Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (NYSE:RGA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Ward: Okay. Thanks, Todd. And so, I guess, if we think about Asia overall, as a growth opportunity for RGA, Curious about the strategy, should we think about growth in Asia as a potential maybe offset to the natural maturation of the traditional U.S. business that you guys have spoken about in prior years? And could growth in Asia over time, change RGA’s ROE or capital return strategy?

Anna Manning: Thanks for that question. Very good question. So, let me piece it out. I think there were a few components to that question. Strategy in Asia. So, both on our traditional business and then I will speak to the strategy on our GFS business. On the Traditional Business, really, I mentioned it before. It’s around bringing a package. It’s about introducing new products, supporting them with underwriting programs and services. It leads to a much better competitive position for us. In fact, many of the deals that €“ and transactions that we work on are exclusive because we’re taking the idea to the clients and in exchange, we get agreement to get all of the reinsurance on that business. That’s been €“ that’s not a new strategy.

That’s been a growth strategy in that Asia for quite a while and it’s been, as you can see, a successful growth strategy, but further, because of our global footprint in Asia, we can leverage the ideas, the successful ideas market-to-market. So again, another growth lever. On the GFS, you will also see that we’ve been successful and we’ve been growing that business. And I would point to it’s an earlier stage of development. And really, it requires very deep knowledge of the business and also the conditions. And for us, what is an advantage is, we’ve been there for many, many years, decades. And we have boots on the ground, local teams who are very familiar, very experienced. So another growth engine for us in Asia. But I would say that also is in other markets, that strategy of product development and underwriting programs and expertise and being creative on the GFS side.

Look, we see momentum and we see good growth opportunities. Yes, Asia will have on balance higher rates of growth, but we fully expect to grow our business in all our regions as we move forward.

Operator: The next question comes from Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Andrew Kligerman: Hey, good morning. I am still trying to kind of get clarity around these flu numbers. I know it came up in the last few questions. But if we look at the midpoint of your estimate, it’s about 29,000 and if we look back historically at the flu season deaths from, say, 2010 through 2019, it was around, say, 36,000. So was the unfavorable mortality in the quarter due to flu? Or was it something else? That’s what I am trying to get a handle on. And then I think Tom was asking a question about IBNR and so forth and the pull forward. So have you lowered your assumptions next quarter for flu mortality, that’s two parts.