Reinsurance Group Of America Inc (RGA) September 2026 Conference Transcript

So, first, I'd like to thank Laura Cocklin for being with us, CFO, RGA, and Ron Herman, Chief Commercial Officer. So, thank you all for being here. Maybe we'll start with a broad one to kick it off. And I wanted to ask about, you know, what do you see as the biggest priorities over the next 12 months? And, you know, what are the things we should look for to, you know, judge whether you're executing on those priorities?

Sure, I'll start. Feel free to jump in. And so, you know, I think as I come into this role, there's a few priorities that I think about over the next year. First is really just continuing to deliver on our strategy. I think we've been doing extremely well in hitting our financial targets of the 8% to 10% EPS growth and the 13% to 15% ROE. So, you know, as I think about going forward and leveraging our competitive advantages and how we want to, you know, continue to benefit from our local presence, our ability to reinsure both sides of the balance sheet, our biometric expertise, you know, continuing to use those to ensure we're going after that balanced discipline growth. Second would be investor communications. I think one of the things that I really want to focus on is just how we tell our story externally. I think there's a little bit of a gap between just the understanding of how RGA creates value, really our biometric focus and expertise, the mix of earnings of our business. So really want to enhance how we do the investor communications, whether through things like this or our disclosures or different metrics. And then lastly, I would probably say third-party capital. That's the focus for us right now. A great tool for us as we think about our broader capital management and just different things we can benefit from that. So that's something as we finish deploying Ruby this year, we'll look to kind of what makes sense going forward.

So next, one of the questions I get frequently is on the competitive environment. And I was interested if you could talk about And just, you know, how is, you know, the price discipline, the competition different when you're looking at, you know, bigger enforced blocks versus, you know, I think some of the reoccurring flow reinsurance through relationships that you've talked about?

Yeah, I can start this one. So one of the benefits we have is a global footprint. So when you think about the local support we have across the globe and the way we interact with the regions, it enables us really to think about competition in a different light. In Asia, for example, we do an awful lot of flow business, and a lot of that is origination with the clients and then work with the regulators as we build the products. And what we have found in our exclusive approach to many of those situations is we don't have competition per se in those. Take the U.S. We do the same thing across the Americas, including Canada, where we focus on an underwriting approach, and a lot of those transactions end up also being exclusive. And then on the larger blocks, which happen more in the U.S., we've become highly selective of the types of business that we want and where we think our biometric expertise can play a role. And as Laura mentioned, having the ability to do both sides of the balance sheet really do help us in terms of focus on transactions that we're capable of doing just about anything across the board. And then in EMEA, primarily in the U.K., we're very big in the longevity space. We're well represented there. We've got a longstanding history there. And although that marketplace has been a little bit slow in 2026, the pipelines are picking up significantly. There just haven't been as many large transactions, and we're capable of handling the small transactions. We're capable of handling the larger transactions, and we have seen an increase, as I just mentioned. And so we're very selective where we compete, and I think that helps us in terms of the competitive environment overall.

Got it. Next topic, mortality. So it's been running pretty favorable recently. And I was interested if you all could comment on, you know, how transitory you think it is. Is it more viewed as, you know, there was some pull forward around COVID-19 and so forth, and we're getting the benefit of being on the other side of that now? You know, does any of it have to do with some of the medications that are out there or, you know, potentially longer term, some of the, you know, tech improvements that could benefit medical care?

Yeah, I'll take that. So I think from a mortality experience perspective, you know, it's been favorable to date the last few years, actually, and we're quite pleased with that. I think it really does show, you know, our expertise in the risk selection as we think about just broader mortality. The mortality trends have been really positive across a lot of our key markets in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada, so that certainly provides some potential tailwinds. If it's pulled forward from COVID, I mean, I think that's a possibility. It's hard to say exactly if that's the case. It's certainly something that, you know, we monitor and we look at as we see the trends, but it's hard to tell. The medical advancements, for sure. I mean, GLP-1 is the one that absolutely comes up the most as we're talking and looking at a lot of our research. You know, there's been a lot this year as far as advancements specifically in that as far as kind of the oral GLP-1. The Medicare is going to start covering it, so that should allow broader access and hopefully make it cheaper, and then just the generic versions of it. So I think all of that will be beneficial. When we think about that and we think about our assumptions, we generally bake in some sort of medical advancements into our assumptions. So what's happening with GLP-1 and some of the other drugs certainly helps give us confidence in those assumptions. We'll continue to monitor and see what happens, but between just the advancements and some of the technology, it certainly suggests potential tailwinds.

I guess mortality improvement assumptions over time, because this isn't something that's a new assumption, if you will. I mean, has it changed your approach to that, or is it sort of things that are happening just give you more confidence in what you are already assuming?

Yeah, I would say more the latter. I mean, again, over, I guess, just 50-plus years of us, there's been medical advancement, so we assume that in our general assumptions. And so this does give you confidence. You know, whether with, you know, things like AI and technology, there's going to be more, you know, we'll have to see. But that's something as part of just our, we have a huge global research and development team that's constantly doing research on all the different things that are going on. And then there's a lot of discussions back and forth across the different markets and regions and different products on what makes sense.

Got it. I was just going to add, I think, I mean, if you think about, we have over 50 years of biometric experience in pricing. And so although, as Laura mentions, we've got a lot of people looking at the improvements over time, we react slower, right? We don't build those things into pricing immediately. So we look to see some of those improvements which support some of the assumptions that, you know, that we've built in. And so I think part of what you're seeing is just that experience. Got it.

So the next one, I'm going to apologize ahead of time. It has an accounting kind of angle to it. But I do think it's important, and I think it's important for people to, like, hear the explanation of what it is and why it's important. But, you know, you have these capped cohorts, as they're called, and you reduce that meaningfully by 25%. And I think you've suggested you can take it down further. What are these capped cohorts? Maybe you can kind of give us that in plain English. and, you know, why is it impactful for volatility of earnings and improvement of earnings to take these actions?

I guess that one's mine. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. So I'll try to keep it plain English, and feel free to tell me if it's not. So the capped cohorts, it's a concept that just came out of the new long-duration targeted improvement accounting. But really what it is is when we think about sometimes we refer to an NPR or a net premium ratio, and when that, which is basically an indicator of profitability. So when we have an NPR, when a cohort is capped, it's because that net premium ratio is over 100%. And all that means is that all future premiums are needed to pay future benefits. So there's no profitability going forward that we can smooth it over when we talk about smoothing. So that's basically what the capped cohort is. It's just that it's over 100% and there's no more to smooth it over. And so when that happens, any experience in earnings, whether good or bad, just goes straight to the bottom line. And that can cause some volatility, and so a lot of the in-force management actions that we've talked about have been to address those capped cohorts so that we can try to limit or minimize that volatility. And when we do those in-force actions, we can do things like rate increases. So if we do get rate increases, that then improves the profitability and can change that. A cohort can go from capped to uncapped. Or we might recapture the business, or the client may recapture the business. We'll negotiate a recapture, and then the business just comes off our book. So we have been intentional about trying to go after some of those capped cohorts just to help limit that volatility, and it can be underperforming business.

Got it. Very helpful. Pivoting to Asia Pacific, it's been an important source of growth recently. Sometimes on the outside it's a little hard to see exactly where and how you're growing. So I wanted to see if you could give a little more detail on, you know, what kind of transactions those are, what kind of geographies, you know, the products that you're engaged in. And, you know, are these bigger enforce blocks? Are they more asset heavy or are they more these relationship deals that you talk about?

Yeah, I can take that one. So primarily most of our business in Asia is coming from Japan and Hong Kong. We've had a local presence there for a long time. And, in fact, our CEO, Tony, is who really established our footprint there and built that out over a number of years. And so that team has been with our GA for a long time. They're very connected with clients. They're also very connected with regulators. And a lot of what we're doing is flow transactions that they're the ability to do exclusives because we're helping design them and helping them get through the regulatory environment has been a very big part of what we do. It's a lot of single premium whole life and products along those lines. There have been some recent announcement about competition within those markets. That's primarily your asset plays, companies that are looking more for the asset transactions only, and that's not where we play. We play primarily where there are biometric and asset mixes coming together.

Yeah, and maybe I'll just add to that. One of the big successes we've had in Asia, too, is just product development. And so we are working with the clients to actually create the products that we think can make sense in the market, and then we can get reinsurance from that. So that's been a huge part of our success there as well.

Got it. But just while we're still on Asia Pacific, I wanted to ask about the potential increased scrutiny from China on some of the brokerage accounts in Hong Kong. And, you know, if there's any update that you can provide on how you're seeing that impact, if at all, the sales, particularly to mainland China visitors in Hong Kong.

Yeah, I'll start with that one. So I think the bottom line is we expect it to have pretty limited impact on our business. What has come out in the news, the tax law is actually not new. It's just more discussions on if they're going to enforce it and how. But as we look across the business and we talk to the clients, you know, taxes are not the main motivation for why some of the mainland Chinese visitors are coming over and buying the different products. It's access to USD or to a broader global investment strategy, some of the protection benefits that come with it. So it's not taxes. So, you know, still relatively new, but we expect it to be pretty limited.

So as RubyVee has become pretty fully deployed, you know, can you provide an update on that? What do you look at in terms of potential, you know, next vehicles? And, you know, could that fund a larger part of the set of liabilities that you all look at?

Yeah, sure. So maybe just taking a step back from a sidecar perspective in general, excuse me, like I mentioned, it is one of our priorities. I think it's a pretty advantageous tool to have in our toolkit as far as a few things, really. It does obviously provide additional capital as we see some of these opportunities that we've been seeing. The fee income, just the reoccurring stream of capital-like fee income is always a benefit. We also like it because it helps us think about public versus private company balance sheets. So as we think about some of the different risks that we want to reinsure, when we have the sidecars in place, you know, we can see where they might make the most sense. And then lastly, I would say, you know, it gives an opportunity for third-party investors to really benefit from some of our biometric expertise and our understanding of the liabilities and then really does help validate the price as, you know, other investors are happy to take the business. RubyRee will be fully deployed this year, so we're very excited about that. And then, you know, we're looking to see what might make sense next. It is part of our broader strategy right now, you know, nothing to specifically say, but look forward to talking about it when we have it.

Okay, great. Next on the equitable transaction, you know, it's been a little while now. I'd be interested in just an update on, you know, how is that performed, you know, doing a larger deal? Is that something that you view as repeatable? Is that, you know, a unique transaction that, you know, that could offer more opportunities with other large primaries?

I'll take that. So, number one, I think some know, but not all, I ran the life insurance business and the group employee benefits business at Equitable for years before joining RGA. It's a very unique transaction. The one that everybody looks at is the block, which we'll certainly talk about. But it was more of a partnering arrangement where we ultimately gained exclusivity because of the different areas to which we were able to partner with them. And they contributed to Ruby Lee. We've talked to Alliance Bernstein. We actually have taken over a significant part of their underwriting where we're actually doing the underwriting through our own organization, which we obviously always like doing and have built out over quite a bit over the last few years. We've also built them product, and that relationship continues. In terms of the deal itself, it has certainly met all of our expectations, and it is well within where we expected it to be, both from a mortality claims standpoint as well as earnings standpoint. So the numbers that we've disclosed, it's still tracking pretty much right in line with what we would expect it to be. I think there's really four reasons for that. One is we have 50 years plus of underwriting mortality, but we were able to look at that block and the experience that they had over that time and apply both our knowledge and experience with their knowledge and experience. And I think the net net of that is what you saw in the seeding commissions and what that was that was published. The other side of it is we were able to reposition the assets and that enabled us to get better returns than they had traditionally been able to get. And that was all a big part of, you know, how we evolved and how we looked at that entire process going through it. And then in terms of capital, we're able to do it at a lower cost of capital, and that's just really due to our expertise and the teams that Laura have overall. We have done other transactions like Equitable, but they have been much smaller. So Equitable, there's not a lot of $32 billion statutory business out there, but it showed the capabilities that we have as an organization to be able to deliver it. We have repeated that type of business, and it's actually part of what we're looking for as we go forward, where I mentioned earlier about driving to exclusives. You know, it's hard to tell somebody, hey, you have a block, we want to look at it, give us exclusivity. It's much easier when we say, well, we can help you with this, this, this, and this, and we can think about this as a holistic partnership, and how do we move forward? And so we have repeated it, smaller transactions that aren't as public. And in terms of the underwriting capabilities, we've actually taken over three organizations now, either in total or a large sum of it. And those have led to additional blocks as we've moved forward.

Yeah, that's a big piece for us when we can help play across different pieces of the value chain, whether it's the product development in Asia or the underwriting in the U.S. like all of that just contributes then as we kind of work with the clients and work towards that exclusive business.

Next on capital, could you talk about the capital position in the company, how you're thinking about it, and how much capacity that gives you for growth opportunities, as well as maybe how you balance that with other forms of capital deployment like buybacks?

Sure, sure. So when I think about capital, we have numerous sources of capital. We obviously have organic growth that can help fund our capital. the third-party capital that I talked about. There's runoff of our existing block of business. We leverage capacity to the extent that that's available, and then our excess capital. So, you know, we do have about $2 billion of excess capital that we disclose at the end of Q2. And so we really think about looking at, you know, our pipeline, which right now is very attractive across all the different regions, and looking at both the mix of transaction and flow business and see what we see coming over the next, say, 12 to 18 months. some of these deals, especially larger transactions, can take quite some time to play out with the clients. So we have to balance kind of that timing when we look at the capital. We also are very committed to the 20% to 30% payout ratio that we put out there as far as a shareholder return perspective. And we'll look at that and we'll look at the pipeline and think about where we can be opportunistic if it makes sense from a buyback perspective or if there's just a large amount of transactions. I think when we think about kind of funding the business overall in the total capacity, it is a mix of flow and transactions. And so that's where, you know, it's nice. When we think about hitting the 8% to 10% EPS, we have multiple different levers other than just deployment into the transaction. So that is the flow business.

That is as we think about balance sheet optimization efforts across our asset portfolio, the enforced management that I talked about and the buyback so you know it's all a balance and we look across all those different pieces as we think about our broader kind of capital and capacity and maybe one quick thing to add to i mean under laura and i've worked together now for quite a few years but one of the things that we're really trying to focus on is the planning process to think about the transactions we want to be involved in so we've become very highly selective in the types of transactions that we want to be in more planning around the whole capital framework that you know Laura was just talking about because of the length of some of the processes that we have. And so it's helped because in my role, you know, we're shifting across regions, we're doing and looking at different things, some move quicker than others, and that balance is really tied into sort of the selection, the governance, and the oversight of the deals that we really want to partake in.

Yeah, and that, we're going to add another one to that, but I think that is critical just because, you know, we've always talked about going after balanced discipline growth and then really being selective. And as we kind of double down more on some of this exclusive business and we're able to re-insure both sides of the balance sheet and see the value and the benefit that provides the clients, it's critical then as we look at the capital and we think about the allocation as we go into each planning season.

Got it. Okay. So one of the things I think you guys changed recently was how you're talking about growth, and you're looking at total premium growth excluding POT, pension mistransfers is a better metric for measuring RGA's growth. So maybe you could just explain why that is.

Yes, for sure. So we talked about this first on the Q2 call, but more and more of the transactions that we're writing in the financial solution segment specifically do have a biometric risk component to it. And I think there seems to be a misconception that anything in financial solutions is really just pure spread business. I actually had someone say that the other day. That's not the case. You know, again, going back to this, we're seeing a huge advantage in really being able to re-insure both sides of the balance sheet. And so when we do that, we're taking both the asset and the liability risk. And at that time, then, it tends to go in our financial solution segment. So there's just – it's a little gray now between traditional and financial solutions. So as we talk about kind of measuring our growth, you know, we don't think it makes sense anymore that the focus is just on traditional because of that both sides of the balance sheet and seeing more and more biometric risk in the financial solution segment. So we believe a better indicator is to look all in, excluding the PRT, just because that can add lumpiness, given kind of the mix of business that we're seeing right now.

Got it. Okay. And on the pension mistransfer market specifically, I mean, is that somewhere you still look for to growth? I think that is probably a little asset heavier in some cases. How does the pipeline look for that business? Is that something you still view as attractive?

It still is a key focus for us. And I would say the first half of 26, it's been a bit slow. The projections are that it's going to be an off year, certainly comparing to 25 and 24. Some are saying about half. I'm not good at predicting that. But I would say somewhere less than what we've expected. We're well positioned, both in the U.S. and the U.K., to capitalize on that market. We have the ability to do the small transactions in a very complementary way to those sorts of opportunities, as well as the large opportunities that we could see come to market. One of the big things that's happened thus far in 26 is that there haven't been any real large opportunities. The pipeline's building. There's been strong momentum, you know, over the last several months looking into the year end, and it's looking like the second half of the year will meet our expectations, but, you know, to be determined at this point.

Yep. And I wanted to circle back on one of the comments from the prior question. You know, when a lot of investors are looking at RGA and they're seeing the investment portfolio growing, and, yeah, I think it's growing a bit faster. than equity, for example, I think a lot of times the perception is that, you know, that's investment leverage is being added to the business. And so you commented a bit about it, but, you know, maybe you could talk about, you know, that dynamic and are there asset classes where you're increasing allocations and, you know, what areas are you pulling back on?

Yeah, so maybe I'll take that in a few pieces. So one, you know, kind of hitting at asset leverage there and how people are looking at and that has been increased. I think asset leverage is really more of an output than an input for us. When I think about that, you know, as I talk about reinsuring both sides of the balance sheet and some of the opportunities that we have, when we do that and we bring in some of these larger transactions, you know, asset leverage is going to go up inherently just based on the calculation. But it's a bit of a blunt metric, I would say, in that it doesn't really take into consideration then the underlying risk. So, you know, our mix of business does have a significant biometric focus, it's longer duration, it has, you know, a large mix of assets across private, public space, different currencies, and so it's not that kind of shorter duration spread only business that I think is generally thought of when you think about kind of asset leverage and it going up and some of those concerns. So that's one space where, as I kind of go back to my first comment on investor communication or just external communication, being clear about how we tell that story, because I think there really is a difference in the mix of business that we have, and that longer duration in our pretty balanced, disciplined investment portfolio makes a big difference there. But, again, it goes back to that's the mix of business that we're seeing, and, you know, the biometric piece of it is always there, but when we do it on the coinsurance basis, we take the assets. And so you see that happening. From an investment portfolio perspective, I think, you know, right now there's been a lot of opportunities in the market in both the public and the private space, you know, yields are up. And so we look to have a really good balance of that. I mean, certainly we are heavier on the public investment grade side as we think about liquidity, portfolio construction, ALM, et cetera. But we have been taking opportunities, as it makes sense, for some of the higher-yielding private asset classes as well.

Got it. That's helpful. What do you think investors misunderstand about RGA today? You know, I think there was a time where you traded at a much higher multiple, and, you know, we went through a pandemic, so that changed things. But at the same time, I also kind of felt like there was a proof point a little bit. that, you know, you're able to manage through it without taking too much hit to book value. And what do you think they're missing?

Yeah, I think it's a great question, and one of the reasons that it is a priority, you know, over the next year as I come into this role, I think one is the asset leverage that we just talked about. So we certainly own wanting to provide more details there to help it to provide clarity on that piece. I think, too, is the mix of business. I've said probably biometric a number of times since we started this. But that mix of how much is truly kind of underwriting margin biometric business and what is just spread only versus then the fee business, I think that's another piece where, you know, the assumption that anything in financial solutions is spread only is very far from accurate. And so that's something that we have to work towards and do better from a communication perspective, just to be clear about the types and the mix of business that we are taking and that there is, like, we don't even focus on the spread only business anymore. We certainly have some. We did more in the past before it became more of a commodity, certainly in the U.S., but that focus on our biometric expertise and the underwriting margin is something we need to be clear about for sure, and probably those two things are the biggest.

Another topic that I wanted to touch on is just some of the more complex liabilities out there, and in certain cases, it can be biometric-type risk, but, you know, things like SGL or long-term care, and, you know, some of the products have been harder to underwrite over time, but maybe the data is becoming a little more fruitful. Are those things that you're interested in? I know they've been sort of parts of deals, but is that something you engage more in?

Yeah, I was going to pile on to the last question. Now, I'm glad I didn't because it would be this answer. So, I know we have disclosed our interest many times in those types of liabilities, but we're highly selective of the things that will get involved. So we're very comfortable with the complex liabilities that we currently have, and they have performed to meet our expectations. But we're not interested in the broad markets of every product out there. You heard a lot of transactions come to market in 25 and early 26. We really didn't have much interest in those because they didn't fit the profile that meets our risk tolerance, that meets our governance standards, that meets our accounting, you know, being in the U.S. And so, you know, so we never say never, but we've been fully disclosed about where we would look at those, what are the criterias that we would look at. And so if you take long-term care, which is obviously a big one in that marketplace, there have been a number of transactions that have occurred over the past year and a half, And we haven't been involved since the one with Manulife. The one with Manulife was a very specific selection of criteria around that with, you know, no premium guarantees, no lifetime benefits, stuff that we feel that we can manage appropriately to the portfolio that we have. And then when you look at it overall, we, you know, it's less than 10% of our total liability.

And we're, you know, we have no interest in going anything above that. um so recently rga has produced i'd call it a lot of strong quarters even you know adjusting for things like you know variable investment income and some of the favorable mortality etc and you know would be interested in your views on you know how sustainable is the earnings power that you all have been printing uh you know what's your level of confidence and how you know how things are running right now yeah sure i'll start jumping uh so a couple things i think there one i mean the confidence and kind of what we've been printing and going forward very strong like i have strong confidence in being able to hit our targets and continuing to deliver on that generally due to

a lot of the things that i've mentioned as we've been talking right we have such a strong global platform we've really seen the benefit of the local presence we have of the biometric expertise the both sides of the balance sheet like there's just been a number of opportunities and we have such a large space to play in across the different markets you know we continue we continue to see that happening from the kind of sustainability of earnings or how you look at it quarter to quarter you know we did start to provide that key consideration slide in the earnings presentations that we do each quarter just to give a better sense of what might be i guess noise i might you know refer to it in any given quarter there's always going to be something and so we wanted to provide that to be able to pull that out and really show just the strength of the core earnings you know, quarter to quarter, which, again, between not only the opportunities we have for a new business, whether in flow or transactions, but some of the other things I mentioned that can contribute, you know, the asset portfolio, being able to reposition, take advantage of the market, the enforce actions that we do, those can, you know, be a little bit volatile as far as quarter to quarter, but certainly provide a benefit. Just even the earnings that we're seeing come in from the transactions that we wrote over For the last few years, you know, we've talked about the pattern of earnings and how it can take a little bit for some of that to come in. We're seeing the benefit of that come into the earnings. So, you know, really a lot of confidence that all of that will continue.

Great. Next, I wanted to ask about the value of Enforce. You know, I think sometimes it's a tricky metric, particularly for a lot of U.S. investors to get their head around. And many companies don't really go into as much detail on it. But, you know, I think the last time you gave it, $44 billion, I think, was the number. It's a very large amount of, you know, sort of enforced embedded value. You know, how should we interpret that? You know, like how should an external investor consider that in the context of investing in RGA? And what does it mean about the emergence of capital over time?

Yeah, sure. So $44 billion, definitely a big number. I agree. It's really meant to just show, like you said, the embedded value that we have in our business. It is specifically the present value of the underwriting investment and fee margins, excluding expenses, taxes, cost of capital, that are on the balance sheet and expected to come in over time. So, you know, we expect, on average, probably that to come in over a 10- to 15-year period, so it's a long period of time, but we have a long-duration business. And, again, it's those different margins and how they will come into income. They should generally come in as expected. I mean, we might see some volatility, obviously, quarter to quarter as it relates to some of the mortality. But otherwise, you know, it is the present value of those different margins and how we expect them to then influence our earnings and organic capital generation, et cetera, over time.

Got it. One of the other things you talked about is, you know, some of the RGA strategic underwriting programs and now they're on track to, I think, double from last year. And, you know, how large can that business become over time? And, you know, what do the economics look like?

It's a really good example to actually support some of the things that Laura was just talking about. So prior to my current role, I ran the Americas. And one of the things that we wanted to do that we had learned from Asia is increase the flow business. How do we get that sort of modernization? Now, U.S. is a very different market than Asia, but we developed that, and literally over the last four years, the application counts to the way we measure it has been a double this year. We're just scratching the surface of it, and it is a very unique opportunity for us because most of our competitors cannot scale to accommodate what we're doing in that marketplace in any short order. And so we took something that we were doing to help our clients handle capacity, the ups and downs of running an insurance company, and we determined that underwriting isn't necessarily going to be a core element of the process going forward, that it's becoming expensive, training underwriters is very difficult, developing them to be full supporting underwriters is even more difficult, and then keeping them after that process, even if you're trying to do it, they end up going to competitors because you just can't keep the compensation up. So we're known as an underwriter. Underwriters enjoy being part of our team, and we've scaled that team very effectively because of some things like AI and some of the tools that we've used to build out that model. But we're just scratching the surface. As I mentioned earlier, there are three companies that we do either all or a significant amount of their underwriting. There are about 30 that we do some elements of it with. And as we move that forward and we continue to demonstrate that capability, it's the U.S. market in particular and then a little bit in Canada, we've got an opportunity, I think, to remove that as a core, turn it into a variable expense, and make it a much more productive outcome when you look at the P&L of that company in particular.

That's really interesting. Next, I wanted to ask about just the broad regulatory environment. I think over time it's been highlighted as something that can be an opportunity for RGA when things are changing, whether it's either accounting, regulatory, et cetera. I mean, how is that landscape broadly right now, and are there any opportunities that are arising out of it?

I think generally, yes, it can be an opportunity for us. the regulations are changing all the time. I mean, we have business across multiple different regions, multiple different countries, and so there's constantly different changes going on that we can benefit from or we can help our clients understand and benefit from. I think it really depends on where it is and what it is, quite honestly, the change. From our perspective, you know, having a local presence, being a super strong counterparty, being around for the last 50-plus years, that generally benefits us as some of these different regulatory changes are coming forward. So most have limited impact on us. We'll see more impact on the clients, and that's where we try to help, but certainly generally positive, I would say.

Yeah, and I would, I mean, obviously it's a key focal point for us, and so we have very strong relationships with our regulators. In fact, I was meeting with one yesterday. So our goal is to sort of educate them along the way of how reinsurance works and the types of transactions we would do. I would say, you know, where you see Japan, where they're doing a lot of product development, they're very tight with their regulators. I think Europe spends a considerable amount of time, given all the regulation is very different throughout the European area. And then in the U.S., obviously, where we're domiciled, but we've spent quite a bit of time with all the regulators to where we do business. And a lot of it's just an education process on both sides. What do they expect? What do they know? And, you know, if you've met with one reinsurer, you've met with one reinsurer. We're not all the same. And so we try to show the differentiation that we have in sort of the markets of where we think we can be quite competitive.

I think the education is a really critical piece there, because as we think about, you know, expanding the business from different market to different market and being able to, you know, use some of the solutions that we did in the U.S. maybe 10 years ago that now might make sense in Asia, like that education is critical. And we can do that because we have the experience across multiple different products in multiple different regions.

Okay. Well, look, we're just out of time, so I will stop it there. Thanks, everybody, for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Laura.

Thank you for coming. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.