Good morning, everyone. I'm Jeff Hopson, Head of Investor Relations for RGA. We welcome you to the 2021 Investor Day and appreciate your ongoing interest. Before we get going, I want to remind you that we will make certain statements and discuss certain topics during the presentation that contain forward-looking information, future financial performance and growth potential. Keep in mind that actual results could differ materially from expected results. A list of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results is included in the slide. Additionally, during the course of the meeting, we will make comments on pre-tax and after-tax adjusted operating income and adjusted operating return on equity, which are considered non-GAAP measures under SEC regulations. We believe that these measures better reflect the ongoing profitability and underlying trends of our business. Please refer to the tables at the end of the presentation for information on these measures, as well as the reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measure. In terms of the agenda, we'll take a short break around 9:30 A.M. Eastern. We'll be finished with the presentations at 10:00 A.M., then we'll take your questions. You can submit your questions via the Q&A box online. I would now like to introduce our first speaker, President and CEO Anna Manning. As many of you know, Anna assumed the CEO role in January 2017 after a year as president, and she spent the prior nine years with RGA in a variety of senior roles. Thank you, Jeff. Good morning and welcome, everyone. The last two years have been challenging for the insurance industry and for RGA as a large global life and health reinsurer. We continue to face near-term uncertainty with the emergence of Omicron, offset by increasing global vaccination levels and some encouraging developments, including new antiviral treatments. We know the pandemic is front of mind for many of you as it is for us, and we will address the business implications this morning, including risk perspectives. Over the last two years, our business has produced meaningful earnings despite the pandemic-related costs. We've remained active and very engaged, working with our clients on adapting to this environment and on many new business opportunities. We've been sharing our research and thought leadership on the pandemic with our clients, so a very busy time for us. Through it, we've demonstrated the value we provide to clients, and I believe it's paying off and expect to see continuing benefits moving forward. All of this, I think, shouldn't come as a surprise to many who know us well and know how we drive value. Let me outline a few important things to note about RGA. We have a differentiated global business, have leadership positions in all the major markets, and have a very well-respected and trusted brand. One of the many unique things about us is that we are exclusively focused on life and health reinsurance. We're not distracted by the capital implications of cycles in other parts of the insurance industry. We have a highly collaborative culture, which is a hallmark of RGA. We are also a deeply technical organization with many talented experts who are also innovative and creative problem-solvers. I see this daily. I believe we're defined by this combination, the security of experience with the power of innovation. Our business is weathering the storm, confirming its resilience, and our actions are reaffirming the value we offer clients and expect to see increasing benefits from this going forward. This pandemic has raised awareness of the industry and the value of insurance products. It's further highlighting the large unmet market opportunities that need simple and affordable products with streamlined underwriting and efficient distribution. We're experts in product development, underwriting, data, and capital solutions. We're bringing this full range of capabilities to clients to address the market needs. We also believe the industry dynamics are creating many other opportunities, and we expect to capitalize on them, in part, by expanding our capabilities and forming strategic partnerships to extend our reach. We are a leader in a highly concentrated global reinsurance industry with a strong franchise that is not simply a collection of offices around the world. We operate by joining empowered local teams with support and governance provided by global experts. We operate this way because we believe you need to be on the ground, close to clients to build sustainable long-term businesses. We believe local teams are better able to understand local markets, local regulations, local customs and cultures, and can more quickly spot opportunities and challenges. Being there daily builds stronger client partnerships. Combining this local market focus with the depth and the breadth of global perspectives creates one of our differentiators, and frankly, I believe it's both a competitive advantage and a better risk management approach. It also increases agility. As an example, product development requires working closely with clients, going through many iterations. What better way to do this than fully engage with clients at the local level? A further benefit is that product development translates into exclusive arrangements, creating opportunities for better margins. The strong focus on clients has always been at the heart of our strategy and culture. It starts with having a deeper understanding of clients' objectives and challenges, and then delivering solutions that best fit those needs. By consistently doing that, we become their preferred reinsurance partner. That eliminates or materially reduces competition. These are some of the ways we deliver value, and over time, this has produced a large, diversified, and valuable global business. This platform has been built through many years of disciplined expansion, beginning with exporting the U.S. mortality expertise to international markets, and then by gradually extending into adjacent risks and products. I believe it's important to note that our growth has been almost entirely through greenfield efforts. Today, we can underwrite and manage almost all the global life and health risks. What has been highlighted in the last two years is the value of scale and diversification in this business. They are competitive advantages. Add to that, the resilience of our business and our strength as a counterparty, I believe, set us up nicely to benefit from a flight to quality. Presented on this slide is the 2020 revenue rankings for the five top global life & health reinsurers, who account for an estimated 65%-70% of the new organic business in the market. We are a leader in this highly concentrated industry, and it's an industry that has high barriers to entry for large segments of the Business. Structural, knowledge, and relationship barriers. We operate in a highly regulated, complex, and long-term business. Expertise, data and judgment, experience, relationships all create natural barriers. Trust and demonstrating that you'll be there over the long term to honor your commitments, these are some of the very difficult barriers new entrants face. Speaking of building long-term trusted partnerships, every year, insurance companies are asked about their reinsurers. It's an annual survey done by a global consulting firm. Every year for the past decade, clients have replied that RGA is the reinsurer with the best-in-class global capabilities. No other reinsurer has been ranked number one since the survey began. Being number one is not just about technical knowledge. It's about the quality of client interactions, delivering on your commitments. It reflects the value of the solutions and services provided. It's the entire client experience working with RGA. It reflects who we are, and it hasn't changed in the last two years. If anything, RGA has been recognized for stepping up during the pandemic to provide some of the most responsive and actionable COVID-19 thought leadership. This is what sets us apart. It's our calling card, and it drives value. Our strategy is focused on our clients and is powered by our people. Reinsurance is a very complex knowledge and relationship business. Technical expertise is critical when evaluating, accepting, and managing risk. That makes our business highly leveraged to people, and we have a lot of talented experts at RGA who are very responsive to client needs and market opportunities. We also have a culture that is highly collaborative, engaged, and innovative. It's this combination of growth mindset with creativity and risk discipline that's produced many first-of-kind products and risk solutions. It's a competitive advantage and part of what makes us an industry leader. As a global life & health reinsurer, a pandemic is the single largest risk for us, and this pandemic has certainly impacted us, but our business has been resilient through the last two years. Large parts have been unaffected by COVID-19 and have continued to perform well. The parts of our business that have been directly impacted by the pandemic have produced strong underlying results ex-COVID-19. To date, this combined earnings power has absorbed all the impacts of COVID-19 and produced positive earnings and grown book value per share. Through the last two years, we've been adding to the underlying earnings power through organic new business and in-force block transactions, which together are estimated to have contributed in excess of $1.5 billion of future pre-tax earnings. We are weathering the storm, the business is resilient, and we expect this to continue. This resilience is the result of decades of investment in building on our knowledge. Those investments have been paying dividends in the last two years. The teams have been sorting through rapidly evolving information to make sense of what is known, what is uncertain, and what is actionable. Applying those insights in our internal biometric models and driving actions, like modifying underwriting and pricing approaches to reflect the pandemic risk environment. Our experts have also generated many research reports and thought leadership pieces and shared them with our clients. Shown on this slide is a small sample of the thought leadership provided by RGA over the last two years. Topics include mortality implications of COVID-19, considerations for underwriting, claims management, fraud detection, distribution, and behavioral science. As a result, I believe our value proposition and our position as a valuable long-term partner have been strengthened during these last two years. We believe ESG is a business priority, that it is central to our strategy and purpose, and requires action and commitment. With respect to the environment, we believe it's imperative that we play our part in mitigating the long-term consequences of climate change. As a first step, I am pleased to announce that RGA will be net zero in operations by 2026, and we are continuing to embed ESG criteria in our investment processes. Through regular sustainability reporting, we'll be increasing the transparency of all our actions. We've expanded community support and have increased funding for medical research through the Longer Life Foundation. I believe importantly, to demonstrate our commitment, ESG targets are included in compensation plans at all levels of the organization. Global industry dynamics are creating many opportunities for growth. Opportunities from increasing awareness and need for insurance products, which have certainly been well highlighted over the course of the last few years. From people aging and entering new phases of life, requiring different insurance products like living benefit products covering health, wellness, medical, and longevity needs. From growing middle classes becoming first-time insurance consumers. All these dynamics will increase the demand for insurance products, and that plays squarely to our sweet spot. We have a well-established and successful track record of creating many first-to-market products. It doesn't end with just product development. It includes underwriting data and analytic tools to improve efficiency and capital solutions to help make consumer products more affordable. I believe this combination is hard to replicate. We expect dynamics such as industry de-risking actions and low interest rates to drive further opportunities for growth. We have been in the in-force block transaction market for over 20 years. I see our ability to support both insurance risk and market risk as important differentiators in responding to these opportunities. Over the next few years, this industry will be facing a flood of regulatory change, including material changes to financial reporting and local and global capital standards, which will impact almost every life and health insurance market. Historically, change has been a positive catalyst for RGA. One of our many strengths is finding ways to deal with unintended consequences from regulatory change. We did it for aspects of Solvency II, and we've done it for local solvency frameworks, including guaranteed level term in the U.S. and LICAT in Canada. I expect regulatory change to continue to be a positive catalyst for RGA. Finally, let me highlight the increasing opportunities we see in the pension risk transfer market. We have been in this business for over 10 years. It has been one of our faster-growing segments, and we are well-placed and expect to continue to succeed. Let me spend a few minutes talking about how we will capitalize on these opportunities. We'll do it by leading with expertise and innovation to create expanded solutions. This is what we excel at, and through which we expect to gain competitive advantage and drive growth and improve margins. We'll capitalize by partnering with clients and being their preferred reinsurer, generating more opportunities for exclusive arrangements, leading to increases in our share of their reinsurance business. We also recognize that others can add value, and ultimately, success is about creating broader solutions which best fit the client's needs. By partnering with external parties, we will accelerate innovation, strengthen capabilities, and increase access to efficient capital, creating additional competitive advantage. We'll capitalize by accelerating and prioritizing high-growth, capability-driven opportunities by concentrating on opportunities that are impactful, play to our strengths, and have a greater likelihood of success. The watch words here are agility, impact, and scale. Through a long-term approach to drive sustainable value for all stakeholders, including actions to increase value through in-force management, as well as actions to address social and environmental issues. Let me end with a few words about why I am confident about RGA's future. It's because we are experienced and disciplined risk experts, and we are well-positioned with a valuable business. We have the talent, capabilities, relationships, and financial resources to get beyond the pandemic and continue to grow in this highly complex, fast-moving industry. We have a strong value proposition, one that has been highlighted and better understood as a result of the pandemic. We have added substantial future earnings over the course of the last two years, and looking ahead, we see many attractive opportunities and have what it takes to capitalize on them. We are committed to delivering attractive financial results and compelling returns for our shareholders. That is why I am confident about our future. I would now like to introduce our Chief Risk Officer, Jonathan Porter, who assumed that role in 2016 after spending the previous eight years at RGA in various senior roles. Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will be providing some insights into RGA's view of risk. As Anna mentioned earlier, the past 20 months have been a challenging period for the insurance and reinsurance industries. At RGA, we have managed our risks well over this period, in large part due to the dedication and expertise of all of our global workforce. People are our biggest differentiator, and that is never more evident than in time of crisis. In addition to the strength of our people, our successful navigation through COVID-19 is also due to a strong risk management framework and culture that has been built up over the decades that we have been in the reinsurance business. We understand risk-reward trade-offs and make proactive decisions to manage our risk profile on a regular basis. This has led to a well-diversified risk profile, the value of which has been clearly demonstrated over the course of this pandemic. A strong risk culture underpins everything we do at RGA, and I am confident that this philosophy is embraced across the organization. We expect all associates to be advocates for risk-based decision-making and regularly monitor metrics to validate that this is the case. Our most recent risk culture survey clearly demonstrates that the tone from the top is well understood and people are applying it in their day-to-day activities. We have strong governance practices and spend substantial time and resources analyzing risks at the time of underwriting and pricing to ensure that we are comfortable with the risk-return profile before agreeing to accept them. Once on the books, we regularly review and assess these risks and are prepared to take action if necessary. We use scenario testing to better understand how risks interact with one another across our portfolio and to identify potential short-term or long-term threats. Our risk limits are clearly defined, regularly reviewed, and consistent with our strategy. Our culture and our risk management capabilities have been key contributors to our track record of successfully navigating past risk events and emerging well-positioned to capitalize on the market opportunities that these events create. Our global scale and wide range of expertise to evaluate and accept all key biometric and market risks combine to create significant option value for how we approach risk-based decision-making. If the risk return dynamics in a specific market or in a specific product line are not at the level that we believe is appropriate, then we can refocus our human and capital resources to where we are more comfortable with that balance while waiting for market conditions to improve. We are not overly dependent on one source of growth, so we can be patient and disciplined in our selection of risks. There are many examples of how taking this longer-term perspective has rewarded us over time. Things like avoiding the challenges in the legacy U.S. long-term care market by selectively reinsuring some product types and only after monitoring the market for an extended period of time, while product features and market conditions developed to a point where we were comfortable. Maintaining our pricing discipline on pension risk transfer opportunities in several markets as they developed, which meant missing out on some early transactions, but positioned us to be successful as market conditions shifted to a level that we were comfortable with. I want to focus now on slide 26, which highlights elements of our current risk profile as well as our expectations on how it will develop over the next five years. The information on this slide is based upon our internal economic capital model, with the charts on the left-hand side showing our current aggregate mix of risks split by insurance-related, market and credit-related, and other risks, as well as a drill down into three biometric risks: mortality, morbidity, which includes critical illness, long-term care, and other health-related risks, and longevity risk. The charts on the right-hand side of the slide provide estimated ranges for these same risk distributions in 2026. Our strategy of methodical and prudent diversification through expansion across regions and countries, as well as to different product lines, has resulted in a book of business that is currently well diversified. Consistent with our strategy, the majority of our internal capital is allocated to support insurance risks. Based on the growth opportunities that we see over the next five years, we expect that this will continue to be the case five years from now. This is highlighted in the top row charts on the slide. As we drill down to the biometric risk level, we see good growth opportunities in mortality and morbidity. Given the demand and favorable conditions in the pension risk transfer market, we expect our longevity risk to grow at an even higher rate. This is expected to result in a more balanced biometric risk distribution by 2026, as shown on the right-hand chart at the bottom of the slide. Longevity risk is also a good natural diversifier to mortality risk, which is another positive result of this growth. The impact of COVID-19 has been significant to our business, with an additional $1.8 billion of pre-tax mortality and morbidity claims incurred from Q2 2020 through Q3 2021. The majority of these costs have been incurred in the U.S., with the proportion in other countries shifting over time based on the timing of COVID-19 waves in the general population, and more recently, based on the relative levels of vaccination. We believe that the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 on our mortality and morbidity businesses will continue to be manageable, and that it is important to put the impacts into the perspective of a longer-term time horizon and the totality of our book of business. We have continued to produce meaningful positive net income that more than supports our COVID-19 claim costs. Over the past six quarters, including the impact of COVID-19, we have reported pre-tax income of close to $1.3 billion. We've continued to support our clients over the course of the pandemic, enhancing our brand and franchise value, but also adding meaningful future financial value for RGA stakeholders. As Anna mentioned, new business expected to be written over 2020 and 2021 is estimated to contribute future pre-tax earnings of more than $1.5 billion. We will also continue to receive long-term premiums from our in-force business. The graph on the bottom right of slide 27 is a simple illustration that shows cumulative premiums and claims for a hypothetical yearly renewable term portfolio across two claim scenarios. The first scenario, represented by the dotted orange line in the chart, assumes claims are a constant percentage of premium, which is represented by the blue line. The solid orange line is the same, except for an additional 25% in claims in the first year. The impact of the additional claims is material when compared to premium in the early years of the block, but over a longer time horizon, the relative impact to cumulative premiums is much less significant. The concept illustrated in the chart also applies to RGA's portfolio. Under current U.S. GAAP, COVID-19 claims are recognized in the current period as they are incurred, but over the life of the business, we expect to collect substantial long-term premiums that will reduce the relative impact over time. Throughout the course of the pandemic, predicting the exact path of the virus has been challenging, and a higher level of short-term uncertainty persists due to factors related to the actions of governments and society, vaccination effectiveness and take-up rates, the development of new antiviral treatments, and the emergence of new COVID-19 variants. The recent identification and spread of the Omicron variant has heightened this uncertainty further. It's still too early to assess what the impact of Omicron will be, as there are three key questions that need to be answered over the coming weeks as scientists collect and analyze general population data. First, will Omicron outcompete the Delta variant to become the dominant global strain? Second, are vaccinations, treatments, and immunity from prior infections as effective against Omicron as prior variants? Third, does Omicron cause more or less severe illness than prior variants? At this stage, we do expect that current or quickly modified vaccines will provide some level of protection against severe disease and death, and the growing levels of global vaccination and immunity from prior infections will moderate the impact of future waves. As with prior COVID-19 developments, we will devote significant medical, underwriting, and actuarial resources to understand the data as it emerges and incorporate new information into our approach to manage our business. Over the longer term, we expect that population mortality improvement from non-COVID causes will continue to occur at levels consistent with our previous expectations, and that there is some potential upside from the acceleration of future claims and the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. The application of mRNA vaccine and therapeutics technology to other diseases like cancer, the potential for lower flu impacts, individuals' awareness and behavioral changes, as well as global governments being better prepared for future health threats could all positively impact future mortality improvement. Just as we are managing through issues related to COVID-19, the same risks and challenges also apply to our global clients. The past has shown us that heightened uncertainty and market change create a higher demand for reinsurance solutions. Clearly, the value of reinsurance as a risk management tool has been demonstrated through the course of this pandemic. The accelerated digital transformation of underwriting, future mortality trend uncertainty, and the need for tools to rebalance risks or release capital are examples of areas where RGA's strong client relationships, technical expertise, and creative problem-solving skills can be brought to bear to deliver risk management solutions to our clients and value to RGA stakeholders. We now move to a business panel discussion with a group of our segment leaders. Joining me is Ron Herrmann, Head of U.S. and Latin American Markets, Tony Cheng, who leads our Asia, Australia, and EMEA business, and Larry Carson, Head of our Global Financial Solutions. To start, can each of you give us an overview of your responsibilities? Well, Jeff, if you don't mind, I'll go first on this one because I'm the new member of the team. I'm Ron Herrmann. Good morning, everyone. Although I am new to RGA, a little over a year now, I've been involved in the life insurance industry for my entire career, which now spans about 34 years. I joined the company after being a long-tenured client, so I got the benefit of experiencing what the RGA team brings to the market. I currently oversee the U.S. and Latin American markets. There are four businesses within this segment that report up to me. The US mortality markets business, which focuses on reinsurance for individual lines. The US Group business, which focuses on reinsurance for the employee benefit lines. The US Individual Health business, which is reinsurance primarily for long-term care. Latin America, which is based in Mexico City and has segments of both individual and employee benefits business supporting Latin and South America. Now, let me hand it over to one of my distinguished colleagues, Tony. Good morning, everyone. My name is Tony Cheng, and I joined RGA in 1997. For the past six years, I've been overseeing our Asian business, and since November of this year, I have been given the added responsibility of overseeing the EMEA and Australian businesses for RGA. Good morning. My name is Larry Carson, and I joined RGA in 1999, spending all of my RGA career in our Global Financial Solutions business unit. Since the beginning of 2020, I've been leading the GFS team. The fact that I've been with this business unit of RGA for close to 23 years should indicate that our lines of business are not new to RGA and in fact are core to who we are. We are responsible for asset intensive business, longevity, and capital solutions. Okay, we have heard from Anna and Jonathan about the overall impacts of COVID. Could you give us some perspective on the impact to your business? Ron, why don't you start then Tony, then Larry. Certainly, overseeing U.S. mortality, COVID has impacted our business. As you've heard from Anna and Jonathan, we've paid pre-tax nearly $1.1 billion in claims. As sad as that is, it certainly does define our purpose. Experiencing the pandemic has been challenging at times, but certainly there are also areas that have enabled progress to accelerate. For example, we've capitalized on the virtual work environment. We've been able to maintain capacity, strengthen our partnerships with clients, add new clients, all while maintaining our governance and risk tolerance. We've been able to support our technology needs while still aligning to our clients, from large industry meetings to small one-on-one discussions. One of the largest areas we have benefited is we've become the trusted resource for underwriting across the industry. That might actually probably apply to you too, Tony, globally. As we've supported the automation and digitization of underwriting. By using our experience and research, we became a trusted resource to aid in the enhancement of the underwriting process, enabling more customers to purchase insurance while eliminating fluids and exams. We've also enhanced our core underwriting services to support the capacity strain from increased demand many of our clients are experiencing. LIMRA reports the highest sales gain in the first half of 2021 since 1983. The Medical Information Bureau reports year to date, October volumes are up 4.5% from 2020 and 8.5% from 2019. Our facultative outsourcing underwriting volumes together over the previous year are up over 30%. Lastly, we've benefited from partnerships with new forms of distribution, focusing on the digital experience and technology-aligned approach, making the buying process easier for the end users. Ron, the insights from the U.S. perspective are very interesting. The closest parallel I have seen is SARS in Hong Kong and Asia in the early 2000s. This is why when COVID first hit, the Asian populations immediately started wearing masks as a reflex reaction to what they experienced during SARS. Now, back in the early 2000s, insurance protection was not an easy sale as life insurance distributors strongly preferred to sell investment products. It was a period of such great optimism and prosperity, but SARS clearly woke up a large number of people to the fact that unfortunate and unforeseen events could occur. Now, this led to the boom in Asian protection business, which continues through today. It was also the main macro event that led to the launch of RGA's successful strategy of product development, which has been the driving factor behind RGA's success in Asia. The long-lasting impact of COVID will be an underpinning for increased demand for insurance protection coverage that will, in my mind, continue well into the future. Larry, what do you think? Well, you know, as sad and as challenging as the past couple of years have been with the pandemic for all of us, for GFS, we continue to have great success over this timeframe in transactional activity, and you can see that in our strong capital deployment the past two years. This success demonstrates the value added and additional diversification benefits to the RGA enterprise. RGA prides itself on execution certainty as these transactions are complex, and we've been helping our clients deal with that complexity for decades. Events like the pandemic cause our clients to focus more on the quality and proven experience of their counterparties. Larry, that's very interesting. In my mind, there definitely is a flight to quality, not only due to execution certainty and the desire for a strong counterparty, but also as clients have been reminded of the value of top quality risk management services and advice, which only the top-tier reinsurers can provide. We have also seen some of our traditional competitors increasingly allocate their capital towards the hardening P&C reinsurance market. Now, when you put these two observations together of the flight to quality and the shift of competitor capital towards the P&C market, RGA is positioned extremely well as we are the only top-tier reinsurer that focuses exclusively on life and health. You have touched upon this to an extent, but can you give me some more detail on the competitive landscape, where we see competition coming from? How is RGA addressing it? The exclusive focus on life and health reinsurance allows us to decentralize and empower strong local offices where the expectation is that they are either number one or number two in the market. As a result, we provide bespoke solutions that can create greater value by satisfying more precisely the client's needs. In the past, this has been product development, GFS or RGAX solutions. However, increasingly, these solutions are being combined to provide broader and more difficult to replicate solutions to our clients. For example, in Hong Kong, we started the product development strategy back in the early 2000s, as I mentioned, when SARS occurred. Over time, the rapid sale of these products and the lower interest rate environment resulted in our clients experiencing immense capital strains due to the high sales of these products. In response, we added to our solution a reinsurance structure to help clients manage their capital more effectively and lower this initial capital strain. What we are now seeing is the rapid digitalization of underwriting due to COVID. In response, we are using our RGAX capabilities so that new product developments now not only come with capital-efficient reinsurance structures, but also add ways to make their underwriting journey more seamless through the use of data and technology. Having such holistic local solutions are very hard for our competitors to replicate, enhance our client partnerships as they are exclusive arrangements, and also result in higher cession rates. However, our job doesn't stop there. If a reinsurer just provides local solutions, their business model could be too expensive. That's why we are also so focused on clinically replicating these solutions, not only deeper into a market, but also across the globe to get maximum mileage from each solution we create. This is often with the same global client that gets this solution into a new market or a new region. For example, once again, we have recently been gaining a great deal of interest throughout EMEA in a bank insurance data solution that we call FAST. This is the same solution that we created in Asia about three years ago. This drive and ability to replicate across the globe is so ingrained in our culture and is another barrier to entry for any new competitor. Tony, that's a great point about the barriers to entry. As I'm sure both my colleagues would agree, we certainly face competition in our markets. Although for GFS, the specific players will vary from market to market and by product line. Having said that, while we certainly pay attention to the competition, we believe that the keys to success are well within our own control. We believe we are well-positioned for a specific segment of the market, namely those clients who value a strong counterparty with an in-depth understanding of both the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet. I would point to a number of the global transactions we've completed this year, such as the large asset intensive blocks with Modern Woodmen and Dai-ichi, as examples of our focus on and success in precisely this segment. Based on our history of income growth and strong capital deployment, we've proven over time, and certainly over the past two years, that we are successful. With a growing trend of in-force block de-risking by our clients, as well as extremely strong growth in pension risk transfer in a number of key markets, we are confident that these opportunities will provide meaningful growth for us in the years to come. The fact that we can take all risks, including not only the asset and investment related risks, but also all of the biometric risks, mortality, morbidity, longevity, allows us to provide holistic solutions to our clients by giving us a wider universe of products and blocks that we can consider to help our clients meet their capital, financial, and risk management needs. Add to that our strong and growing asset sourcing and generation capabilities and our proven history of innovative and first-to-market solutions, and we really do have a complete solution set. Well, Jeff, I think Tony and Larry covered this quite well. I maybe would add, recognize we have competition in all product lines. If you recall Anna's comments earlier, we're in a highly concentrated market, and we look to create value beyond just price. Price matters, but what we bring is a very experienced, knowledgeable team to support the clients well beyond the initial transaction, enabling a win-win relationship that generates bottom-line value to both our clients and our team. We have a global footprint enabling us to leverage learnings across the world, staying attentive to our clients' needs through many different mechanisms for feedback. Because we are the only large reinsurer to stay focused on the life and health industry exclusively, our data gathering and analytical teams provide the support and analysis to provide products and services our clients expect. Jeff, I would tell you heard from the three of us, this is the way we deal with our competition. I think we've been able to compete well, and I think this is why we generate the success that we've been able to do. Anna mentioned opportunities coming from changes in financial reporting and regulation. Where do you see opportunities coming from this in your business? Jeff, let me start first by going back a few years to the introduction of Solvency II. There, we saw early that this would create opportunities for innovative solutions, and we delivered for our clients with solutions focused on longevity risk and on lapse risk, to name a couple. More notably, the introduction of Solvency II led to a large number of successful asset-intensive opportunities and has driven a lot of the growth in our longevity line of business. This growth is not just in Europe, as it's also driven activity with subsidiaries of European companies in the U.S. and in Asia. We are confident that the coming introductions of GAAP long-duration targeted improvements and IFRS 17 will lead to similar successful growth opportunities for us as certain products or blocks of business will look less attractive to our clients under these standards. We've already identified numerous potential solutions and are actively working with our clients around the world to scope and prioritize opportunities. Now, as was the case with Solvency II, these opportunities may take some time to develop. In short, while accounting, solvency, and regulatory changes present threats and challenges to our business, our experience has been that these changes provide just as many, if not more, growth opportunities for us, making change, uncertainty, and complexity our friends. Larry, you have mentioned that we have had great success with the European subsidiaries in Asia due to Solvency II. As you know, many of the new Asian capital frameworks are very much inspired by Solvency II. Our solutions are gaining traction beyond the European companies and with the locally owned Asian company. This is happening in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan, where reserve credits is allowed for the risk transferred via reinsurance. However, there is an added impact of these new capital regulations, as historically, some regulators do not allow reserve credits for reinsurance risk transfer. However, since the new capital frameworks are based on global capital standards that do allow for reserve credit for reinsurance, we believe our capital management solutions will be even more effective across all markets we are in Asia. It is also not just in Asia that this is occurring, as the South African and Canadian capital frameworks are also inspired by Solvency II, and we have been successful in executing on transactions that help our clients manage their capital in these countries. Let's focus a bit on the future. Ron, where do you see the biggest or best opportunities for profitable growth going forward? The U.S. mortality markets is RGA's longest tenured business. We have a large and profitable in-force block, so continuing to manage and oversee the in-force alignment to our strategy will generate opportunity. There are a number of areas where we can grow organically across all business lines. In U.S. mortality markets, we're already capitalizing on the outsourcing and automation of underwriting. That will continue into the foreseeable future. There's also a renewed interest in product development for the underserved middle market. We are engaged with a number of clients to help them build out this product and process. In US Group, we have a balanced suite of products, but we'll continue to expand our turnkey stop loss business, which also generates additional opportunities for our other healthcare lines. Lastly, I also see an opportunity to capitalize on the innovative and services business of RGAX, creating value to our clients by supporting all aspects of the reinsurance process. For example, in Group Re, we built an analytical tool called MedScore. It's a differentiator for us in terms of competition, but beyond just creating value, it also leads to new business. It contributes to improving the profitability of group life and long-term disability by better aligning price with risk. You know what, Jeff? I actually think this is a great question to have Tony and Larry weigh in on. Tony, why don't you talk about growth in EMEA, Asia, and Australia? Sure. Thanks, Ron. Well, to reiterate what we do is that we provide holistic solutions via our leading local offices and then replicate them across the globe via our strongly connected internal network. The future opportunity is to continue to deploy this formula to the tens of millions of people that enter the middle class each year in emerging countries. However, just as importantly, there are mature insurance markets that we feel are emerging reinsurance markets, such as Japan and Taiwan. This is because clients in these markets still use reinsurance in a very traditional manner. Our focus in these markets is to educate clients that reinsurance is not just for risk management, but also for product development, underwriting, and capital management. We are not alone in this education process. These companies become more international through acquisitions and learn from their international subsidiaries how they can use reinsurance more strategically. Maybe, Larry, you got a few words to add to all of this. For GFS, we look to three major trends that will propel our growth in the coming year. First, the continued strong growth in pension risk transfer in both developed markets such as the U.K., continental Europe, Canada, and the U.S., as well as other markets at earlier stages. This will lead to both longevity and asset-intensive growth opportunities. Second, the continuing client trend in the U.S., Japan, continental Europe, and a number of other markets to shed legacy blocks of business with higher guarantees that are a drag on earnings and returns, which will lead to more asset-intensive opportunities for us. Finally, as new accounting and solvency frameworks come online in many of our key markets, we are ready with capital solutions to assist our clients meet these challenges head-on. Jeff, I think it's fair to say that we all see wonderful growth opportunities ahead. Let's round out our global footprint and turn now to our Canadian and Australian business. Now let me take Australia first. Australia has been an exercise of patience and discipline, but we are cautiously optimistic of the operation going forward. We have experienced seven quarters of benign financial results, reflecting the tremendous action over a long period of time in managing our in-force business and repricing business with strong adherence to our risk appetite. We are starting to see this discipline lead to new opportunities on the group reinsurance business as the market is correcting itself and our previously non-competitive offerings are now starting to become competitive once again. On the individual products, there has been tremendous improvement in product and risk management features led by regulatory actions, and we expect further improvement to come to make this market increasingly viable once more for reinsurance. I just want to add that each office has a dual role of being successful in their market, as well as exporting learnings to other markets. The Australian team has shared their learnings broadly, as well as their data and expertise, and this has helped other markets avoid the same challenges and create new products. Jeff, let me take this one for Alka Gautam, who is the head of RGA Canada. RGA has a strong franchise and is a market leader in Canada. Over the past 30 years, we've built a large in-force with significant embedded value. Reinsurance in Canada has been driven by the need for capital relief as well as cession rates, which are quite a bit higher than in the U.S., largely driven by the heavy Canadian regulatory burden. Looking forward, we will continue to have opportunities for growth due to the regulation as well as new accounting, IFRS 17 and capital standards. We believe we can secure increased shares of new business and execute accretive transactions in both the traditional lines of our business as well as the financial solutions markets that you've heard Larry talk about. Another example of the collaboration with RGA's collective expertise to develop solutions, leveraging the client engagement process. Jeff, I think that's an around the world view of how we believe we can establish growth and continue into the foreseeable future. Thank you for the robust discussion. Any final thoughts to share? We are clearly excited about the future. The way I look at it is a strengthening market position occurs when the demand for what we provide is increasing and the supply of what we supply is limited. Demand is increasing in the underlying insurance market as well as the reinsurance market. In the insurance market, the increased demand is due to COVID and the continued economic growth that creates a larger global middle class. In the reinsurance market, we see increasing demand for complete solutions combining product development, a simple underwriting journey, and capital management. On the supply side, we are one of a small number of reinsurers that can satisfy this demand. We do this by delivering locally and replicating these solutions through our vast global footprint. Building the talent, culture and global network is extremely difficult, and this means the supply of such top-tier broad reinsurance solutions will not be able to be increased by competitors in the foreseeable future. Jeff, I would add, you just heard from Tony about the demand is very high. As you look at the insurance industry overall, the pace of change has never been greater. Products, distribution, underwriting, and the overall consumer experience are all evolving. Partnering to focus on each element of the change has never been more critical. Our clients appreciate the strategic thinking and creative ideas that we bring to them. It's those deep, long-lasting and strong client relationships combined with other proven attributes that will lead to our combined success. I certainly second what my esteemed colleagues just said, and I'll add that RGA is in a great position to take advantage of all these growth opportunities and trends that we've discussed. Because of our global operating model, where we have local experts on the ground in all of our markets, as well as regional and global expertise, and we're able to tap into all of that knowledge and ideas around the globe collaborating as one RGA, we are well-positioned. With the capabilities we have in-house today, as well as the capabilities, targeted investments, and partnerships we are adding, we are positioned to meet the increasing demands and to deliver even larger and more complex solutions than we do today. These, combined with our signature strength, our relentless focus on the client and understanding their specific needs and issues, is what will enable us to create value and to succeed. Jeff, if I may be so bold as to speak on behalf of my colleagues, I would just have to say that we are all very confident in the future of RGA. With that, we'll take a short break, and then we'll come back with our CFO's message, followed by your questions. Welcome back to RGA Investor Day 2021. I'm Jeff Hopson. I would now like to introduce our CFO, Todd Larson. Todd became CFO in 2016 after spending the previous 21 years in various senior roles, including Chief Risk Officer. Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. I would like to pick up from the comments you have heard throughout the morning. I would like to further emphasize the benefits of RGA's operating model. We've built out the business over almost 50 years, and it is well-diversified geographically and by product, creating a resilient global platform. This success would not be possible without a balanced capital management strategy, a strong balance sheet, as well as a quality investment portfolio and stable liability profile. When I refer to RGA's success, I'm talking about long-term value creation, strong brand recognition, and a financial track record that we're proud of. RGA is in a long-term business, and while we have fluctuations in earnings on a quarterly basis, we've consistently increased book value per share over time, even during the pandemic. I will provide more context and information later in my prepared remarks around our future financial targets. We believe our business opportunities and capital management support these targets. I will stress that these financial targets exclude the impacts of COVID. Over the course of my career at RGA, I've been happy to be part of the steady growth of the company and the success that we've achieved over time. As I look at RGA's recent financial results, they've been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 claims that we've paid in 2020 and 2021. Despite the pandemic, RGA's business remains profitable and continues to grow and create long-term value. We included on this slide the impact from COVID on earnings per share and return on equity for 2020 and 2021. After considering the COVID impacts, the underlying earnings from our diversified business are strong. We weathered the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and we will weather the pandemic. I remain confident in RGA's strong financial condition and underlying earnings power. I want to reiterate several comments from earlier, which are that RGA has a geographically diverse business as well as a diverse product offering. On this slide, we have shown the distribution of RGA's business by geography based on pre-tax adjusted operating income, excluding the effects of COVID. Our traditional and global financial solutions businesses complement each other around the world, and this has never been more apparent than throughout the pandemic. We have a sizable book of long-term in-force business that is expected to produce significant earnings in the future. RGA's underlying earnings power is intact and will produce strong financial results as we emerge from the pandemic. As you can see on the chart on the left, we have maintained a stable capital mix over time to support the growth of the enterprise. We have also maintained senior debt and hybrid debt levels consistently within our targeted leverage ratio ranges. I also want to point out RGA's strong operating company ratings, which have been consistent over time and are all on stable outlook. We are very committed to maintaining RGA's ratings as it is important that we remain a strong counterparty for our clients and other stakeholders. We have followed a prudent and balanced capital management approach over time. RGA has been successful in deploying capital into in-force blocks, and 2021 has been another active year. Our priority for deploying capital is to support RGA's organic business growth and deploy capital into in-force block transactions. We also want to maintain a healthy dividend, and we'll balance with share repurchase. There may be times when we execute on all these actions during a period, but I would note that our capital management strategy is focused on execution over the long term. RGA's funding and capital strategy includes expanding the use of alternative sources of funding and capital. We've executed retrocession transactions and embedded value in other securitizations in the past. We are exploring a greater use of these and other similar tools. You'll note that we recently executed the inaugural issuance of our funding agreement-backed note program, and we executed on what we consider favorable terms. We'll further look to other funding and capital sources as we execute our capital management strategy. I also want to comment on the use of third-party capital. RGA's existing third-party capital vehicle, Langhorne, is transaction-ready, and it is a high priority to deploy the Langhorne capital. Another area to highlight is RGA's investment portfolio and the performance over time. Our global investment team has a breadth of capabilities across public and private assets. RGA's investment approach balances risk and return with an eye to managing downside risk. The team has a strong track record of credit performance and delivering investment income and yield for the company. Investments is integral to the business, bringing expertise and broad capabilities to construct asset portfolios that align to our liabilities. The investment team embraces diligent underwriting and surveillance to build a diversified, resilient, and high-quality investment portfolio to meet the long-term needs of the company. It is a high-quality portfolio with an average rating of A, with 93% being investment grade. Over time, we have prudently grown our core capabilities, with investment-grade corporates the largest asset allocation in the portfolio. We have expanded into areas adjacent to our strengths in the credit and structured markets. About 10 years ago, we launched our internal private debt and equity and commercial real estate teams, and these teams have added considerable value to RGA. We will continue to prudently extend RGA's asset platform, both internally and through partnerships with external managers, with the goal of sourcing additional private assets. The message I want to leave you with is that RGA's investment management team has strong and broad capabilities, and their partnership with RGA's businesses positions us for continued success. I consider RGA's liability profile as stable with well-understood policyholder behavior risk. As you can see on this slide, a majority of RGA's liabilities have what we consider very low to no policyholder behavior risk. This reduces our disintermediation and liquidity risk. The payout profile of RGA's liabilities is fairly predictable, which allows us some flexibility on how we manage the investment portfolio. Also, when we reinsure in-force blocks of asset-intensive business, we have good liability cash flow projections, now able to construct the asset portfolio to minimize interest rate risk. Since 2017, RGA's total return growth, defined as book value per share, excluding AOCI plus dividends, was just under 11%. As we've seen through various cycles, RGA's differentiated position as a life and health reinsurer allows us to concentrate on our markets. Our deep technical expertise and innovative services and solutions will help expand our capabilities going forward, helping our clients provide affordable and appropriate life and health protection products to the market. Coupled with effective capital management, we believe that we will continue to grow book value per share over time at an attractive rate. Considering the environment we are in and the financial reporting changes that are on the horizon, it is difficult to provide specific financial guidance. However, we thought it would be helpful to provide our perspective on the potential financial benefits from RGA's growth opportunities that we have discussed this morning. I want to be clear that this is not intended to be formal guidance, but rather financial targets with some normalization for the pandemic and based on current U.S. GAAP financial reporting. We see favorable industry dynamics and market opportunities. As you heard during the roundtable, RGA is well-positioned to capitalize on these opportunities and produce profitable growth. When combined with our capital management strategy. We have financial targets for the next five years of 7%-9% adjusted operating earnings per share growth and a return on equity range of 9%-11%. These financial targets exclude the impact of the pandemic. As you know, we are in the middle of implementing the new life insurance financial reporting standard, LDTI, and we are getting closer to the January 1st, 2023 effective date. While we have made significant progress refining key accounting policy decisions, technology solutions, and updates to internal controls, our timeline remains the same around when we expect to disclose certain financial impacts, which is mid-2022. I will remind you that the economics of RGA's book of business remain the same pre and post LDTI implementation. However, the timing of the emergence of income under LDTI will be different than current GAAP. Also, the primary source of earnings volatility will generally shift from claims experience to assumption updates. Overall, we believe the move to LDTI, and in particular, the additional disclosures, will be beneficial to the investors as the new standard will provide more insight and transparency into the long-term performance of our business. As we close with our prepared remarks, you should take away several key messages. We have a very strong and diversified global franchise, and we are well-positioned to continue to perform in the future. While COVID-19 has had a negative impact on our bottom-line results, our business has been resilient, and the underlying earnings power has been strong. Looking forward, we believe that the industry dynamics are favorable and that we will have many opportunities to support our clients, producing profitable growth for RGA. We are confident that these actions will allow us to deliver attractive financial returns for our shareholders over time. I am confident in the future of RGA. Thanks, Todd. This concludes our prepared remarks, and now we will go to Q&A. Please send in your questions, and we will take a minute to collect them. Welcome back. We'll now take your questions. The first question comes from Erik Bass. Can you talk about the drivers behind increasing your EPS growth target from 5%-8% historically to 7%-9% historically or for the next 5 years? So what's the right base level of EPS to think about going forward? Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question, Eric. You know, if I go back to pre-pandemic, you know, we were, you know, year to year, we had some volatility on the EPS side. If you look at various series of time, we were, you know, really achieving that higher end of that 5%-8% prior guidance. You know, you heard about the industry dynamics, the business opportunities that were very opportunistic that we're very excited about, you know, going forward. We think that 7%-9% is achievable. As far as a starting point or a baseline, you know, we looked at, again, pre-pandemic earnings power as well as the impact of COVID. As I mentioned in my remarks, we do adjust for or exclude the impact of COVID when we're setting these financial targets, because we did want to provide some level of information on what we feel the organization can achieve. That, you know, 7%-9% is based off of about $1.2 billion of pre-tax operating earnings, which again, is what we feel the earnings power of the organization is excluding the impacts of COVID, and then, you know, adjusting for some other one-off items. Okay. Our next question comes from John Barnidge. Given the development of Omicron and the durability of COVID, are you now considering price changes among in-force reinsurance treaties? Yeah, Jeff, I'll take that question. So you know, just like any assumption change or impact that we see, that develops, so including COVID, we would expect to reflect this, in our expectations going forward, and we would do that country by country, so given the relative impacts that we're seeing. We have and will continue to adjust our pricing on new business. To the extent that, the COVID-19 impact is material and becomes longer lasting, we would expect to review that at a client level and, look at the impacts client by client and take action using the options we have in our in-force treaties. Jeff, I'd like to add to that. You know, first of all, Ron Herrmann, everybody. We really, you know, first look to price appropriately, and then routinely, we constantly evaluate the experience of that business to our pricing expectations. We work with our clients holistically, back to some of the comments made earlier about our global footprint. I'll give you an example of a recent situation, but we have a global client having business across various countries in a number of our business lines. We had new business opportunities. We have in-force business, and we had an area that we were concerned in discussions with the client around what are the opportunities to improve. We were successfully able to do that because of the constant communication and discussions that we had. Really, if you think about it, there are a number of opportunities that we have within the in-force. Pricing is one of them, but not the only one. Yeah, Ron, let me just add a few there, a bit there from Asia. I mean, there was one example that comes to mind where a similar situation on in-force management, and we worked in, once again, in partnership with one of our closest partners in Asia. We came to a mutually agreeable change in the in-force rate. Not only that, you know, we were able to, through those conversations and the trust built up, be able to lock in new business, reinsurance, and that involved a change actually not only in the product that we were offering, but also the reinsurance structure that we were offering. Really, you know, my experience throughout Asia and other parts of the world is, you know, given the strength of our relationship with clients, given our mentality to work in partnership, as we work through these challenging situations, that's only enhanced through just the way we deal with these situations. Okay. Next question. We've had several questions about the potential growth potential of our longevity business. Thanks, Jeff. We're very excited about the growth opportunities in the longevity business. I think it's worthwhile taking a step back and looking at the pension risk transfer market in various countries around the world as an ecosystem, where you have insurers, reinsurers, and then, of course, you have consultants and other players as well. We've been active as a player in this market in the U.K. since 2008, and we've certainly done longevity swap transactions in the U.K., in Canada, in Continental Europe, in the U.S., and other markets. We feel very good about those opportunities. In addition, we have done what I would refer to as funded or asset intensive longevity transactions in a number of these markets as well, U.K., U.S., Eurozone, et cetera. This is not a new market for us, and it plays very well to our capabilities. It gives us an opportunity to use our strong data and analytics capabilities, our mortality expertise, as well as our investment and asset generation capabilities. You know, the nature of these liabilities is that they are very illiquid. In many cases, there's no policyholder behavior risk whatsoever. They lend themselves very nicely to more of a private investment strategy with more illiquids, and we have those capabilities in-house. What we are working on, and it's always in partnership with our clients, so I don't want anybody leaving with the conclusion that we're gonna go out on our own in the pension risk transfer market. It is building the capabilities to sit side by side with our clients, in partnership, to support them because in some cases, that's a more efficient structure than reinsurance. Again, we feel very, very good about the growth opportunities. In fact, Mercer just came out with a piece yesterday noting that the PRT market in the U.K., they're projecting to grow to GBP 60 billion next year. You're seeing similar growth estimates in the U.S. and other markets, so we feel very, very strong about this. Okay. Next question comes from an investor. Describe the competitive environment and how RGA is able to compete in today's environment? Jeff, I would start by offering that the way we compete is we try not to compete. We try to put distance between ourselves and our competitors. We do that by offering differentiated value propositions. You heard some of that earlier this morning in the panel discussions with the leaders of our business. That is how we have been successful in the past, how we're succeeding today, and how we expect to succeed going forward. Well, if I can add to that, I 100% agree with Anna. In addition to that, you heard her mention in her comments earlier this morning about it being a very highly concentrated market, and the fact that we are exclusively focused on the life and health market, I think adds to all the resources and analysis that we bring is certainly the expertise that supports all of that. We also have a global footprint that enables us to collaborate across varying countries. There's obviously learnings that come from in various forms of underwriting or analysis, and having key operations spread around the world really does give us a positive value to engaging with our clients. As you heard me mention earlier this morning as well, we look to create value beyond price. Now price matters, but we bring RGAX innovation and services teams that really support the reinsurance process, and that's been key in many cases to help us deliver on the client's expectation overall. I would say, last but not least, we have a lot of mortality experience, expertise, analysis, data, that I think is invaluable to our clients. Okay. Our next question comes from Jimmy Bhullar. Should COVID claim severity frequency in the fourth quarter follow the pattern of the third quarter, which was hurt by the pandemic affecting a younger age cohort? Thank you for the question, Jimmy. Maybe what I'll do is I'll talk about what we see happening in the general population at this point, and I'll go through for the sort of five markets that we've identified in the slides. For the U.S., population mortality looks like it's gonna be slightly above what it was in the prior quarter in Q3. But what we are seeing based on CDC reporting data is that the proportion of deaths in the general population that's under age 65 has come down a little bit since we saw in Q3. Q3, if you recall, in our earnings material, we had a graph that showed about 40% or over 40% of the deaths were under age 65. That equivalent number now is about 35%. Now it is still early in the quarter, and the data will take a while to develop, but that's what we're seeing at this point. In the U.K. and Canada, you know, mortality rates again are up a little bit from Q3 in the general population, but still quite low relative to what prior wave peaks would have been. Then finally, in South Africa and India, mortality remains quite low relative to prior peaks in particular. They're both running currently at about 10% of what we would have seen in the prior wave peaks in those markets. Okay, next question. Please describe how you will grow in your various markets. I'll take that one first, Jeff. I would say, first of all, the current economic environment certainly has a lot of our clients looking at risk transfer and/or freeing up capital. There's a lot of discussions certainly around those two areas in the reinsurance world overall. In the U.S., we do have a very large in-force. A lot of our arrangements are YRT, and there's a natural escalation of premiums over that period of time, and we do look to evaluate the experience with our expected results, and we do have that aligned to our overall strategy looking forward. In the U.S. mortality business, the individual mortality business, you heard my comments this morning about underwriting and the ability to clearly differentiate there. By providing the automation support as well as the core support, we're forging a lot of relationships and really becoming the underwriting expert to many of our clients across the industry overall. In the group business, we also have a turnkey stop-loss business, dedicated purely to the health side of the market, and that is in line with generating other expectations or other results around healthcare products, that we're experiencing growth. Then last but not least, I'd say, two new things. One is we're forming relationships with new forms of distribution. A lot of that has to do with the digital development, but there is also a lot of interest in our clients for serving the underserved middle market and helping to build out products and processes to support that endeavor for each. Let me add on to that, Jeff. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, you know, even if we didn't or just reacted to the opportunities, we feel we're incredibly well-positioned. You know, I'd mentioned earlier today how SARS really stimulated a 20-year ongoing boom in protection business in Asia, and we expect COVID will be a strong underpinning for, obviously, insurance protection demand from our consumers for many years to come. I also mentioned earlier about the flight to quality reinsurers, whether that's, you know, strong counterparty execution certainty, but also the fact that obviously, now more than ever, our clients are appreciating the top quality risk management advice and service. You know, we don't just react to the market. You know, RGA's always been about, as Anna mentioned earlier, you know, exclusives and how do we be proactive in creating a market and obviously creating risks that we want to reinsure. Other growth drivers for me internationally are obviously the changing capital regulations that we're seeing around the world. That will have a huge drive. As Ron mentioned, just the fact that COVID has stimulated the digital solutions. Really the point I want to emphasize is one of RGA's greatest strengths is obviously our strong local offices and the interconnectivity globally of those local offices. It's our ability to provide combined solutions, what I call holistic solutions, that I think, you know, honestly, we're second to none, and I think that's gonna drive a lot of our growth into the future internationally. Adding on to what Tony and Ron said, absolutely agree with everything they said there. You'd look back to those three trends I talked about earlier, growth in pension risk transfer, all the regulatory accounting and solvency changes, and then the trend towards back book de-risking. Those are all large and growing trends. And again, we feel very, very well-positioned both for the reasons that my colleagues have noted as well. I would reemphasize our strong understanding of and ability to take risks on appropriate risks on both the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet as a real differentiator. Okay, next question from Erik Bass asks about the various impacts of LDTI. Let me take the opportunity to talk about LDTI. You know, we are not in a position to provide any financial impacts at this time. You know, we're targeting you know, towards the middle of next year as far as bringing out or disclosing some of the financial impacts. I will comment that we have a very well managed and controlled implementation project going on, and we're very confident in our ability to be ready to implement the standard in 2023. One thing I like to mention too is that the economics and cash flows of RGA's business is not changing with LDTI. This is a financial reporting standard, and it does not change the value of our underlying business. One thing you asked about the reserves. You know, the opening reserves will increase just the way the standard works. You have to eliminate any negative reserves under current U.S. GAAP, as well as just with the level of aggregation of how you need to look at the various cohorts of the various blocks of business. It will result in a reserve increase on the opening balance sheet, which is at the end of 2020. I do wanna make a point here that I think what's more important than the opening balance sheet is really what do things look like in 2023 when we actually go live with the financial reporting of the new standard? We'll have 2021 and 2022 results that will impact, you know, the actual balance sheet at the beginning of 2023. The way the new LDTI standard works, it sort of smooths out the claims volatility. So the impact, some of the higher elevated claims during the course of the pandemic, will be smoothed out over that period of time. What does create the volatility, you know, going forward is the assumption updates on a periodic basis. I think that will be an interesting piece that we'll all need to make sure we pay attention to and understand. But also that provides opportunities for RGA from a reinsurance perspective because under reinsurance our client companies could have more certainty around some of the assumptions that they could use, and it might help, you know, smooth out the volatility on the assumption setting side. Then, you know, lastly, there's going to be a lot of new disclosures that come along with the new financial reporting standard. You know, disclosures around present value of future premiums, present value of future benefits, roll forwards of reserve balances and DAC balances. I think there's going to be a lot more information that investors and analysts and rating agencies can use to better measure the long-term nature of our business and the value of that long-term business versus getting too caught up in sort of the short term, you know, volatility. To answer the excess capital question, I think we'll need to see how sort of some of that evolves on how, you know, people view the new capital frameworks under the new view of how the business looks under LDTI. Thank you, Todd. I'd also like to emphasize a comment around short-term volatility being smoothed with the new Long Duration Targeted Improvements coming on board in the beginning of 2023. Look, our clients reinsure for many reasons. Having protection against short-term volatility is a reason for reinsurance. It isn't the only reason. Our clients reinsure for access to expertise. Again, you heard that quite clearly in the panel session earlier today. Our clients reinsure for risk management purposes. There are many reasons why our clients reinsure. Short-term volatility was one of the reasons. It isn't the only reason. Yeah. Anna, you take me back down memory lane. I mean, when we started off in Asia, to be honest, you know, obviously we had a phenomenal, and we still have a phenomenal U.S. business, which was reinsurance. For a lot of it was the risk management as well as the facultative services provided. In Asia, we didn't have that opportunity. The reinsurance market for risk management just wasn't big enough. We had to decide what we were going to do. That's really, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of our success has been around the product development. We decided at that point in time, we needed to create the new products, develop phenomenal teams of actuaries, underwriters, business developers, doctors, to be able to create, products that had not been seen in those markets. Now, the beauty of RGA or reinsurers is we're like a consulting company, but we take the risk. When we talk to a client, and we can create a new product for them, not only is that a great new idea for them, and hopefully they appreciate that, and they will obviously give us the exclusive opportunity to reinsure that, but we are a reinsurer. They don't have to really focus too much on the risk because RGA is going to take a large chunk of that risk. It's really that combination of the ability for us to have incredible talent and also back it with our balance sheet by taking the risk is really, you know, why reinsurers in general, but RGA has really had such a great growth story in the past and will continue. Just to add further, what we're now seeing down the road is, you know, that's product development. Obviously, COVID has accelerated the digital revolution, and particularly in the underwriting space. We've also talked about some of the opportunities for capital management. The best way. You know, Anna spoke about many reasons for reinsurance. Our focus is to combine all those reasons into the one solution. That not only creates more value to our clients where we do that, but it actually makes it more replicable across the globe, which is obviously, once again, one of RGA's main strengths. If I could underscore something that Tony said, our value isn't just at point of sale or at the point of transaction. It's throughout the life of that contract, throughout the life of our relationship. As to the risk management reason for reinsuring, we have a large inforce, and that large inforce allows us to spot trends earlier. An example, a very good example in the U.S. market, was the spotting of the trend in policyholder behavior on level premium renewable term business. We were first to market with what we were seeing in that experience, and we shared that information with clients, and they were able to take action. It's the experience, it's the expertise, it's the scale of our business, sharing all that in an actionable form. In the particular example I just spoke about, some were able to restructure some of those rates and allowing them to react, risk manage that business. It's the entire relationship with RGA, all of its capabilities through very, very long partnerships. Okay, next question comes from Erik Bass. He asks about the $1.5 billion of future earnings we expect to generate from new business added in twenty 2020 and 2021. How much capital did you allocate to new business, and over what period do you expect these earnings to emerge? I guess the one point I wanna make is I mean, to me, the $1.5 billion of future earnings, that's pretty impressive to add that during the course of the pandemic. 2020, we were a little bit more cautious. We deployed about $150 million or so into transactional activity last year. In 2021, we deployed about $440 million of capital so far. Really, it's across all of our different geographies, in Asia, in the U.S., in Europe. You know, it's been a pretty diversified, successful year as far as transactional and capital deployment. We're very happy with that. It's been, you know, variety of different products. The actual emergence of those profits or earnings will, you know, come over the lifetime of the underlying different products that we reinsured. Okay, from Andrew Kligerman. You cite uncertainty on COVID going forward. Is there a likelihood that global mortality could exceed Q3 results over the next two to three quarters? Yeah, I'll take that question, Jeff. I guess, you know, one thing that we've learned, I think, over the course of this pandemic is it's very difficult to predict the exact course of what's gonna happen, you know, beyond more than, you know, a month or two. So, you know, I don't wanna speculate on what results will be over the next couple of quarters exactly in the general population. I guess a couple things I can point to are, you know, with the Omicron variant as an example, which is kind of the current, you know, item which is being most closely tracked, it's still uncertain what the impact of that will be. You know, when I think about the categories I mentioned in my prepared remarks, transmissibility as an example, it does look like the virus is more transmissible or that variant is more transmissible. But from a severity perspective, it's still not clear. You know, some anecdotal evidence we're getting out of South Africa in particular does seem to point to it being less severe, which could be positive news. You know, therefore, if Omicron does outcompete current variants, that could have a reducing effect. You know, when I also think of the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments, that's also obviously a key driver of what we're gonna see, and also prior infections as well. You know, again, early data, just in the last 24, 48 hours, there's been some reports about how the vaccines are maintaining effectiveness, potentially reduced on one or two doses. But with booster doses, they still seem to be quite effective. Now again, it's still early. We don't know for sure. But that's another key element that we would need to be tracking to understand what the impacts will be. At this point, I'd say, you know, we're reiterating our rules of thumb that we've provided. Our expectation would be our results would follow those relative to the general population mortality that will emerge in the next couple of quarters. Okay, next from Alex Scott. Two recent shifts in the pandemic that impact mortality sensitivity are vaccination rates of the insured population and a younger skew in terms of mortality under age 65. Could you discuss these factors, and how do you think these developments impact your book in aggregate? I guess, you know, I've like maybe partly hit on some of these in prior questions that I've answered. You know, I think, you know, vaccination rates we continue to see increasing, in particular when I look at some of our markets, you know, that were a bit behind the curve a couple of quarters ago. When I think about South Africa and India, you know, vaccination rates are significantly higher than what they were at the time the last waves went through those countries for the Delta variant. Just as an example, India is over 80%, I think 85% now of adults, so people 18 and over, which is, you know, correlated to the insured population, have received one dose, and it's over 50% now. 51% have received two doses within India, which is a very positive sign given back in May when the Q2 wave went through. I think those numbers were, you know, in the single or low double digits. Similar in South Africa, we are also seeing vaccination rates go up. They're still lower than what we've seen in other markets, but they are improving. Another factor you need to think about in South Africa, and maybe to a little bit of a lesser extent in India, is prior infection and the protection that people will receive from just having had COVID in the past. We feel that those numbers are quite high in the general populations there. They'll continue to give some level of protection it seems. Again, early data still, but even with Omicron, it still seems like there is some prior protection that is happening in those infections. I'd mentioned the statistic about the skewness to less than 65 in the U.S. Again, just to comment on that, we are seeing in Q4 that pattern does seem to be reversing a little bit. It's dropping the proportion of deaths in the U.S. under 65 according to CDC data, which again is not yet complete for the quarter, is a little bit lower than what we saw in Q3. Jeff, maybe just add a couple of comments there. I mean, you know, I talked about the power of our global network. You know, Jonathan and I were on a call, I guess, earlier this week with our South African colleagues. The fact that we have an incredibly strong South African presence means we can obviously, you know, it's not just in terms of sharing ideas across the globe, it's also on the risk management side. We've got, you know, the best information one could argue that's possible to stay on top of these issues. But I also want to emphasize reinsurance is commercializing risk management, and we are obviously got a incredibly deep talent pool and culture around risk management. Just to give you an example, you know, I was reading a piece that I guess it was our head of business development shared online in South Africa. He's one of the senior actuaries. The comment was around Changing the underlying rates that are charged to consumers based on vaccination status. As I read the paper, firstly, I thought, well, that's a no-brainer. Why wouldn't you do it? As I read the paper, it was very deep and complex as a situation. Ultimately, we're now seeing that trend in South Africa for new business where the major players are differentiating rates by vaccination status. I just want to say that because that's an example of the innovation that's developed locally out of our deep understanding on risk management. Now you may think, well, you know, charging rates depending on vaccination status isn't so sexy or a great innovation. That's at least in my mind, the only market in the world that's done that. To me, that's the definition of innovation is being able to do something first, execute it, and you can see how many of our innovations are really steeped purely from our learnings from risk management. Okay. It was highlighted earlier in the presentation that RGA sees market conditions as better for PRT than previously, and hence the company is seeing a lot of opportunity there. What has changed? Thanks, Jeff. Fundamentally, I don't think anything has changed dramatically in terms of our risk appetite. The big change that we're seeing is because of the strong equity markets over the past couple of years, corporate balance sheets are looking a lot better, and therefore, the pension plan funding levels is much better. You're seeing that, and this is not just a U.S. phenomenon. This is U.S., this is U.K., it's Netherlands, it's Canada, it's all over. You're seeing a lot more underlying demand for pension risk transfer solutions. That drives the need for whether it's longevity reinsurance or asset-intensive longevity reinsurance or what have you. We're just seeing this just nice growth trend in the underlying market. Okay. Can you provide an update on Langhorne Re opportunities? How confident are you that you'll get the capital deployed within the five-year commitment period? Hi. Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, we're deploying the Langhorne capital is a very, you know, high priority, you know, for RGA. We like the ability to have access to the alternative, you know, capital markets where something that's keenly, you know, in front of us that we're, as I mentioned, a high priority for us to deploy that capital. Okay. From Jimmy Bhullar, how has the primary insurance appetite for reinsurance changed in various regions since the onset of the pandemic? And do you expect a material lift in cession rates in the future? I can take this one first. I would say session rates started to escalate prior to the pandemic. I think we see a continuance of what was happening before the pandemic actually happened. If you look at some of the industry reports that come out, LIMRA, Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association, talks about seeing the highest sales volume in the first half of this year since 1983. The Medical Information Bureau reports volumes were up overall 4.5% from 2020 and 8.5% approximately from 2019. If you look at our business during that same time frame, our facultative services, which include a number of things, but they're up over 30% and have been a significant market leading example of some of the capacity we've been able to help our clients deal with because of the increased demand for the insurance products overall. Yeah, let me just add to that. I mean, you know, I think in Asia, and in the EMEA, it's still too early to see the reaction in cession rates. I can't imagine, given the recent events, that cession rates are not gonna be stabilized or increased. But really, as I sort of alluded to earlier, you know, our job as a company is to find ways to increase those cession rates, and that's through, you know, the productivity, the creation of whether it's new products, underwriting solutions, capital management, and so on. So, you know, we're quite excited about, you know, the opportunities, to, you know, increase those cession rates over time through our actions. I believe we're really, as well as anyone, positioned to do that across the globe. Let me add a couple of thoughts. Certainly, cession rates support our growth, but it's not the only lever in how we grow. We grow when the underlying insurance market grows, and we've spoken about some of those trends that we're seeing. We grow when more reinsurance is sent to the reinsurance market, so the cession rates that Ron and Tony just spoke about. We grow when our market share, when our portion of those cession rates grow. I believe that our actions, our responses during the last two years during COVID, our thought leadership, our continuing client-focused partnership approaches have not only demonstrated RGA's value, they've reinforced RGA's value. It's all of those combinations in how we grow that I think are very constructive. I'm very excited about as we look forward. Yeah, Anna, just to add to that. I mean, what we've definitely, as I mentioned, I think earlier today was the flight to quality, right? I mean, during these times, as Anna's mentioned, the thought leadership, the ability to share our risk management strength with our clients, I think has been very much appreciated. So I think that's gonna be a way that we're gonna increase our market share. I also want to add life reinsurance is a long-term business, and the consistency of performance really counts around the globe. So the fact that we do not, you know we're exclusively a life and health reinsurer, so we don't apportion capital to, for example, right now, we're probably seeing some move in some of the composite reinsurers towards allocating capital to the hardening P&C market. We don't have those types of thoughts, and we're just consistently focused on our life and health clients, and that's a key part of how we've built our brand, and I'm sure it's very much appreciated by our clients. Okay, the next question from Thomas Gallagher. Has the pandemic allowed you to push through any rate on in-force treaties or for new business pricing? Yeah, let me start, and then maybe Ron or Tony, if you guys wanna jump in too. I mean, rest assured, we are pricing for the cost of the pandemic in our new business. That has been the case since the very start of the pandemic. Of course, we update assumptions as new information emerges, and we're doing that. As I mentioned earlier, to the extent we were to see the pandemic impact be material on a go-forward basis and, you know, last longer, we would definitely be reviewing and looking at our options that we have in our in-force business and, you know, constructively working with our clients to look at the earnings for those portfolios. Maybe I just add quickly, Jonathan, again, back to the customer discussions. Although the pandemic is new, the process has been part of our strategy for a long period of time. We constantly evaluate in force, and that leads back to the discussions I was talking earlier with our clients and the actions that we could take, you know, up to and including a pricing change or a rate increase. Yeah, just maybe adding on to that, I mean, you know, we obviously are incredibly active right this moment, discussing all these issues. I do wanna share, you know, we feel part of our responsibility to the industry is to be able to call out some of these issues early, maybe not during the pandemic, that's well-known, but historically we have called out other issues and actions, not only to, you know, make sure our business is sustainable, it really truly calls out an issue in the industry that ultimately gets rectified. We feel it's a broader responsibility not only to manage our in-force business very well but also our new business pricing. Okay, next question comes from an investor. Recognizing the business mix shift of exposure to more morbidity and longevity versus mortality, how fast do you expect this change to be versus the rate of growth previously? Yeah, let me address that question. You know, first of all, we see good growth opportunities across all of our biometric risks, for sure. I think you know increasing ability to grow. You know, when I think about our morbidity business, a lot of that business is in Asia. I think we see, again, as Tony has described a few times today, we see a lot of good growth opportunities, product development opportunities, and ability to grow our morbidity business. Then, Larry, maybe I can ask you to jump in on longevity, but I know we definitely see very strong growth opportunities there as you've described before. Yeah, as I said, we see very strong growth opportunities. We've seen strong growth over the past 5-10 years, and this is really just a continuation of those trends. Okay, we have time for one more question. You've deployed a significant amount of capital into transactions so far in 2021. How are you winning these deals? Well, fundamentally, we're not doing anything different. It's the same patience and discipline that we always show. You've seen this in our history. You go back to our history of capital deployment, and you'll see lumpiness from one year to the next, and that's a vivid demonstration of that patience and discipline. You know, fundamentally, I think, Todd said this earlier, we're probably a little bit more prudent, more cautious in 2020, especially in the earlier days of the pandemic with the uncertainty there. 2021, as we felt more comfortable, you certainly saw some more capital deployment. Again, this is in all of our markets and across all of our lines of business. Maybe, Larry, just add to that. I mean, definitely 2021 was a very strong year in Japan on some of the asset intensive transactions. Really just to share with you know, thoughts around that. I mean, Japan's the type of market as some other Asian markets are, where you've just got to be in the market for quite some time before you're respected as a long-term reinsurance partner. So we've obviously served our time there, provided long-term consistent performance. I think Larry mentioned earlier today, the ability for us to combine some of these very long-term liabilities. It takes us to not only have the capabilities on the asset side, but also on the biometric side, which we've obviously spent over 20 years developing. you know, definitely in terms of the transactions around the world, we're very excited about the prospects. Okay, well, that concludes the Q&A session. I'd like to turn it over to Anna for her closing remarks. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, team. You've heard through the morning all about what makes RGA a successful company and such a compelling investment opportunity. You've heard about our differentiated and valuable franchise. You've heard about the strong and resilient balance sheet, leading market position, deep technical expertise combined with creative, innovative problem solvers. You've heard about many of the exciting opportunities we see ahead for growth. In the midst of a global pandemic that has had a tragic toll, it has caused a lot of heartache. It's also important to take a step back and remember the important purpose that RGA serves. We provide financial protection and resilience in times of uncertainty. Delivering on that purpose, being there in the long term is how we create value. It drives our ambition, and it's why we are all so proud of this company. Thank you for joining us today, and thank you for your ongoing interest in RGA.