Good day everyone. Welcome to the Reinsurance Group of America Fourth Quarter 2019 Results Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to introduce Mr. Todd Larson, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Ms. Anna Manning, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Mr. Larson.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone and welcome to RGA’s fourth quarter 2019 conference call. With me this morning in St. Louis is Anna Manning, RGA’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Anna and I will discuss the fourth quarter results after a quick reminder about forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures. Following our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. To help you better understand RGA’s business, we’ll make certain statements and discuss certain subjects during this call that will contain forward-looking information, including among other things, investment performance, statements relating to projections of revenues, premiums or earnings and future financial performance and growth potential of RGA and its subsidiaries. Please keep in mind that actual results could differ materially from expected results. A list of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results is included in the earnings release we issued yesterday. In addition during the course of this call, we’ll make comments on pre-tax and after-tax adjusted operating income, which is considered a non-GAAP financial measure under SEC regulations. We believe this measure better reflects the ongoing profitability and underlying trends of our business. Please refer the tables in the press release and quarterly financial supplement for more information on this measure and reconciliations of net income to adjusted operating income for our various business segments. These documents and additional information may be found on our Investor Relations website at rgare.com. And now I'll turn the call over to Anna for her comments.

Thank you, Todd and good morning. As indicated in our press release last evening, we reported adjusted operating EPS of $3.43 for the quarter compared to $3.46 cents a year ago. While the quarter was modestly below expectations, the full year exceeded our expectations. Overall strength in the underlying business combined with strong organic growth and active capital deployment contributed to the full year growth and adjusted operating EPS of over 10%. Highlights for the quarter include strong overall results in the EMEA, Excellent results from our financial solutions businesses across all geographies. And our U.S. group business performance continued its rebound from 2018 and exceeded expectations. These areas of strength partly offset a loss in Australia and unfavorable U.S. individual mortality experience. Todd will have additional comments regarding the quarter, but let me step back and provide some broader thoughts. U.S. individual mortality was unfavorable in the quarter and for the full year primarily due to a higher volume of large claims. Our ongoing evaluation of the performance of this business leads us to believe that the majority of the unfavorable experience can be attributed to volatility, especially at the larger policy size amounts. Absorbing short term claims volatility is a key component of the value that we provide to our clients. And the impact on our financial results tends to smooth out over longer periods of time. As mentioned previously, we also expect that there is likely some influence from the slowdown in mortality improvements that we have seen in the U.S. population statistics in the last few years. Although we expect that the impact to our portfolio of reinsured lives should be less than what has been observed in the general population. In the current quarter and for the full year, we believe the main driver of…

Thanks, Anna. I'll touch on a few financial metrics and provide a highlight of our segment results. First, a quick comment just wanted to mention that we did change the name of our US and Latin America financial reinsurance business to US and Latin America Capital Solutions. This is just a name change that better aligns the product offerings within this business, and it doesn't affect any previously reported results. Our adjusted operating return on equity for the full year was 10.5%, which is within our guidance range of 10% to 12%. Net foreign currency fluctuations were relatively small for the quarter having a favorable effect of $0.01 per share on earnings as compared with the prior year. However, for the full year, net foreign currency fluctuations were more meaningful, with an adverse effect of $0.18 per share on earnings. Or top line premium growth was 7% for the year, as organic growth was strong at approximately 8%. Our strategy providing broad based solutions to our clients through our risk and capital expertise continues to deliver. We deployed approximately $465 million of capital into transactions for the year exceeding the strong results in 2018. The transactions we executed in 2019 were diverse, both by product type and by region. We ended the period with an excess capital position of approximately $900 million. The pipeline remains active, and we are optimistic about opportunities to continue to deploy capital into transactions into 2020. The effective tax rate on pre-tax adjusted operating income was 23.1% for the quarter, and for the full year was 22.4%. Within the expected range of 21% to 24%. Moving on to investments. The average investment yield excluding spread business was 4.55%. Up 11 basis points from a year ago, primarily due to higher variable income this quarter. A…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Humphrey Lee with Dowling & Partners.

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. I appreciate the color in terms of the U.S. mortality and the kind of run rate earnings expectation. Again, we're looking at five quarters in the row of unfavorable mortality. And while I understand it as a long term business, and you have to look at the performance over an extended period of time, is anything that you can share in terms of why do you don't think this is a trend or why do you feel like the - you all kind of [indiscernible] are still comfortable?

Humphrey it's Todd, let me start out. Now what we've seen, especially in the second half of the year was an elevated number, really a small number, I should say a small number of larger claims. And when I say larger claims this time and sort of in excess of $5 million, between $5 million and $8 million. So a very small number of claims above are expected in the second half of the year. Really resulted in some of that volatility we saw in the third in the fourth quarter. But then if I take a step back and why are we comfortable over the longer term. We do have a lot of information and data given our history of being in the business. We do continue in extensive analysis on your experience studies by clients and by era, et cetera. So if you take - maybe just take a quick step back, if you look at 2017, I would say that year performance was in-line with our expectations, if not, maybe slightly favorable. And then if you look at 2018, we commented that in total for the full year, we were off about $30 million on claims experience. On a base of benefit payments it is over $4 billion. So then turning in '19 here. We're not happy to see four quarters in a row of unfavorable experience. Again, when we looked at it, there are some slight misses in the first and second quarter, but really the big deviation came in the second half of the year and based on all the analysis that we've been able to do with most of that - does come down to volatility in the number of these - small number of these larger claims.

Humphrey, if I may add a comment. Recall at a recent Investor Day, we shared some CDC data with you that showed a return to positive improvements in 2018 in the general population. We're also seeing early CDC data through the middle of 2019 that are showing an acceleration in those improvements. And we're viewing this as a positive indicator in the U.S.

That's helpful. Shipping gear to Australia, so I understand that you are looking at the rate increases to remediate both the globe and individual blocks. But I'm looking at just the earnings for this year, if my math is correct, I think Australia was a loss of over $16 million for the full year. I think with the original guidance for '19 was breakeven or maybe s slight positive. So as you think about 2020 like what is your expectation on Australia given the repricing. She we expect maybe losses to carry forward for maybe the first half before the rate increases benefit to kick-in.

First, Humphrey, your math is pretty close. It was around about a $60 million pre-tax loss for the year. And so we do have some great actions that will be coming online. The rates between March and July, I think of next year. So that's going to this should be positive to the overall results. Giving you a sort of exact or solid prediction for where next year will come out as sort of difficult as we still work through the experience on some of the older business that we are again pricing as quickly as we can on any of the open treaties both on the group side and on the individual side. So I would suspect will come in below the current year 2019 loss of about $60 million, hopefully substantially better. But it's really hard to give you an exact figure.

Got it. Thank you.

And we'll take our next question from Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse.

Good morning. As I look at the deployment of excess capital, and as safety and you said you're going to deploy $300 million $400 million of excess capital on average annually. And then I will get the fourth quarter no share repurchases. So looking out to 2020 do you think that you will likely spend the excess capital mostly on transactions and potentially not buy any shares back? And with that question, what transactions are you seeing that are most likely? And maybe just tie [indiscernible] to it as well? I know that's not going to be on balance sheet but [indiscernible] as well.

Yeah, Andrew. Yeah. First, we would like to continue to deploy the capital generation back into, transactions. And, again, it's transactions that don't fit our sweet spot and that we can get what we view as an appropriate level of return. So I don't see any significant change in our approach to the extent that we don't think we're going to be successful on transactions will counterbalance that with looking at share repurchases. And we may look at share repurchase as well as part of the overall mix. So again, we're positive and we would like to redeploy the capital back into nice transactions like we've been doing the last few years.

And on the pipeline question, Andrew. We have an active pipeline in all of our regions. EMEA is particularly active with respect to pension risk transfer and asset intensive opportunity. So longevity type opportunities. We've spoken about the momentum in Asia-Pacific. We're seeing a good pipeline for asset intensive and for financial reinsurance opportunities. In part, I think driven by the impact of low rates - the continuing impact of low rates on the company's local statutory balance sheets. Canada, good pipeline, good demand for life hack high solutions. In the U.S., I think we mentioned in the third quarter, and we're seeing it again in the fourth quarter a bit of a pause on the medium to larger asset intensive opportunities. We think this is more temporarily low. But as we look at our pipeline, it's a very good pipeline. And it's also a good pipeline for the larger transactions that would be directed at Langhorne. So a continuation, I would say generally continuation from the third quarter.

Got it. And then just maybe there's been clearly a lot of interest in the coronavirus. And I'm curious about how RGA is thinking about that in terms of its exposure and anything else you might add?

Yeah. Well, it's too early to provide much in terms of the virus itself. What we can share we'll share as some high order estimates of our exposure. So obviously our primary exposure's associated with our traditional mortality business. And we estimate that approximately 12% of our global pandemic exposure is in Asia. And of that, we have a very small operation in China. So of that 12%, we estimate 1% to 2% would be in China. The remainder of our global pandemic exposure that would be just over 50% in the U.S., 35% between Canada and EMEA and then the rest of the small residual in all of our other operations.

Thank you.

And we'll take a question from Jimmy Bhullar with JP Morgan.

Hi, first question on just the Australia business. Have the results in the past couple of quarters affected your views on what your losses or earnings are going to be for that business, especially in the short term over the coming year?

It's in the last couple quarters, we saw a little bit of deterioration on the group business. But again, as I mentioned earlier, those are the ones that were, we've already taking some great action on. So I would say nothing that's happened last couple quarters that materially changes our view of the numbers I talked about earlier going into 2020. But certainly, we'll continue to, as Anna mentioned, as I mentioned in my comments, do whatever we can to remediate the enforced block.

And I thank you lost about $45 million in Australia in the second half of the year. What was the drag from the business for all the 2019?

For Australia?

Yeah.

The total pretax loss for Australia for the year was right around $63 million or $64 million.

Okay. And then it seems like the commentary in the press sort of suggests that the flu season is shaping up to be worse than the last few years. Have you - more sort of the third through the quarter. Have you seen any indication of that, as it relates to your 1Q results?

We've seen similar reports in the press and they're generally based on earlier activity, increased earlier activity than in the prior periods. It's too early to predict what that means from a mortality impact for the season. Interestingly, we did see something similar in the Australia flu season. It also began earlier but it ended fairly quietly and with what is an average mortality season. So that got a lot of attention as well. Hopefully the U.S. will have a similar mortality outcome but much too early to say and we wouldn't expect to have seen much impact in our 4Q mortality results from the flu.

And then just lastly, it seems like competition for block transaction has been picking up a little bit. You obviously haven't been active in the Langhorne JV, so what's your - any comments you have on competition both for blocks and then also on the ongoing flow business on the reinsurance side?

Why don't I start with competition in the organic in the flow business? And I'll start in the US. There was an up a lot of recording activity in 2019 on open treaties, and it was driven in large part because of the need to reprice because of changes to PBR and the new mortality tables. I would say the competition was robust, wouldn't expect to see a lot of change in the overall market share positions. So continuing, rational, robust competition in Canada, EMEA and Asia, our organic competition remains strong. But recall our strategy, especially in Asia is really to try to limit competition or eliminate competition through our product development services. And now we're combining that product development with capital management. And you can see the results of that in the growth rates that we're enjoying in our organic business. So overall, I would say on the organic side, we're in good shape against the competition and we expect to see continuing growth in that traditional business. Now on the transaction side, yeah, competition is very strong on the transaction side. And there's also continuing interest from new players. So not only are there lots of competitors, but increasing number of competitors and we're seeing them both from established companies and relatively recent new players. There's a lot of interest on this part of our business. There are lots of large opportunities. But we continue to be successful. And in large part because of the package that we are providing this package of technical risk and structuring expertise, the relationships execution counters party. We're holding on our own. And if I look at capital deployment levels in 2019, we had a very strong year. We ended the year deploying a $465 million into these enforce block transactions and that followed what I thought was a strong year in 2018 where we deployed just slightly south of $450 million. So we're getting our fair share of those transactions.

Thank you.

And we will move on to our next question from Erik Bass with Autonomous Research.

Hi, thank you. I want to go back to US mortality, just given the trend and results. Have you brought in any outside experts or done anything else to take a fresh look at the data to make sure that the claims are just volatility and not part of a more systemic trend? I know you mentioned that the second half of year is really around a few larger claims. But are there any specific data points that you could share with us just to support the conclusion that just volatility?

Well the specific answer to your question as it relates to the fourth quarter, we have not had outside expertise look at our fourth quarter results. But having said that our experts are in constant communication with industry colleagues. They participate in many of the industry groups. We have outside experts, medical doctors come in to speak to our medical doctors as we build out our views on mortality. So I would say the specific answer to your question about fourth quarter is no. But generally we do take advice and we do use outside experts in addition to what we think a very strong and very expert teams within RGA.

Got it. And I mean any specific data you could give on just the number of particularly large claims or was the case of a few max claims anything else that just supports the volatility case?

Probably in the second half of the year there was probably an extra handful of claims each quarter in that $5 million to $8 million range as you know our maximum retention is $8 million. So in that $5 million to $8 million range, I would call it about a handful on average of the last two quarters.

Got it. Thank you. And then shifting to Asia, ex-Australia, can you just talk about how the results there compare versus your assumptions? And how we should think about the run rate for that business and the seasonality as well?

So for Asia, ex-Australia on the traditional side for the quarter and I would say for the full year it was right around our expectations across the segment. So good to see there. As far as average quarterly run rate for the traditional segment in Asia, I put that at between $40 million and $45 million so.

Got it. And is there any material seasonality in that?

Maybe a little bit where you see the first quarter and the fourth quarter be a little bit softer than the middle two quarters.

Got it. Thank you.

We will take our next question from Dan Bergman with Citi.

Thanks. Good morning. In the press release I believe you commented that full year 2019 results were somewhere above expectation. So I just wanted to see when we think about that 5% to 8% medium term EPS growth guidance, is the $13.35 that you reported in 2019 a good base line to grow up further or should we be thinking about a materially different starting point. So any thoughts on that would be helpful.

It's probably not a bad starting point. Again there is pluses and minuses in our business and that was exceeded our plan by a little bit, somewhat driven by the lower tax rate. But overall, it's not a bad place to start. I can say you can fine tune it all you want, but it was a pretty good result.

Great, thanks. And then maybe just moving to a U.S. group business, I just want to see if you could quantify how favorable results were relative to your expectations and a little bit of color on kind of the main drivers’ lines of business. And should we be thinking about this as likely back to full margins in 2020 or is that a little bit further out?

Yeah. So again, we're pleased with how the group business rebounded in 2019. For the quarter, it was about - probably about $5 million ahead of expectations and a little bit more than that for the full year. So it's all the business has been repriced at this point that we have talked to about throughout the course of last year that we're going to go through repricing efforts. Most of the lines within the U.S. group business performed pretty well or exceeded expectations. I think there was one line that was a little bit below expectations. And I think we've commented before 30 or 35-ish, or maybe a little bit higher run rate at full profitability is about right for that line depending on how much we retain in renewals and so on. But we would expect based on what we saw in 2019 and as we had talked about previous quarters that 2020 should be back to our expected margins.

Great, thank you.

We'll take our next question from Ryan Krueger from KBW.

Hi, good morning. In terms of the larger transactions in the pipeline that would be more likely to go to Langhorne. Is there a particular regional concentration on those larger potential transactions?

I would say that the EMEA region would be a region that has some attractive opportunities for Langhorne. And we are also seeing a few opportunities that are not necessarily focused on the PRT type risks but are focused on different underlying biometric risks. So, generally I would point to the EMEA region for these larger transactions. And you've likely seen the press release this morning about one of the PRT deals that has been announced not an RGA deal but one of the PRT deals that has been announced in the market.

Thanks. And then, on U.S. mortality. I guess outside of the large claims, you did talk about some headwinds from the slowdown in mortality improvement in the U.S. recently. And does that make - I guess have you read that at all your stance of not going back to the feed in to renegotiate some of the poorly performing experience from the 99 to 04 block I guess as more experience has emerged, that that perhaps is a bit worse than it had been before.

Yeah. As we've discussed in the past, this is long term business. And we have long term relationships. So what we do from a repricing strategy is we look at the balance of relationships with our clients across all of their businesses and across - excuse me, and across all of their countries over a long period of time, which new this short term volatility. And so as we look at this, we wouldn't expect to change or take short term or take actions because of these short term results.

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We'll move on to Alex Scott from Goldman Sachs.

Hi, first question I had was just kind of a housekeeping item on the tax rate guide, going up a little bit at the low end of the range. Can you provide any commentary on what's driving that?

Sure. As we've gotten a little bit more familiar and as the regulations from the original tax reform have come out. Again, as we better understand them, and as we look at our mix of business operations around the world. And then under tax reform, there can be some moving parts due to the foreign operations with some of the unique aspects of the tax reform. And again, based on, again everything that we can see and project, we think the 23% to 24% rate is more realistic for RGA and our overall business profile. Hopefully, we'll be able to manage below that 23% rate, but we think, again, the 23% to 24% is probably the most appropriate range to guide you to.

Okay. And then maybe a follow-up question on the Australia business. I mean, is that 8% drag on earnings? Now I was just hoping maybe you could provide any kind of details around the level of disability claim reserves that we should be considering in terms of the reserves that are experiencing some unfavorable development? The amount of open treaties that you have out there in disability and how much and premiums are coming from that? Anything that would be useful for us to sort of box in. What the negative valuation is that we should be associating with this issue? Because, I think just looking at earnings, I don't think it's 8%, is a good way to think about it necessarily, but at the same time, I don't really have any other details around that business because of the disclosure in a box in it.

Yes. So the individual DI business in Australia is the worst performing business. And one point is that we're not quoting on new business and that product line. We are just working through the treaties that we have. So most of that sort of a close off as far as any new business goes. As far as the actual reserve numbers, that's not something that we have necessarily shared maybe we'll take that away to give some thought to. But overall, and I think you are pressing a little bit, if I had to sit here and give you what we think the impact on earnings could be in 2020 I would say it's called a loss of $40ish million pre-tax, again, coming in better than what we experienced in 2019 of a $64 million loss. And then hopefully keep literally in a way and reducing that as we know go forward in time.

Got it. Okay. And maybe one more on U.S. mortality. Just thinking through what you said about the CDC data, mortality does appear to be getting a little better for the overall population in '19. And your takeaway on the results is that, this sort of random volatility to some degree. But I guess, what was the underlying driver then taking the 350 run rate down to 325? Because it just - there is some element that is sort of normal or how should I interpret that?

And just as a quick reminder that's for the entire U.S. traditional segment. So it's the U.S. mortality markets, individual health, the group business and then a relatively small operation in Latin America. But that’s one of the primary drivers of reducing from what we had been at the 350 run rate down to the 325 level. And again, it's going to be volatile around that number. But it's really a combination of the continued headwind from the lower interest rates, as well as there is an impact from the slowdown the mortality improvements more recently.

Got you. Okay. Thanks very much.

And our next question comes from Thomas Gallagher with Evercore ISI.

Good morning. Anna I just follow-up on Jimmy's question from earlier. You had said there was a real pickup in recoating activity in 4Q, due to PBR and the new mortality tables. So with that pickup in recoating. Did prices go up or down stay flat? Can you get some perspective on what those changes meant for the recoating?

Yes. And just to clarify the activity was throughout 2019. It wasn't necessarily focused exclusively in the fourth quarter. And it was recoating of open treaties. In terms of prices that's a difficult question to answer because there was so much activity. So in some cases, you wouldn't be surprised to see some rate increases and other cases depending on the underwriting, performance and the quality of the business, it could trend down. What I can say universally though, is that we were pricing business with our margins. We were pricing business to achieve our overall margins.

Okay. So there wasn't any based on the PBR new mortality tables, there was no meaningful obvious change in either direction, it really would have been dependent on each contract. Is that a fair way to describe it?

They would have been PBR - the impact of PBR and the impact of the new mortality tables would have been elements of part of the elements, but there were other elements that were involved in this exercise as well.

Okay. And then just kind of a broader question on your comments from earlier about the slowdown in the mortality improvement. So if we - if you did end up, I guess, determining that was sort of a permanent trend. Would we be talking about an earnings impact? Would there - would it be a reserve balance sheet impact? Is there any way to kind of dimension based on the trend that, I guess the broader population trends that you've seen for the last few years, if you were to extrapolate that, and I know you're not assuming that now? But just dimension it a bit, if you were to with that, is that worth be determined to the trend are we talking about a big balance sheet adjustment or I don't know if you can give some perspective on that?

I guess it would depend on how long you assume that this trend continues, and how long it would take for the trend to potentially reverse and what your view is on long-term mortality improvements. I'm not trying to not answer your question I just think it's a question that is very complicated to answer. I will say that we have a lot of provisions or a lot of margins in our balance sheet reserves for mortality business. We've demonstrated that every time that we do our asset adequacy testing or cash flow testing. So there's a lot of room in those reserves before something like a long-term trend - or sorry, a short term, slowdown would hit.

Yeah. This is Todd. I would echo that. It's really in the near term we're looking at it as earnings headwind, not any type of for the balance sheet issue.

And I just want to reiterate, we are bullish on long term improvements. And we've stated and I’ll repeat it that, we're bullish because of future medical advancements and new treatments and technologies and things like new cholesterol medications and new stroke treatments and personalized medicine from genomics, anti-aging. So our view hasn't changed in terms of the long-term mortality improvements.

Got you. And then just one final one, if I could. Just Anna I presume your comments around the mortality improvement was in part may be driven by the Society of Actuaries study? Any way it was one I read and it talked about how the, I guess from 2009 to 2016 or 2017, the patient mortality improvement was running about a full percentage point less than it was in the decade before. Is that kind of the study that you were addressing or is it something else that you were looking at?

My comment was with respect to what we call the rapid release CDC data through the second quarter of 2019.

Got you. Okay, thank you.

Our next question comes from Evan Heflin [ph] with Barclays. [Operator Instructions] And hearing no response, we'll move on to Peter Deutsch with Fidelity Investments.

Hey, guys, good morning. Just wanted to ask you question about how you think about your pandemic P&L. Like, I know kind of a standard stress test is to assume one and a half additional deaths per thousand lives. So just trying to think what that means for your block of business if you had? I know that would be a pretty extreme example. But, just based on what you said half of your [indiscernible] in the U.S. I thought just off the top my head, we had a growth of 1.5 trillion of mortality exposure. So, if you had that level of excess deaths would we be looking at like a $4.5 billion P&L? Or how should we think about that?

So we think of our stress scenarios as one in 200 year events. And they're not too far from the 1.5 extra deaths that you've just mentioned. You're correct, of our total global mortality amounts, half are in the U.S. And so we have 3.3 trillion globally, let's call it 1.2 trillion in the U.S. And so cross multiplication absolutely would - your rough math is correct is what I'm trying to get at. Before - those are pretax and before any benefit from diversification.

Okay, and then just I mean, when you think about your stress test, in terms of liquidity, you would address that how?

Yes, part of our, enterprise risk management framework we would look at and do look at pandemic, different pandemic type scenarios and make sure that we're comfortable that we would have the amount of liquidity on hand or access to liquidity to support that type of scenario over time.

Yeah.

Okay. And that does conclude today's Q&A session. I would like to turn the conference back over to our speakers for any concluding remarks.

Well thank you. Thank you, everyone for joining our call today and your continued support for RGA. Thank you very much.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. We appreciate your participation today.