Earnings Call Transcript - AON Q3 2021

Operator, Operator

Good morning and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon plc's Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call. At this time, all parties will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of today’s call. I would like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time. It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. Information concerning risk factors that could cause such differences are described in the press release covering our third quarter 2021 results as well as having been posted on our website. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, CEO of Aon plc.

Greg Case, CEO

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter conference call. I'm joined by Christa Davies, our CFO; and Eric Andersen, our President. As in previous quarters, for your reference, we posted a detailed financial presentation on our website. We want to begin by thanking our 50,000 colleagues. 2021 continues to be a remarkable year. And as a result of our colleagues' hard work, dedication, and perseverance, we've delivered outstanding results in Q3 and year-to-date. This performance is an extraordinary accomplishment and a direct result of their efforts, working together as one firm to bring the best of Aon to clients. We're also proud to report that our client feedback continues to be outstanding as net promoter scores are at a five-year high. Additionally, Aon's colleague engagement is at the highest levels we've seen over the past decade, consistent with top quartile employers. This client feedback and colleague engagement are directly reflected in our firm's sustained momentum and financial performance. In deep appreciation for all that our colleagues do for our clients and our firm, we were excited to establish in Q3 the Aon United growth ownership plan. This unique program rewards every colleague with a stock-based award to share in the current and future success of our firm, and we're thrilled to recognize and support our colleagues in this way. Overall, as we reflect on Q3 and the first nine months of 2021, our momentum, defined by client delivery, colleague engagement and financial results, is exceptional, even more promising as what we see in the opportunity ahead. Our conversations with clients reinforce substantial and growing unmet demand to support them in making better decisions to protect and grow their businesses in an increasingly volatile world. This opportunity to create new markets to serve our clients is the catalyst for our innovation agenda and a source of greater momentum in our business. Focusing on financial performance in Q3, our global team delivered outstanding results across each of our key financial metrics, including 12% organic revenue growth. Notably, our strongest growth in over a decade for two quarters in a row, driven by mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth from every solution line, highlighted by particular strength in health and commercial risk at 16% and 30%, respectively, and adjusted EPS growth of 14%. Year-to-date, our 9% organic revenue growth reflects mid-single-digit or greater organic growth from three of our four solution lines. Our Aon United strategy is delivering significant momentum in every solution line, with net new business generation and ongoing strong retention. We also saw double-digit growth for the second consecutive quarter in the more discretionary portions of our business, such as transaction liability, human capital, and project-related work within Commercial Risk Solutions and Health Solutions. We continue to expect mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth and margin expansion in the full year 2021, 2022, and over the long term as we continue to win share in our core business and execute to further expand our total addressable market. As we move forward, we continue to be guided by our Aon United Blueprint, to ensure we're operating as a fully integrated global team capable of delivering the best of our firm in every local market. Today, we'd like to highlight how the core tenets of our blueprint drive momentum and deliver greater future opportunity. Specifically, how delivering Aon United is enabling core new business generation and fueling stronger retention. How Aon Business Services is building capability for colleagues and translating into better service for clients. Our ongoing focus on innovation at scale is accelerating the development of new solutions to serve unmet demand, and our commitment to inclusive people leadership has resulted in the highest level of engagement and retention in over a decade. First, executing Aon United is delivering net new business generation and ongoing strong retention by continuing to engage clients across all their needs with the entirety of our firm. This strategy has been built over many years and enables extraordinary solutions for clients, resulting in Aon winning more, growing our book of business with new and existing clients and, in turn, delivering exceptional results to shareholders. Second, We've invested heavily in Aon Business Services, or ABS, over the past five years, which now represents the core operating platform that spans the entirety of the firm. ABS Centers of Excellence have and will continue to grow margins by driving efficiencies across all solution lines. Equally important, ABS capability enables us to improve client service delivery and scale innovation globally much faster, driving higher organic growth. The ABS model is redefining what we're capable of delivering to clients and improving the way we work. Third, we continue to accelerate innovation at scale. Aon is delivering innovative solutions to our clients by helping them navigate new forms of volatility, build resilient workforces, access new forms of capital, and address the underserved through digital solutions, all of which substantially grow our total addressable market. This has been demonstrated, for example, intellectual property-backed financing, a first-of-its-kind option created and enabled by Aon's IP solutions team. Given that intellectual property represents 80-plus percent of the value of the S&P 500, we believe the entire IP category has the potential to be a $100 billion market over time. Other categories that represent new addressable markets in the tens of billions include cyber, climate, supply chain, and digital client solutions, led by our exceptional team at CoverWallet. Fundamentally, this opportunity to serve substantial new addressable markets is driven by client demand. At Aon, we are relentlessly focused on the voice of the client, and we're hearing consistent client feedback about the need to make better decisions around long-tail risks. For example, we're currently getting this guidance from the almost 3,500 clients that are currently participating in our regional Aon Insight series. And it's also being reinforced by two pieces of proprietary research that we recently released. Every two years, Aon conducts our global risk management survey, and the latest report released three days ago was informed by insights from more than 2,300 clients across 16 industries spanning public and private organizations from 60 countries around the world. With more emphasis and reliance on technology, cyber risk tops the list as the number one current and predicted future risk globally. It's the highest rank since the inception of the survey. The top 10 risks also reflect the impact of COVID on organizations as they needed to navigate volatility with better and faster decisions. We're seeing organizations shift focus from event-based to impact-based risk assessments, reflecting the shift in mindset following the systemic impact of the pandemic. Aon also recently released results of a survey focused on 800 C-suite leaders and senior executives in the U.S., EU, UK, and Canada to understand how organizations are preparing for and responding to the current environment. We found that, today, senior leaders are more astutely risk aware than ever before, but remain confident to take on calculated risks and investments that build resiliency of their companies. As we stated before, the approach to risk strategy has shifted from being generally defensive and risk-averse to more opportunistic, taking a holistic, integrated view as they seek solutions to address these challenges. There's great respect to the need to defend their businesses, but that's accompanied by a desire to find solutions that help them win, which the IP financing example highlights. In this environment, we're uniquely positioned to deliver data-driven insights to help our clients make better decisions that grow their businesses. Fourth and finally, we continue to see tremendous impact from our commitment to inclusive people leadership. Voluntary attrition is down substantially compared to our 2019 baseline, and our quarterly pulse of colleagues shows that we continue to enjoy all-time high engagement levels. Many examples highlight our talent focus and priority, including our commitment on our entrepreneurship programs and a $30 million investment to create 10,000 new roles in the apprenticeship community. Our investment in talent development has resulted in over 14,000 Aon colleagues around the world participating in training programs in the last nine months alone, and the announcement of the Aon United growth ownership plan. In summary, our global Aon team delivered the best third-quarter results in over a decade. Our United Blueprint, powered by our capability in Aon Business Services, combined with significant investment in new and growing categories of addressable client demand, reinforces the momentum we have today and offers even greater potential over the next few years. The result is clients that are better informed, better advised, and equipped to make better decisions. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Christa for her thoughts on our financial results and our long-term outlook for continued shareholder value creation. Christa?

Christa Davies, CFO

Thanks so much, Greg, and good morning, everyone. As Greg highlighted, we delivered continued progress for both the quarter and year-to-date. Through the first nine months of the year, we translated strong organic revenue growth into double-digit adjusted operating income and adjusted earnings per share growth, building on our momentum as we head into the last quarter of the year. As I further reflect on our performance year-to-date, as Greg noted, organic revenue growth was 12% in the third quarter and 9% year-to-date, our strongest organic revenue growth in over a decade. We saw strong global macroeconomic conditions in the quarter, but we continue to assess the factors as we have since the beginning of the pandemic. Those factors are the virus and vaccine rollout, including the potential impacts of new variants, government stimulus, and overall GDP growth. These macroeconomic conditions do impact our clients in various areas of our business. Considering the current outlook for these factors, we continue to expect mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth for the full year 2021, 2022, and over the long term. I would also note that total reported revenue was up 13% in Q3 and 12% year-to-date, including the favorable impact from changes in FX rates driven by a weaker U.S. dollar versus most currencies. Moving to operating performance. First, I want to speak to the impact of our previously communicated refunding expenses as compared to COVID-impacted expenses in 2020, which I'll describe before any 2021 growth. As we've described, the timing of expenses is changing year-over-year, such that $65 million of expenses moved into Q3 from Q4. This impact is due to the actions we took last year as we reduced discretionary expenses to be prepared for the impact of COVID-19 and potential macroeconomic distress. In Q3, this re-patterning negatively impacted margins by approximately 240 basis points, resulting in Q3 operating margin contraction of 30 basis points. Excluding this impact, margins would have expanded by 210 basis points in Q3 and 240 basis points year-to-date. A second key factor impacting adjusted margins has been the relative speed of revenue growth and investment. In Q3, excluding the impact of the rebating, our strong organic revenue growth significantly outpaced expense growth similar to Q2. We continue to evaluate investments using our return on invested capital framework in the areas of talent, business services, and innovation to enable long-term growth. We expect that these areas of investment will continue to ramp up significantly during Q4. In addition, we anticipate continued resumption of travel and entertainment expenses and modest increases in real estate as more colleagues return to the office. Collectively, the headwind from expense patterning and tailwind from slower investment compared to revenue growth were the main factors driving 30 basis points of margin contraction in Q3 and 20 basis points of margin expansion year-to-date. Looking forward, as we've said historically, we expect to deliver full-year margin expansion for 2021 and over the long term. Turning back to the results in the quarter. We translated strong adjusted operating income growth into adjusted EPS growth of 14% in Q3 and 16% year-to-date. As noted in our earnings material, FX translation had a favorable impact of approximately $0.02 per share in Q3 and $0.24 per share year-to-date. If currencies remain stable at today's rates, we would expect an insignificant impact in Q4. Excluding the costs associated with the termination of the combination with Willis Towers Watson-related costs, our performance and outlook for free cash flow in 2021 and going forward remains strong. Free cash flow decreased 40% year-to-date to $1.1 billion as strong revenue growth was offset by the $1 billion termination fee payment and other related costs. Of the total $1.363 billion of termination fee and other related costs, a pre-tax amount, the $1 billion termination fee was paid in Q3 and approximately 2/3 of the remaining charges will be paid in 2021, with the majority of the balance paid in 2022. We continue to expect to drive free cash flow over the long term, building on our long-term track record of 14% CAGR over the last 10 years based on operating income growth, working capital improvements, and reduced structural uses of cash enabled by Aon Business Services. As Greg highlighted, Aon Business Services not only drive efficiencies but also enable revenue opportunities and innovation at scale. As an example, through our integrated vendor management system in the U.S., last year, we were able to ensure that 5% of addressable vendor spend was with diverse suppliers, which is 2x higher than the Fortune 500 average. In addition to being a key initiative for Aon as part of our overall ESG strategy, this is also a way we can have an even bigger impact on what we deliver for clients in an Aon United way. In the third quarter, we had an opportunity to engage with biopharmaceutical clients looking to establish a supplier diversity program as part of their broader inclusion and diversity strategy. Given our demonstrated supply diversity expertise, our global spend management team and human capital colleagues came together to forge a new innovative solution based on this client's emerging need, which included establishing governance structure and conducting research on peer and industry norms. Given our outlook for long-term free cash flow growth, we expect share repurchase to continue to remain our highest return on capital opportunity for capital allocation. In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 4.4 million shares for approximately $1.3 billion. We also expect to continue to invest organically and inorganically in innovative content and capabilities to address unmet client needs. Our M&A pipeline, centered around the four areas that Greg described, is focused on bringing innovative solutions to our clients' biggest challenges, delivered by the connectivity of Aon United. I would also note that on October 1, we closed the previously announced sale of our retiree exchange business to a light. In 2020, the retiree exchange generated $176 million of revenue, and it is a predominantly Q4 business. Turning now to our balance sheet and debt capacity. We remain confident in the strength of our balance sheet and manage liquidity risk through a well-laddered debt maturity profile. In Q3, we issued $1 billion of senior notes as we return closer to historical leverage ratios, while maintaining our current investment-grade credit ratings. Interest expense in the fourth quarter is expected to be approximately $85 million, reflecting our increased debt levels. Over the long term, we expect to return to our past practice of growing debt as EBITDA grows. Further, I'd note that the fourth quarter is our seasonally strongest quarter for free cash flow generation, and we intend to allocate this cash to our highest and best uses based on return on capital, which remains share repurchase. In summary, strong top and bottom line performance for both the quarter and year-to-date reflects continued progress and momentum as we enter the last quarter of the year. We believe our disciplined approach to return on invested capital, combined with expected long-term free cash flow growth, will unlock substantial shareholder value creation over the long term. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator, and we'll be happy to take your questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you very much. Now we will start the question-and-answer session. Our first question is from Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. You may go ahead with your question.

Elyse Greenspan, Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. My first question is on the ramp-up that you were talking about expenses in the fourth quarter. Christa, I think you used the word significantly when talking about that. Just trying to see if you could expand on the ramp-up you're expecting from investments, T&E, and real estate? And tying into that, should we expect your full year margin expansion to be at or better than your 10-year average, which I believe is around 90 basis points?

Christa Davies, CFO

Thanks so much for the question, Elyse. As you mentioned, over the last 10 years, we've delivered 890 basis points of margin expansion for approximately 90 basis points a year for 10 years. And we will deliver full-year margin expansion for the full year 2021. As I mentioned, in Q4, we will continue to invest meaningfully in talent, Aon Business Services, and innovation to enable long-term growth. And we expect the expenses associated with these investments will ramp up during Q4 due to the terrific opportunity we see ahead. And so, as I mentioned, at least, we expect full-year margin expansion. We don't give specific in-year guidance for that, but we have delivered margin expansion for the last 10 years of 90 basis points a year.

Elyse Greenspan, Analyst

Okay. Can you provide any additional insights regarding your investments in the third quarter? Was there anything specific happening in that quarter that might help in understanding the ramp-up in size that you might observe sequentially?

Christa Davies, CFO

Yes. So what I did say about Q3 is our strong revenue growth significantly outpaced our expense growth. And so, these investments are really going to increase more in Q4 than Q3.

Greg Case, CEO

And Elyse, I want to emphasize that when considering margin over time, Christa is absolutely correct. Looking at our historical performance, it has been what it has been. We fully anticipate that this will continue in the future regarding margin improvement, as we mentioned for next year and the years that follow. It's important to note, however, that there has been a consistent increase in our capacity to invest in growth and generate momentum in the business in specific areas that directly respond to client needs. Essentially, our clients are expressing a strong demand for new solutions. I’d like to highlight this increase in investment. Eric, perhaps you could mention a few specific areas that would give Elyse a clearer idea of the kinds of initiatives we are pursuing while still working towards margin improvement?

Eric Andersen, President

Sure, Greg. Perhaps a couple of ways to answer the question. One is going back to the question around T&E. We've been doing these client impact series events over the last couple of quarters, and they've drawn thousands of clients. We've been able to do it virtually, which allows us to bring global capability, global speakers, global insight to any region and share best practices. I remember what our clients are thinking about around the world has been really helpful. And really one of the benefits of using the technology in a way that we're going to keep using going forward. So the historical model of doing a roadshow, putting people in conference rooms around city to city, our ability to do it in two hours and talk to 4,000 clients at the same time is material. So that's just one area. Christa, I just didn't want to lose that point because it has been such a great impact for us. And then second, Greg, is we continue to see real growth opportunities in the business really in a couple of different areas, first, on the data and analytics area, continued to invest in our digital space, our modeling, and analytic capability to help clients see what's coming and understand it better. You mentioned in your opening comments, C-suite people are now risk-aware. And by risk-aware, that means they want more information. And so, we need to have greater analytic capability and modeling capabilities. So we're investing there. Additionally, you've got your traditional areas where we're seeing great growth, whether it's M&A services, construction, or health benefits. Those areas where we see that strong need underneath the Aon United platform of integrating those teams is something we're focused on. So there's a lot out there. We could talk for days about it, but just to make those comments off the question.

Elyse Greenspan, Analyst

And then one last one. The tax rate was on an adjusted basis, which is under 24% this quarter, so a little bit higher than where it's been trending. If you could provide any color there? And then any implications that you can share from the global minimum tax?

Christa Davies, CFO

Yes. So Elyse, thank you so much for the question. We're not going to give guidance on the tax rate going forward. But if we look back historically, excluding the impact of discrete items, which can be positive or negative in any one quarter, our historical underlying rate over the last four years was 18%. What you saw in Q3 was a tax rate slightly higher with an unfavorable discrete item. And in terms of the global minimum tax, obviously, we're tracking this very closely and monitoring, et cetera, but the implementation of that has not been worked out yet. As we learn more, we look forward to sharing with you, Elyse.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Charlie Lederer with Wolf Research. Sir, your line is open.

Charlie Lederer, Analyst

I'm dialing in for Mike Zaremski this morning. A couple of questions on cash flows. Should we expect the net loss on a GAAP basis to help reduce cash tax payments over the next 12 months or so? And also, you noted in the slide deck that about the $363 million that will be paid in '21. Have you disclosed how much of that has been paid to date?

Christa Davies, CFO

So maybe I'll take those in reverse order, Charlie. Thanks so much for the question. So we had $1.363 billion of expenses that were adjusted out of Q3, $1 billion in termination fee, and $363 million of charges, which is at the lower end of the range we provided. We provided a $350 million to $400 million range. We paid the $1 billion termination fee in Q3, and 2/3 of the $363 million in charges will be paid by the end of 2021, and the remaining 1/3 will be paid in 2022. And then I think your first question was around sort of the free cash flow. We do expect to generate strong free cash flow this year, and we expect free cash flow over the long term to be growing double digits. One of the things I'd note, Charlie, is if you start with the $2.6 billion of free cash flow straight off the GAAP cash flow statement in 2020, that’s cash flow from operations less CapEx, which equals $2.6 billion; you can grow that double digits, Charlie, and get yourself to a good starting point for 2022 free cash flow. And then I think you're also really asking about the tax deductibility of the $1 billion, the $1.363 billion, in fact. We have said that's a pretax number; we have not disclosed the details of the tax deductibility of it.

Charlie Lederer, Analyst

Okay. And then some of your peers talked this quarter about significant rate increases in cyber insurance. Is this helping your organic growth? And can you talk about what you're seeing there, and whether there's more of a supply/demand imbalance going on now?

Greg Case, CEO

Maybe Charlie, I'll start with that. I'd love to get Eric, your comments on this. We start overall when we're asked about rate; we always come back to market impact. That's more important than anything else. Literally, how clients really endure what's going on in the broader marketplace. And remember, our role in life is to help them model, understand analytics, and create the best set of solutions for them in the face of market impact. Pricing had a modest impact on us over the course of the quarter and the first nine months, but generally, you can pick the one-off pieces, but overall, we're looking at how to help clients manage that. But Eric, on a day-to-day basis, how would you reflect it?

Eric Andersen, President

Greg, I think I would say it in that, perhaps a little bit of what you said. The clients make decisions based on their risk appetite, budget capacity, insurance options in the marketplace, and each product essentially has its own dynamics. Credit has its own claim trends, it has tons of conditions, retention deductibles, and supply demand, and which markets are competing, et cetera. So we're coming out of probably a 24- to 36-month price increase environment, but we’re seeing a deceleration across the globe on the major products. You mentioned cyber, in particular. It's important to put that in scale in terms of the size and reach of the entirety of the insurance marketplace. So it gets a lot of attention over the last couple of days I've heard as well. But the reality is, it's one product in an entire risk management portfolio that clients are managing against, and a lot of the energy that's going into cyber today is actually going into the consulting aspect of it. The risk management part or the post-event part as opposed to just risk transfer as the market is trying to find the right balance for risk transfer and what's covered in it based on all the activity we've seen in ransomware and other things over the last couple of years. But keep it in context because overall, the size and scale of what our clients are doing around the world, they're trying to make trade-offs and choices based on market conditions that have been more favorable to insurers than clients over the last couple of years. Ultimately, our role in that is to help them using our expertise, analytics, and modeling capability to help them make those choices. But I would just say, I would keep cyber in context relative to the entirety of the marketplace.

Operator, Operator

Our next question now is from Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan. Sir, you may ask your question.

Jimmy Bhullar, Analyst

Hi, good morning. So first, I just had a question on employee retention. You've lost a number of high-profile employees during the Willis process. It doesn't seem like it's impacted your results though. So I’m wondering if you could just talk about employee retention overall? And whether you expect a little bit of a slowdown in results? Just haven't seen that yet, but you might be expecting that over the next few quarters because of it?

Greg Case, CEO

Jimmy, let's begin with some perspective. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the situation is quite different from what we often hear. Our voluntary attrition is currently measured against 2019, and we are significantly better than that baseline, indicating that we've grown stronger over time, which is very encouraging. Most importantly, our engagement levels are at an all-time high for the past decade, thanks to our regular surveys conducted quarterly and sometimes even monthly. We are focusing on better ways to support our colleagues in serving clients, emphasizing their expertise, development, and insights. As our clients work towards their goals, our colleagues are right there with them, fostering a unique environment that defines Aon. This has led us to concentrate more on talent development, as I highlighted earlier. We are experiencing tremendous momentum globally among our colleagues, evident in both our revenue growth and profitability, along with improvements in our Net Promoter Scores. Overall, we find ourselves in a privileged position and are excited about the contributions of our colleagues around the world. I am increasingly optimistic about our future potential, as talent is at the core of what we do each day. I would also like to hear from Eric and Christa on this matter.

Eric Andersen, President

Thank you, Greg. In response to your question about turnover among senior staff, it's important to note that we cannot solely rely on isolated reports from the insurance industry. We are very confident in our team and believe that our investments for the future are essential for positioning our assets effectively. Our Aon Business Services platform presents a unique opportunity for us to deliver professional services with consistent standards globally and leverage our innovation in ways that I believe other companies in our field cannot. As we invest in talent, we are concentrating on areas where we see growth potential and ensuring we have well-established service teams. We are proud of our progress and view the ABS platform as a transformative asset. It enables us to scale our innovation, meet our clients' service needs, and strategically direct our talent investments into areas where we can have a significant positive impact.

Jimmy Bhullar, Analyst

Okay. And then on the timing of expenses. You did mention, I think, in previous comments, the shift in expenses towards 2Q and 3Q this year. As we think about expenses and margins in 2022, should that be consistent with 2021? Or would it be more consistent with pre-pandemic levels?

Christa Davies, CFO

Great question. So 2021 is the right patterning of expenses for each go-forward year, Jimmy. So you should use 2021 as your right patterning.

Jimmy Bhullar, Analyst

Okay. And then just lastly, I think you've obviously benefited from lower T&E spending in the near term, and I think at some point, that comes back. But as you think about your expenses longer term, are there long-term benefits from the pandemic, whether it's lower real estate footprint or less travel going forward at least through the next few years? How do you think about how the pandemic affects your margin trajectory and expenses?

Christa Davies, CFO

Thanks so much for asking the question, Jimmy. It's a great question. We're really focused on learning the best lessons in how we've been serving clients well over the last 18 months, bringing global expertise and teams to serve their most important issues. Via video globally, as Eric described, with our client insight series over 4,000 clients virtually. It's creating more opportunities for colleagues to be included globally, and we're utilizing this to bring the best talent and best expertise to clients. For us, this is really about the future of work and how we position Aon in a new, better scenario. Serving clients with the best talent and expertise while providing employees with flexibility, ensuring that they're productive and having a diverse and inclusive workforce. But Eric, you're at the front-end center of clients every day, what would you add here?

Eric Andersen, President

Yes, Christa, not much other than to say, it has really provided an opportunity for us to unlock our global talent in a way that we can bring it to a client that historically was just more challenging because of logistics. When a client, if it's a U.S.-based client and they want to talk about something happening in France, you just pop up the French team, and they can go direct. So historically, that would have come from the team in France to the account executive in the U.S. and would have been talked about in the third person as opposed to just unlocking the global team, and it does a couple of things for us. One, it shows the power of the global company to a client. It also makes connections among our teams in a way where they're learning firsthand as well and can repeat that learning. So you're absolutely right on everything you said, Christa, before, but it is there's an ability for us to really see and use the global connectivity in a way that historically had just been harder to do and do it on a more frequent basis. Our clients have really valued that access, being able to get right to the point of the expertise and deliver it in a really easy way for the client to digest it and really build those relationships. We definitely are going to take those forward. That has been a valuable aspect for us and is something we're going to incorporate into the model going forward.

Operator, Operator

Our next question now is from Meyer Shields with KBW. Your line is open, sir.

Meyer Shields, Analyst

First user question, if I can. What are you telling your clients about the persistence of current inflation in the U.S.?

Greg Case, CEO

So overall, Meyer, I just want to confirm what we're telling our clients about it. Was that the question?

Meyer Shields, Analyst

Yes, pretty much just because I think the year insights are going to be tremendously valuable. I'm just wondering what point is?

Christa Davies, CFO

Yes. I mean, this is such a great question because wage inflation is certainly real, and our human capital business is hearing directly from clients about it and seeing in our compensation surveys and data where compensation increases and averages are in the 1% to 12% range, depending on the role. Our teams are spending a lot of time with clients and offering strategies to deal with this. Areas like total rewards for resource allocation, organizational benchmarking, and the development of long-term talent strategies are really topical right now. Not surprisingly, we're seeing a lot of demand in our human capital business, and it's reflected in the double-digit growth we've seen over the course of this year.

Meyer Shields, Analyst

Okay. That makes sense. Does it go beyond compensation-related inflation?

Christa Davies, CFO

That's the main area. We're seeing it in the labor area. Are there other areas you're thinking about there?

Meyer Shields, Analyst

The general people are calling on financial inflation to sort of be all items CPI?

Christa Davies, CFO

Yes. I mean, one of the things we would say more broadly, Meyer, is inflation is a positive thing for Aon's business overall. If you think about it, you are insuring assets and whether the assets are corporate revenues or employment levels or commercial property assets, inflation is generally a tailwind for our business.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Weston Bloomer from UBS. Sir, your line is open.

Weston Bloomer, Analyst

My first question is on the investment in talent and what that could potentially mean for organic growth, more specifically just in the second half of the year because it looks like you'll probably come off a difficult comp in the second half of 2022. I'm more curious, as you bring on new talent historically, what have you seen in terms of a ramp-up in terms of getting the full efficiency or your broader expectations there?

Greg Case, CEO

I'll start with a broad view, and all three of us can provide input on this. We have discussed achieving mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth across all of our solution lines, and that’s our current status and expectation for the coming years. Our focus is not merely on quarter-to-quarter results; rather, we prioritize how we support our colleagues and our talent strategy. This includes recruiting and developing our workforce, as well as enhancing our apprenticeship program, which has proven to be a valuable investment since its inception in 2017. In Chicago, we have engaged 15 employers in our apprenticeship network with 1,000 apprentices. This initiative has expanded across North America and mirrors our efforts in Europe, earning recognition for its potential impact. Talent development is vital for us, and we have trained 14,000 Aon colleagues in the past nine months to help them grow as professionals in an increasingly complex environment. We expect to see mid-single-digit or greater results consistently over time, with ongoing opportunities in new addressable markets. This is our philosophical approach.

Eric Andersen, President

Yes. Maybe a different angle on it, too, is that when you think about the Aon United model and how we interact with clients, essentially, we have a client leader who can bring all the capability of the firm to a client, whether it's on the risk side, wealth side, health side, etc. That model is a team-based model. So it's less about hiring a person and then getting an immediate return. It's more around investing in the capability so that as we interact with clients, we can bring either existing solutions that we have today or as the teams work together and create new solutions together, where you're matching human capital and risk or reinsurance and health to create new ways to unlock value. That's less about needing five new people to get five new things; it’s about how do you consistently invest over time so you have the expertise and the team-based culture that allows you to deliver that capability to a client in a way that nobody else can. That's the plan. Christa, anything you'd add?

Christa Davies, CFO

Yes. Look, just to build on Eric's point about investments. We've invested in Aon Business Services and specialized teams. We’ve engineered a firm that's capable of sustained long-term organic growth and margin expansion at any point in the cycle, as we've demonstrated over the last decade.

Greg Case, CEO

Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call. We always appreciate it and look forward to our next discussion. Thanks very much.

Operator, Operator

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