Damien Green: Gabriel. It’s Damien here. I appreciate the question. We are seeing — so firstly, we saw an uptick in MCV, Mainland Chinese visitor sales in the fourth quarter of 2022, which is very positive. We registered strong double-digit growth in Mainland China for quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year in Macau, which was a very positive sign. As we go into the first quarter, we are seeing a step change in Mainland Chinese visitor sales into Hong Kong, albeit off a low base, Gabriel, but very positive signs. So whilst clearly, the recovery is happening here. Clearly, the inflows are there. The pace of that recovery over coming months is clearly got to be determined. But positive sign so far. And the last thing I’d say here is we’re very well positioned to capitalize on the Mainland Chinese visitor opportunity as it returns to Hong Kong.
We’ve got 12,000 agents. We’ve been focusing very, very hard over the course of the pandemic in beefing up our Mainland Chinese visitor sales capabilities as well as partnership channels, including DBS Bank.
Gabriel Dechaine: Somewhere it’s more like back half where you expect it to ramp up?
Damien Green: Definitely. What I would say is we’re expecting a significant recovery over the course of 2023, with a ramp-up in Q1, but that’s the way I see it. Thanks.
Gabriel Dechaine: Okay. And then my second question on the. policyholder experience. I don’t know if you can break that number down for us. We just got the one number, which in and of itself is fine. But how much of it was mortality gains in LTV? How much of it was, I’m assuming group in Canada, was positive? And then on the other side, how much of it was negative lapse and mortality in the U.S.? And if that lapse issue was — experience was tied to the no-lapse guarantee business?
Steven Finch: Thanks, Gabriel. It’s Steve here. I’ll tackle that. And I guess, I’ll speak broadly about what we saw and then try to answer your questions on some of the specifics. So Q4 policyholder experience in total, as Phil noted, was just over $80 million pretax, an improvement from Q3 and from Q4 prior year. I would categorize it as the broad driver of the result was unfavorable lapse experience in our U.S. Life business. In terms of mortality and morbidity, so claims results, that varied across businesses and geographies, but it was neutral overall for the quarter. And that was driven by a couple of the things that you noted. We had favorable experience in Group Benefits in Canada, which has been a trend for the full year, very positive results there in the Canadian Group Benefits.
We saw a gain in LTC. We saw in Q4 what I would consider normal large-case variability that was a charge in the U.S. So that’s sort of the claims side of things. In terms of lapse, a little bit of context. So what we’re seeing in terms of the lapse results, we had updated our experience in the U.S., updated the assumptions in 2021 fully reflecting pre-pandemic experience. And what we’re seeing now is really a shock to the system caused by health concerns from the pandemic as well as more recently, the variability in markets and the uncertain economic outlook. That’s impacting more than just the guaranteed UL product line. So it’s across a number of product lines. But my expectation is that these impacts are expected to moderate going forward and revert back to pre-pandemic levels as the pandemic subsides and the economic uncertainty abates.
