Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE:VOYA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Kenneth Lee: Got you. Very helpful there. And just one quick follow-up to your color that you provided in terms of the net inflows there, the retail net inflows in the quarter, fair to say that it was largely driven by fixed income or just want to get a better sense of the complexion around the net flows there that you saw. thanks.

Christine Hurtsellers: Yes. the flows in retail continue to be dominated from offshore money, predominantly into income and growth. And again, some of our global tech with tech performing well, we’re getting flows there too. But inside of that, actually, we’re starting to see positive inflows within sort of the traditional U.S. market, which I think where we really stand out, and this is the beauty of our JV as Asia didn’t go through this sort of bump and problems that the domestic market did. And so you really saw the power of us having, not only our U.S. business that was more challenged in retail, but the power of really Asia dominating our flow. So overall, I’m just excited, because we see Asia is continuing and growing. Europe is improving in retail. and also, we’re really seeing, starting to see green shoots in stability in U.S.

Kenneth Lee: Got you. Very helpful. Thanks, again.

Operator: Our next question comes from Josh Shanker with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Josh Shanker: Yes. well, I don’t mean to belabor the point, but a little more on medical stop loss. A lot of healthcare providers are seeing medical cost inflation. I realize we should look at a trailing 12-month basis, and it’s very good. but can you give us any confidence that what we’re seeing in the third quarter isn’t a result of the medical cost inflation we’re seeing overall? And if it is in that some extent, to what extent do we need to wait 12 months for repricing of the business to occur to capture that?

Donald Templin: Yes. Josh, look, there’s obviously a lot of dynamics around the inflation question. What I would say we’ve seen, it’s really more the traditional, what does the incidence look like? And then obviously, to your point, there can be noise in the actual claim cost piece of it. but we’re not seeing that as an unusual driver in our data. Now, could it change and evolve as we move forward? Absolutely, it could. What I would say though, this is a business predicated on a long history of inflation, right. So, this has been a product set that you think about core inflation of medical costs, sort of first dollar of 6%, 7% is not an unusual range. So, at a minimum, those sorts of things are always factored in, how we think about the claims costs moving forward.

Could the experience be driven a little bit better? Because well, okay, there’s a blip waiting to come. Again, maybe, but the core fundamentals of the product, the long-term health of the product, we think the data is going to be there to support what we assess the risk at and what we need to price at, and then the market long-term will absolutely be rational on this particular issue, but we’re not seeing it today in the data that we’ve got. But again, this is why we keep both hands on the wheel and pay close attention to the actual experience that we’re seeing, and how we think about pricing moving forward.

Heather Lavallee: In the build I’ve mentioned, Josh, is that as you think about the cost of higher medical costs on consumers and on our participants, it’s why we’ve got a strong demand for our supplemental health products, as well as our HSA. These products are so important now to be able to help protect in time of need. and so we’re certainly seeing that demand and see that show up in our 2024 sales.

Rob Grubka: And only, because it’s the most popular topic in markets today, what should we think about the impact of GLP-1 drugs on the medical stop-loss industry? Is it a one that should reduce the cost of extreme healthcare intervention for employees in the future? Is it a non-event? How are you guys thinking about it?

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