John Q. Doyle: Yes, thanks David. We love what we’re doing at Mercer careers. Let me ask Martine to talk about our results here to-date.
Martine Ferland: Yes. Thanks, David for the question. And you touched on it. The quarter growth this quarter was on top of challenging 17% comparable for the second quarter of last year. Our quarter at 6% in Q2 now has also been impacted by the delay of start of certain projects. But I would say that the fundamentals for the business remain very strong. We have 9% growth year-to-date. The demand for service continues, our clients still grapple with labor shortages, wage inflation, dealing with new ways of working, tech in the workplace. We discussed generative AI with the clients. So, you’re right, it’s also a business that has the largest opponent the discretionary compliance for us at Mercer and we are always watching the macroeconomics.
But I would say at this point, our sales, our pipeline, client sentiments, very strong. So it continues to give us good visibility into strength for the third quarter and beyond. So, I’m confident that the rest of the year will be good for career.
John Q. Doyle: Thanks, Martine. Thanks, David. Operator, next question please.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Mike Ward with Citi.
Michael Ward: Thanks. Good morning. You called out global specialty in Guy Carpenter. Just wondering if you can discuss some of those trends and maybe the runway and how significant those impacts are?
John Q. Doyle: Sure. Thanks, Mike for the question. Maybe I’ll ask Dean we’re quite pleased with our execution of what’s been a very, very challenging reinsurance market in the first half of this year. But Dean, maybe you can talk about the growth of GC.
Dean Klisura: Sure. Thanks, John. We’re very pleased with our 11% underlying growth in the quarter, 10% for the first half of the year. As you call out, we’ve seen strong growth across all of our regions in particular internationally and global specialties. Global specialties plays deeply in the retrocession capital market based in London and globally and there’s been some capital challenges. Despite that, we’ve seen some capital inflow into the marketplace. But despite market conditions, our global specialty team continues to grow and perform impressively. New business across Guy Carpenter continues to accelerate. Some of that’s from all the talent that we hired we’re winning in the marketplace. We’re seeing very strong demand in this marketplace for analytics platform.
Which we think is the best in the marketplace. Demand for our advice and solutions remains strong. I mean our clients are really experiencing and seeing a flight to quality works in a challenging market environment where capital is still constrained where reinsurers are driving really challenging terms and conditions, you want to be with the best. I think also Guy Carpenter securities is differentiating in the marketplace. We did over 20 cap bond deals in the first half of the year with some of that new ILS capital coming into the marketplace. We’ve done ILS structuring for key clients. And so, I think there’s just kind of real momentum in the business kind of globally. And of course, the market continues to be a tailwind. There’s not enough new capital in the marketplace to change the trajectory of the pricing environment.
John Q. Doyle: Thank you, Dean. Martin, maybe you could talk a little bit about the growth in specialties?
Martin South: Yes. Thank you, John. As I mentioned earlier, that where we’ve seen really good growth in specialty areas being in the credit specialties, maybe not surprising given what’s happening in the environment. Construction has been very strong internationally. Aviation and energy and power as those go through transition there and aviation is bounced back. So, feeling very good about that a little so take it with the advisory business as well where we — the two businesses hang together. We’re advising clients increasingly on how to manage that lost cost had to drive growth during the energy transition and so forth. So, all of those specialty areas we’re seeing really strong growth and momentum and that’s how we go to market. That’s how we differentiate ourselves through that lens.
