-March, where we started to see pandemic conditions start to creep into our sales practice. It really wasn't a first quarter event, pandemic-wise, last year. We're up against a tough comparable in the first quarter. As we move then into the second quarter, it starts to switch on you where the second quarter was a particularly depressed quarter in 2020, down some 60% or so in the U.S., similarly in Japan. We'll start to see some percentage-wise recovery as we make our way into the second quarter. We still believe the second half of the year is going to be a better marker for us in the U.S. Now, the table is set in the U.S. By that, what I mean is our dental and vision product is now filed and loaded in 40 states, and we're building state by state throughout 2021. In 2020, we had a 10-state pilot going on for very little sales just to make sure the system was working, the products were working, the administration was working. Now we're truly launching it. That is all the way down to small business, all the way up to large corporate or large cases. The Group Life and Disability acquisition from Zurich, that is a product that is ready to go right now in the marketplace. The nature of the reinsurance structure with Zurich is that we do not need to wait on product filings, which could take upwards of 6 to 9 months before you are in the market. We are ready now in the market. In fact, we actually sold a $5 million case in the November, December timeframe, just as we acquired them. We closed on the acquisition in November. That platform is up and ready to go, will not miss a sales season, and is ready to sell product. Our direct-to-consumer was just now launched and rolled out in 30 states where we have three products that we are offering up, accident, hospital, critical illness, and those products are out there in the marketplace. It is very slow going, but we think that the D2C platform will be a building platform over time for us. We spent a lot of time in 2020 in the U.S., yes, navigating the pandemic, but also readying the stage for a recovery in 2021. Interesting. Just kind of going back to Japan, then I want to go to U.S. right after. You are targeting JPY 80 billion to JPY 90 billion by 2025. That compares with JPY 51 billion in 2020, JPY 80 billion in 2019, JPY 96 billion in 2018. There were some spikes in 2018, I get that. Is there a potential for materially more if you go into those other product areas that you described, Fred? The- Yeah, income and care. You think The answer is yes. I think when we look over a five-year period of time, quite honestly, pandemic recovery, we can see that springing back more in its trajectory. We are assuming a really slower path of recovery and build in the Japan Post system, because their issues were not strictly pandemic related. Of course, there was more market conduct related issues that they need to recover from, rebuild from, and restructure. We need to be supportive of them and patient in making sure they do what they need to do to get it done right and create a strong foundation going forward. They're too important an institution in Japan and for us to not allow that to happen. We are assuming a more gradual build and recovery in the Japan Post system. There's not really a reason for that, meaning that's not some sort of plan that was dictated between the parties. We would all like to see a speedy and sharper recovery in that system, but we just think it's prudent to be more conservative given their dynamics. What that brings you back to, you're absolutely right, it brings you back to a third sector level that is commensurate with pre-pandemic levels. I would say pre-pandemic and pre-Japan Post challenge levels, which was more in that 2016 to 2019 or 2018 period. 2018, we introduced a new Cancer product, so you saw Japan Post shoot up, as well as our overall Cancer business, because that was quite a robust product improvement and design build. That was a bit of an outlier year in that regard, but you'll see that from time to time. When I joined the company, not quite six years ago, we were a JPY 65 billion kind of player in the third sector space. We had augmented that with a first sector savings product called WAYS, which was popular in the banking market, bank distribution, because it had that savings component to it. When I joined the company, it was shortly after that we had good news and bad news. The good news was Japan Post started to really build to become a prominent play in our alliance and our sale of third sector business. Offsetting that was the Bank of Japan's 2016 announcement to go to negative interest rates, and we very quickly ascertained that, hey, you can't properly price a first sector savings product, or it's at minimum. Minimum dangerous- Dangerous We just flat dead shut it down. I think we may have been the first major player of any kind in Japan to shut it down. We did that. Did that. I've been involved in businesses that are interest rate sensitive. We did that. It was not an easy thing to do. We really pivoted to becoming a third sector player. We built that JPY 60 billion franchise up into the JPY 80 billion-JPY 90 billion franchise. We want it to be back at that level. That's job one. To go beyond that is really going to require age cohorts. It's going to require grabbing a younger cohort through income, i.e., disability type insurance, and an older cohort through so-called care products, sometimes called Long-Term Care Insurance. Remember, in both these products, they're supplemental in nature. They have very defined benefit structures. They don't have the type of tail risk that you see with long-term disability in the U.S., or obviously long-term care in the U.S. You should not confuse those two, because these are supplemental in nature. We're not taking the first dollar losses on those. Risks are taken by the government in both cases, or the Social Security system or the health system. We're very supplemental defined. That creates an opportunity for us. Those have to build, in my mind, for us to really take the third sector business franchise to another level. Realize we're number one in Japan. Japan's the second largest insurance market in the world. The highest penetration of supplemental health products in the world. We're talking about moving a franchise up from a pretty nice position as a company. It's not like we're a small player looking to build. Again, as I've said to you before, Andrew, my biggest issue is when I look at growth, I look at it and I got to balance, do not risk those two most important points of Japan. It delivers us a 200 basis point cost to capital advantage over the rest of the competition in the U.S., and it delivers me JPY 200 billion or close to $2 billion a year in cash flow. Those are two precious commodities that while we grow, we cannot risk. I see. Okay. If you think about the U.S., and you've highlighted some amazing opportunities, dental and vision group benefits, direct-to-consumer. I look at Aflac's kind of longer term guidance out to 2025 of $1.8 billion. That would represent roughly a 2.2% CAGR versus 2019 sales of $20 billion. The question is, Fred, are you being conservative here? Do you think that's really the absolute right peg? I think what I would tell you is, remember, in this business of buy and build. Build, yeah. The strategy we've taken, as you know, in the U.S., is to buy the footprint and the franchise and the capabilities and technology, the delivery, and the talent that comes with it, and then breathe life into it through what Aflac brings to the table in the way of brand, distribution, capital, et cetera. We have subscribed to a buy and build strategy. That buy and build strategy has good news and bad news associated with it. The good news associated with it is it wasn't writing very large checks in a seller's market, and booking a lot of goodwill and paying for somebody else's growth rate, basically. That's good because we tend to not find a lot of value in the goodwill asset, because usually when we look at a property, we're the ones that are delivering the growth opportunity, not the seller, if you will, or not the property itself. We subscribe to that. The bad news is, because you don't amortize goodwill and because you book restructuring costs or integration costs, oftentimes are defined out of adjusted earnings, the build portion of our strategy is dilutive to operating earnings. It may be the economic long-term right decision for our investors, but it can be painful in terms of the build cost and its operating earnings dynamic. However, what we believe is that done right with our voluntary business, which is really why build makes so much sense, and done right bringing down market, which is a unique Aflac dynamic, the dental and vision opportunities for us can be quite robust, as well as True Group Life and Disability. We're not looking to be the biggest player in the marketplace in both those categories, but we're looking to be a top player in the U.S., and we're looking for it to be very profitable and particularly create halo effect in our products. What do we mean by halo effect? Voluntary products suffer from a couple things, one of which is penetration. If you are an employer with 1,000 employees and we offer our voluntary products in your company, we're lucky to get 150 to 200 of your employees, or 15%-20% of your employees to buy our products. That's because we're on page two, if you will, of the benefit enrollment platform. As you move into dental and vision and True Group Life and Disability, dental and vision has an 80%-85% penetration, which now all of a sudden, we're touching 850 of your employees with an Aflac product. On True Group Life and Disability, it's typically in the 60s, 60%-65% of your employees. By touching more of those employees in small companies and big companies, we have much more voluntary capability to drive the voluntary sales, which has very strong risk-return dynamics for us as a company, given our scale. The halo effect is as important to us as the actual sale of Dental and Vision and the sale of True Group Life and Disability. We think that can be a catalyst to lifting the overall boat. It's a slow road, though. When we bought CAIC in 2009, it was doing about $100 million a year in premium, and we bought it for about $100 million. Today, that platform does nearly $700 million in earned premium. Okay? It went from 125 customers to today, it has 7,600 customers. We took a platform that was large case and smaller, and over a 10-year period of time, we built it to larger with many more cases, bringing it down market. That's why we have 7,600 customers on that platform. It did take 10 years. You might say, "What's your compounded annual growth rate in CAIC, Fred?" I would say, "Well, from a revenue standpoint, it was about a 20% CAGR." You would say, "Well, that's fantastic." It did take 10 years to get from $100 million in premium to $700 million in premium. When you look at Dental and Vision build, and you look at Group Life and Disability build, those will naturally build, I think, a little quicker, primarily because of the higher penetration dynamic. You have much more premium at stake that you can bring in. They'll move faster. We've given guidance on the growth rates in those sectors. It still takes time. Are we being conservative? I think we're being appropriately prudent, if you will, in realizing that it is a gradual build process, and we obviously are working hard every day to do better than that. Got it. I guess we're kind of coming down to the hour, maybe one last question, Fred, about capital. If we look at the, prior to COVID, the payout ratio was about 65%-80%, your forward guidance and increased dividend appear to suggest 80%-90% in the near term. I'm wondering, how does Aflac view its longer term payout ratio as a% of operating earnings? I think, I would say it stands to reason that you would see our payout ratio migrate up in the short run. It goes back to my comments of, look, we are asking you as investors to be patient with a buy and build strategy in the U.S. and effectively a product launch strategy in Japan, and that takes patience. Again, the good news is we can do that without disrupting our capital deployment activities, everything from dividend and dividend growth rate to using our capital to defend, if you will, earnings per share growth rates during this period of time. Naturally, in the insurance industry, as you know, when sales are more depressed, you often have more robust cash flows in your corporate setting because you're not paying out as much in the way of acquisition costs, which tend to be heaped or front-ended. As a result, you see more robust cash flows coming out of U.S. and Japan during a period of weakness in sales. We've diverted some of that money towards reinvestment in the platform. We originally were holding onto it for risk purposes. Watching the pandemic unfold, we gradually started to release that exercise when we saw that we were migrating materially better than our stress testing was suggesting, as we learn more and more about the trajectory of the pandemic. We started to pivot then into releasing that capital. You saw that in our share repurchase of half a billion dollars, I believe it was, in the fourth quarter. You saw that pivot. What we're really doing right now is we're saying, look, during this period of free cash flow generation, while we again set the table for another stairstep of growth, particularly in the U.S., we're going to increase the amount of capital deployed as a percentage or a payout ratio to support all of you as investors, reward all of you as investors while you are patient with our build strategy. That's only fair to do because we otherwise could have acquired a company and announced something, quote unquote, "accretive in year two," which I always put in quotes, and do it that way. We chose to build. It's only fair that we return capital to you while we are going through this period of time. That's the tack we're taking. We'll then settle into a more consistent payout ratio, which I think is largely defined as you put it, Andrew, it's largely defined around being in a position to pay out 80%-100% of what we would call our FSA earnings and our statutory earnings, in Japan and the U.S. The good news about a third sector platform in Japan and a supplemental health platform or morbidity play in the U.S. is you tend to have a very high ratio of statutory earnings to GAAP earnings, and that supports a higher payout ratio of capital. We do think that payout ratio will continue to be a strength of our stock and a strength of our company. We're trying to balance that with investing in a build strategy, because ultimately, our ability to go from 37 years to 67 years of dividend increase is going to be entirely on the back of being successful with these growth initiatives that grow future cash flow and earnings. We've got to balance the two. Awesome. Fred, great insights. Thank you for sharing them, and we appreciate the time. It's my pleasure. Thank you for the good questions. It's good to see you again. I hope everybody's staying safe. Likewise. Take care.