Aon plc (NYSE:AON) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 7 of 11

It does, by the way, explain a little bit of what’s going on in the primary market around property, as more of the risk is now sitting on the primary insurers they are now dealing with how do they price it and what kind of risk do they take. So it is an interconnected system of reinsurance and insurance. So just to point that out. And I think on the second half, tends to be more around the ILS business and facultative business. And I do think we had a very strong first half, in fact. And our expectation is that should continue as the primary clients now may have less low-level reinsurance protection on property catastrophe or secondary perils like wildfires or hailstorms or what have you. And so the ability for the insurers to manage that exposure, the tool that they would use now is facultative reinsurance on an individual risk basis.

And the last point I’ll make, and Greg, maybe I’ll throw it to you is facultative reinsurance is also being used on things like captives or large corporates where they’re also repaying more of the risk themselves. So don’t just think about it as a reinsurance tool. You should also start to think about it as large corporates that are trying to access, not just traditional insurance markets, but also reinsurance markets. But in fact, is the way they do that. But Greg, maybe anything you’d add on that?

Greg Case: You summarized it very well. I would just add a couple of things on the talent point overall and in reinsurance. Look, reinsurance, our colleagues, this has been strength to strength, really over the last 5 years. It’s been a tortious. It’s also one of the areas we’ve invested heavily and continued content and capability, not just core reinsurance, but if you think about what we’re doing in cat bonds and ILS, we lead the world in this, the work we’ve done in strategy and technology group Eric described before, this is just substantial investment. And with this core in reinsurance, we now have this incorporated into the overall risk capital effort. And so it’s really, for us, we’re very — we’re excited about the possibilities and the capability we have to help clients, and it continues to build, which is why we feel so strongly positive about the second half of the year and the ongoing results here.

Rob Cox: And maybe moving back to commercial risk. If we exclude these external factors on the M&A services business, is it fair to assume that the remainder of the business accelerated sequentially, kind of along with the accelerated renewal premium change that we saw in the market this quarter?

Christa Davies: I mean, Rob, we’re not giving specific guidance on commercial risk at that level? What we would say is we’re extremely excited about year-to-date growth of 7% overall for AON. And on track to mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth for the full year. And obviously, we’ve had a real headwind in this M&A area given transaction volume, as Greg described, is down 30% to 40%, and we expect that softness to continue into the second half of the year.

Rob Cox: And maybe just one last question on health solutions. Really strong growth. Just you guys pointed to the growth outside of the United States being particularly strong. And I’m just curious what’s driving that? Is that market share gains, medical inflation? Any color you could provide there?

Eric Andersen: So I would say more of market share gains and the ability of the team to work together globally through global benefits. Remember the health systems are different everywhere in the world. So — when you look at the U.S. system versus the U.K. versus Europe or anywhere in Asia-Pacific or LatAm, they’re very different. But the needs are often of one organization expanding globally. They need that expertise. And so our global team really well connected, working together to able to help global clients as well as local clients. So we think it’s market share gains in the local countries and really excited about what they’ve been doing over the course of the last year or two.

Page 7 of 11