John Doyle: So, let me be clear, Elyse, we’re not looking to build a third-party wholesale business. There’s obviously been considerable growth in the wholesaler to E&S market over the course of the last several years. We want to bring the best solutions in the marketplace to our clients. Generally, we’re preferring admitted solutions for our clients. Not that there aren’t good things that happen in the E&S market. Of course, there are, and innovation is one of the areas where the E&S market is important. But we want to access as much of that E&S market directly. We actually access most of our E&S market solutions directly today. But we want to continue to press and make sure that we can access as much of that market directly.
So, it’s client-driven, It’s about us managing the client outcomes, client experiences, really as directly as possible. Having said that, we’ll continue to use wholesalers for niche expertise. They serve us very well and our clients very well. In those cases, they also have strong program businesses as well. So, anyway, that’s what it’s about. It’s just, again, making sure we can directly access as much capital directly as possible for our clients. Thank you for that. Andrew, next question?
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Greg Peters with Raymond James.
Greg Peters: Good morning, everyone. I’d like to pivot to — for the first question, pivot to the Consulting business, which had a nice quarter. I’m wondering if you can provide some additional color around how the different pieces are moving. I know some of the management consultants have pre-announced that they’re going to be cutting staff this year. Not really seeing any signs of weakness in your pipeline, but maybe you could give us some color, because forecasting this out seems to be a little bit of a black box?
John Doyle: Okay. Thanks, Greg. Yeah, we are very pleased with the start to the year. As you recall, of course, Oliver Wyman had a slow start to the year in 2023, had a nice year overall of growth. There’s going to be a bit more volatility to revenue growth at Oliver Wyman, but we also expect better growth on average from Oliver Wyman over the medium to longer term. Nick, maybe you can share with Greg some color on demand in the first quarter.
Nick Studer: Thank you, John, and thank you, Greg. Yeah, 13% was a very pleasing start to the year, it makes a marvelous headline, and we’re very, very proud of a good start on what, as you noted, is a tough environment for many in our profession. John has already given the caution about taking the two-year view. We also probably benefited from a few little timing benefits of things that might have shown up in Q2, might have shown up in Q1. And we still very much give guidance through the cycle. This should be a mid-to-high single-digit business. And you noted the sort of forecasting it out is a tricky challenge. That is true because we have a relatively short backlog. The nature of our work is such that when clients need assistance, they need it quickly.
And so, we are always ready to move very, very nimbly. To give you a little bit more color, we grew pretty strongly across all the four regions of our management consulting business and our economic research business, NERA, also grew very strongly, fastest in the Middle East, but in the double-digits or very close to double-digits in all three of the other major regions we have. And sectorally, it was also fairly broadly spread. Our communications media and technology team grew well, healthcare grew well, banking seeing a rebound in private capital work, which I’ve noted on previous calls, has been pretty robust even in the face of obviously a very much lower deal market, but our work on portfolio company performance has helped us there. But insurance also growing, and quite broadly across the capabilities that we bring to bear as well.
So, we think we’re in a good position. We’re very confident we gained share over the last few years, but it’s a tough consulting environment. And our pipeline indicates that mid-to-high single-digit growth environment, growth forecast, is how we think about this business through the cycle.
John Doyle: Thank you, Nick. That’s very helpful. And Greg, maybe I’ll ask Pat Tomlinson also to share some thoughts just on the first quarter at Mercer, given our consulting operations there. And Pat, while you have the floor, as I mentioned, obviously, you’re joining this call for the first time. Maybe you could talk a bit about your priorities at Mercer.
Pat Tomlinson: Sure. Thanks, John. Yes, we are pleased with our Q1 2024 underlying growth, as mentioned earlier, of 6%. It was our 12th consecutive quarter with 5% or more growth, especially the breadth across the practices. Health, another impressive quarter with 10% growth in Q1. That growth was really [Technical Difficulty] double-digit growth nearly across all regions. And it comes on the back of investments in hiring new talent, focus on thought leadership, creating digital tools and really focusing in on client segmentation, trying to match client healthcare needs, based upon industry segment size with the innovative and adaptive solutions that we have. So, really trying to meet clients where they are. We certainly benefited from strong retention.
We had good renewal growth. Insurer revenue and medical cost inflation has an impact there. We see significant demand for digital solutions and the innovative benefits that are kind of underscoring the value that we’re providing to clients. If I pivot over to wealth, we grew 5% in Q1. There was good, balanced, equally strong performance in [DB&A] (ph) and IMS. We see DB plans funding statuses continue to benefit from elevated interest rates that’s driving an increase in risk transfer over the last couple of years, as well as we have some regulatory requirements and demands that are creating some project work. If you add in some capital — some volatile capital markets, it’s driving strong demand for both our actuarial and our investment solutions business.
