You saw we were able to pivot last year, and I know we’ve gotten a couple of questions today with respect to what’s going to happen? What are you expecting like on fixed annuities. We’re not expecting to sell as much fixed annuities in ’23, but we’re prepared if the opportunity arises. So with respect to stock repurchases, we’re watching the Fed. We’re watching to see what kind of credit cycle might happen. But nothing has changed strategically. We want to return capital. I hope that helped to some degree, Tom.
Tom Gallagher: That does. And my follow-up is can you — it’s really about the competitive conditions in your buffer annuity space and then in the fixed annuity space. From what I’ve heard, the buffer annuity space has a lot more entrants. But whenever I hear that, I get worried about price competitiveness. And I know you are one of the founders of that business. But just curious, with a lot more competition coming in, are you seeing pricing pressure? Is it affecting margins? Or is that still pretty rational? And then a similar question on the fixed annuity space. You’ve had two quarters of very strong growth, or should say, strong sales levels. That’s considered among the most commoditized products in the industry. And you know the private equity firms with a lot of unique investment strategies are big into that space.
So whenever you see sales growth in a space like that, it has to make you wonder from my perspective, what’s going on and what the margins look like. But anyway, sorry for the long-winded questions.
Eric Steigerwalt: Yes. I’ll start out. I think everybody is going to jump in here, Tom. And you asked a similar question last quarter. Look, I see a reasonable level of discipline. You’ve heard other companies talk about the fact that they’re really happy with the returns that they’re getting in the fixed space. And although you’re seeing a lot more competition or peer companies entering the Rila space. Generally, I see, we see decent discipline here. I mean we think this is an excellent product for consumers. Our distributors love it, and we love it as a manufacturer. So again, I’m using the word generally, Tom, but generally, across the various sales classes or product classes, I’m seeing reasonable discipline. David, Miles, even Ed looks like he wants to jump in. Tom, you got a live one here.
Unidentified Company Representative: All right. I’ll start. So I think in addition to what Eric said on the pricing and the economics, we think that simplicity and transparency do matter. We’ve continued to enhance our Shield suite of products, and we’ll continue to keep the product up to date to compete in a variety of market conditions. We’re also thinking about ways to address other consumer needs, and we did that successfully with Shield Level Pay.
Ed Spehar: Tom, just very quickly. So yes, the role space is more competitive as you went from 3 carriers to whatever it is now, 20%, whatever the number is. But I would just point out that the returns initially when there were three carriers were very high. So yes, they are lower today, but still attractive, just not what they were when they were — when you had basically oligopolistic pricing with three players. If I look at the question you had about competition from alternative asset managers, remember what David said, we have a partnership a reinsurance arrangement with Athene. So we are benefiting from that element of the competitive market with the relationship we have.
