Andy Sullivan: Sure, Jimmy, it’s Andy. We have a high degree of confidence in our approach in PGIM. As you’ve heard me say before, flows are an outcome of really three things; having a broad and diversified product portfolio, great long-term investment results and great distribution. The bottom line is we’ve stayed very focused on those elements because we know they work. It has resulted in our strong track record over — with positive flows in 18 of the last 20 years. So we’re continuing to expand our product range in vehicles. Just as an example, our ultra-short bond ETF ranked number two in terms of net flow rate in its category. Second, we’re continuing to invest in distribution on both the retail and institutional side.
In retail, we’re maintaining our high activity, high visibility approach with advisers. And in institutional, we added a significant number of new clients this year. And then obviously, finally, our long-term investment track record speaks for itself over three, five and 10 years. The predominant impact that we’ve seen has been a fixed income impact. And in particular, we believe that sustained higher rates are really good for the fixed income business. So we’re going to keep doing what we know works, and we’re confident that we’re going to be a net grower over time.
Jimmy Bhullar: Do you have enough visibility to assume that you’ll have positive flows on an overall basis at PGIM for 2023 or too early to say?
Andy Sullivan: So as I’ve said in the past, flow is very a good bit quarter-to-quarter, especially on the institutional side, they’re chunky. So we wouldn’t provide a forecast on that. Over the long run, we know that we’re going to grow.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from John Barnidge from Piper Sandler. Your line is now live.
John Barnidge: Thank you very much. My question is around agents. As I look at the agent count, they’ve declined overall in international. Is there anything being done to drive greater agent recruitment, or with productivity improved? Are you taking assurance lessons on the tax side to the agent force more generally?
Andy Sullivan: So John, it’s Andy. I’ll take your question. So really, the impact you saw near-term, COVID kept pressure on our recruiting efforts and retention efforts. Fact is, throughout the last couple of years, it was a harder environment to recruit and establish culture with new agents. That impacted our life consultant count more so than our Life Planner counts, but it did affect both. As we’ve started to transition to more of an endemic, we are seeing an improvement and expect to see an improvement over time. We’ll remain focused on two areas; first, strengthening our existing people’s performance and we’re exceptionally proud of our talent. We have the highest number of million dollar roundtable members who really deliver every single day for our customers.
And second, we are continuing to lean in to attract land and develop new agents, which as we come out of the COVID pandemic, we believe will be easier for us. So this is a model that has worked for us very consistently over a long period of time, and we expect to keep seeing steady performance.
John Barnidge: Thank you for that. And then my follow-up question. Can you talk about the decline in group new annualized premium in both Group Life and Group Disability? Is this from renewals, selective exits or job cuts at the large and jumbo into the market? Thank you.
