Aegon N.V. (NYSE:AEG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

The providers will be the — the provider will continue to be the provider of choice. But we’re moving across the advisory teams from Nationwide Building Society. We moved that across to our side, which is actually playing to the strength of both partners even better. So this is really something that sets up and extends the partnership into the future, and therefore, it’s something that we’re very pleased that we were able to do.

Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Farquhar Murray from Autonomous.

Farquhar Murray : Just 2 questions, if I may. Firstly, on the CSM roll forward on Slide 17. Please, could you just elaborate on the policyholder experience in the VA book. You mentioned lapse in utilization. But I just wonder if you can give us a little bit more color on which products are driving that in a sense of what’s behind it and how it might develop? And then secondly, momentum in WFG looks solid in terms of license agents, but the multi-ticket one is slightly lagging that improvement. Can I just ask how long it is taking for a typically newly licensed agent to follow through into a multi-ticket one? And what kind of initiatives can you do to encourage conversion there?

Lard Friese: Farquhar, I’m going to take your WFG question, and Matt will take the CSM roll forward. On WFG, yes, so we are in a — we have said that we want to do a couple of things. We want to grow our agents to the 110,000 target by 2027, and we’re well underway to get there. You noticed quite a nice increase year-on-year for that. And we also want to grow overall tickets and productivity of the agents. It depends a little bit on — there’s not 1 single rule for this on how long it takes from — to move from a single ticket to multiple ticket agent. It takes time. I have to get back to you on how much time that exactly takes. But it’s something that, that is not, let’s say — it requires a very targeted approach to make sure that the agents become more and more productive over time. We have seen this productivity improvement. We are measuring it, and we’re reporting on it. So you can continue to see the progress in the near future. On the CSM?

Matthew Rider : Yes. So I’m looking at Slide 17, where you directed me and just to level set everybody, we see the minus €163 million and the CSM balance and on the right to see that it’s related to U.S. Variable Annuities and Individual Life. It is generally related to on variable annuities. It’s poor surrender experience and benefit utilization experience. And on the Life side, there is a little bit of a mixed bag of persistency and mortality in there. One thing to note is that I think we’re all going to have to get used a bit to the geography of these things. So for example, on the variable annuity side, you have these experienced variances that are hitting the CSM, and that’s in contracts that have CSM, which is mainly withdrawal benefits historically written — withdrawal benefits rather than like the IB and DB business that we have, which doesn’t have a CSM.

So you see experience variances there going through the P&L rather than CSM. But if you call in IR, we can give you a little bit more detail on that one.

Operator: We will now go to the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Iain Pearce from Exane.