Good morning, everyone. I think most of you probably know who I am, but quick introduction anyways. Paul Holden. I cover the large cap financials for CIBC. That includes the life insurers and Great-West Lifeco. Really excited to have this session this morning with David Harney. David, thank you for spending the time with us. David was appointed President and CEO of Great-West roughly a month ago.
Early July, Kind of the day.
First of July. It's just over a month ago, so new into the role, but certainly not new to Great-West , right? David joined Great-West when it was acquired by Irish Life in 2013. He was appointed CEO of Irish Life in 2016 and then promoted to President and CEO of the European segment in 2020. David has also held additional oversight for capital and risk solutions business and holds a master's degree in financial mathematics and is an actuary. I think it's always great to have an actuary at the top of the leadership chain in an insurance business. I think that's good to know. I think I'm just going to jump straight into some questions. For those in the audience, please maybe give me the opportunity to ask three or four, but we do highly encourage audience participation.
If you have a question, you have to put up your hand or if you want, email me the question and hopefully I see it, and then we'll relay you in. We don't need to wait until the end of the call to take your question. If there's a particular topic or answer from David that really stokes your interest, please do put up your hand and then we can unmute you or again, email it or put it in the chat. Okay. David, maybe let's start with some sort of high-level questions, which again, I think are appropriate just given, you know, Great-West Lifeco had its Investor Day not that long ago, early April. You're new to the CEO chair, July 1st, and I imagine you did play a major role in creating the plan at the Investor Day and that nothing really changes with you as CEO.
I imagine it was all laid out. Maybe you can kind of run through what are your top priorities, particularly in year one as CEO?
Yeah, so thanks very much, Paul, and thanks for the invite this morning. It's great just to get the opportunity to tell some of the Great-West story. You're right. I became part of the Great-West Group in 2013. That was when Great-West bought Irish Life. I suppose that was, you know, the thing I learned was just how good an acquirer they are of companies like Irish Life, which really flourished under their ownership and had been grown very strongly. It was a fantastic sort of experience for Irish Life to get to that time. I got to lead Irish Life from 2015 to 2020 and then have been on the Lifeco executive team when I got to run the European business. Responsibilities were as a trade hub and risk solutions and more recently investments before stepping into the current role.
Yeah, a part of the executive team, I'd say it's maybe not the major part, but was a part in shaping the development of the company over the last few years. I got to see Paul did a fantastic job leading the business over the last 12 years and building the portfolio. I feel really lucky coming in as CEO. I can really see it as a portfolio that's in great shape. Somebody said to me recently, if you're in the right markets, the right geographies, and you have the right teams in place, only good things can happen. That's really where we are as a company. Certainly with me coming in as CEO, there's going to be no major change in direction. It's a strategic playbook that plays very well for us and we're going to continue that. Our core markets are retirement and insurance.
Obviously, our geographies are Canada, the U.S., Europe, and our global reinsurance business. We've great brands and positions in each of the markets. I think it's probably rare for a company to have a portfolio that is so customized. I think Paul and Paul before me did a great job shaping the portfolio. There's no area that we're in at the moment that we don't want to be in. I think it's rare for a company to be in that position. I think that's what gives us a lot of confidence then about the financial objectives that we shared at Investor Day. Our earnings per share growth is 10%. We expect to grow our ROE to more than 19%. We're a mature company. That's, you know, the earnings flow more or less through to cash, so 80% , cash generation. That's a very strong position to be in.
The dividend payout ratio of 45%- 55%. We have a lot of confidence around those financial objectives. For me then, I think, you know, M&A has been part for success to date. I think it can be in the future as well. The organic capability of the business will deliver those targets that we set out. The only thing I'm maybe adding now as I come into the job is, you know, we explained yesterday maybe what our execution priorities are to just help that organic growth. Again, you know, we're very strong on customer abilities. Continue sharpening our focus on customer and their needs. I think there's going to be a lot of AI and digital innovation in the industry over the next few years. We need to invest in platforms to make sure that we're well positioned for that.
Just continuing to make sure that we have the brands and the talents in each of the markets to support our growth.
I mean, look, given that answer, it sounds like clearly you're coming into a position or the company is in a position of strength. I want to kind of break down the plan into maybe two sort of buckets, right?
Yeah.
Parts of the plan where you think it's, you know, there's high probability of success, as we call it in North America, the so-called slam dunks.
Yeah.
Are there parts of the plan where a little bit more heavy lifting is required, like on digital? Is there more, a lot more work required in the next few years?
Yeah, we're in a strong position. I'd say there's never a slam dunk, you know, like even when you have a fantastic position, markets are competitive. That's the way it should be. That's what makes sure that we all do a good job for our customers. I don't think there's heavy lifting either, you know, like the portfolio is in good shape. Maybe a sense of our ambition, like we're in different growth positions, maybe in each of our markets. Our biggest ambition is in the U.S. We expect double-digit growth in the U.S., and then maybe single-digit plus in Europe in capital and risk solutions and single-digit growth in Canada. That's just, I suppose, that's the growth position that we're in in each of the markets. I don't think any of them is a slam dunk. I don't think any of them is tougher than the others.
They're sensible targets, I'd say, with a similar degree of difficulty in all of the segments. What we need to do to support the growth is those execution priorities that I talked about.
Yeah. Okay. I want to ask you about the ROE objective, right? You already pulled that out in your first answer, 19%+ .
Yeah.
That's above where G WO obviously currently is and has been historically. I think that's higher than most insurance companies would be targeting globally. If I have to identify maybe the top three or four factors that enabled Great-West to drive that ROE, what would those factors be?
Yeah, I think, yeah, like it is a very impressive number. To grow ROE for over 19%, and we're confident about doing that, that is an impressive achievement. Like I mentioned, maybe just to step back a bit, our three markets are retirement, wealth, and insurance. Retirement and wealth, we describe as capital-light. By that, it means they don't, you know, once you establish your position, you don't require new capital to support the growth of those businesses. Our short-term insurance business is maybe not as capital-light as wealth and retirement, but it's largely capital-light as well. I think one of the great things we've done as a business over the last number of years is position the portfolio more to capital-light. For 2024, 62% of our earnings came from capital-light businesses.
For our planning period over the next five years, which we explained at Investor Day, we expect our capital-light businesses to grow to 72% of earnings. Again, if you go to 2024, or maybe for the last 12 months, sorry, our base ROE for the last 12 months is 17.4%. We're already within touching distance of that 19% target. 80% of that ROE expansion would just come from the growth of those capital-light businesses. There'd be an additional amount, like, you know, when you have capital-light businesses, then you're generating a lot of cash, absent M&A activity that will allow us to do share buybacks, which we're doing at the moment. Again, as you grow those businesses, your leverage, your expense positions will improve, and that will add a bit of business. 80% of that ROE expansion is coming from the growth of the capital-light businesses.
I think maybe the big question here is why are we so confident about growing our capital-light businesses? Because it's easy for me to say we're going to grow them from 60% of earnings to over 70% of earnings. Why are we so confident about that? It's probably more the question. I think it goes to the positions we have in each of the markets. You know, with the number two player in 401(k) in the U.S., that's a great position. Canada Life is one of the best known financial brands in Canada. Irish Life is a dominant brand in the U.K., and the device is very respected in the U.K. and Germany. We've seen that's liked to win in each of their markets. When you go to retirement and wealth, there are just broader trends that are supporting the growth of those businesses.
We're not the only ones that are going to see growth of those businesses. Other people can see it as well.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, you already touched a little bit on what my next question is, which is, you know, the challenge with the high ROE, the challenge with the high ROE is the deployment of all that excess capital, right? Particularly as you pointed out, a lot of your growth is going to come in capital-light businesses. They don't require the organic capital to grow.
Yeah.
My numbers would suggest you're going to be generating over $1.2 billion of deployable capital per year. That's above and beyond the dividend, right?
Yeah.
The way I view it, there's a bit of a balancing act between ROE expansion and the capital deployment because it's hard for acquisitions, you know, year one or two to be ROE accretive versus the 19% objective. I'm really curious how you're thinking about both sort of different capital deployment options, right? Share buybacks, which you're currently doing, acquisitions, which you said Great-West has a very rich and successful history in acquisitions and part of the plan going forward. Bigger picture, how are you thinking about the balancing act on capital deployment?
Yeah, I think you're right, Paul. It is balancing acts. Opportunity is we can see an acquisition opportunity that's going to have an immediate ROE of 19% will be all over it. I think it tends not, you tend not to get those. I suppose maybe just maybe just sound back a little bit again. The point I made at the start, the delivery of our medium-term financial ambitions are not dependent on M&A. You're right. We have been very successful on recent M&A, and I think it will continue to be a part of our story where we see device opportunities. We're not realistically going to get an M&A opportunity that immediately has an ROE of 19%. That's not the targets we would set for M&A. We have a hurdle rate of 15%.
If we can get opportunities that deliver 15% or more and add to scale of capabilities in our segments, then we've become interested. That's okay. That will pull back ROE a little bit. We will totally live with that pullback. I think our ambition post that pullback would still be on a journey back to that 19%+ . If we execute well, then the greatest outcome of that will be that that will be 19% again with all the bigger equity base. The obvious areas for us on acquisition are probably to look to our recent history. We've been very successful in the U.S. on our workplace acquisitions. We've also been successful on some public goods attentions in the US, the recent acquisition of Options Facts, going back a little bit to add the Personal Capital acquisition.
We've also done smaller wealth acquisitions in Canada growing only up a number of players. We've done similar in Europe. I think that the areas for us, I think opportunities will arise again where we can meet our hurdle rates, and we will be disciplined off. They don't, we won't play, we don't need to do it. I think opportunities will arise. The guide to where people can expect us to play is to look at our recent, our recent activity.
Yeah. I mean, I guess one of the obvious ones to me would be the workplace solutions, right? Again, given recent history, given the priority of growing that business, and the scale advantage that Empower has.
Yeah, like it's a very competitive market. I think players do a really good job for participants to do it very efficiently, but you need scale to be able to play in it. We have 19 million participants now that are smaller than the biggest player, but it's a relative market share of almost maybe 1.8, nearly 2x to the third players. We're in a great position there. That's from the successful acquisition and integration of, going back to JP Morgan and then MassMutual and Prudential Financial. We have a very good playbook there. For all of those, we exceeded our synergy targets, we exceeded our retention targets, and the growth of the U.S. business is coming from both the successful integration of both businesses, but also our passion for the market as well.
If you were to pick out one area where we could add value, it doesn't have to be workplace again. I think there are other areas, but yet, that's one we're certainly interested in.
Given, I mean, past acquisitions have added a lot of earnings at the future and opened up the opportunity for large cost synergies. Now, I guess my question is, given you've scaled the business even more, you have a lot of integration expertise, could that sort of financial opportunity in terms of driving synergies and EPS creation be even more powerful going forward?
It depends a little bit on the player. I'd say if we could get 10% again, that would be good. It's more, you know, the windy expense synergies, you obviously need to retain the clients. A lot of the time, the expense synergies are needed just for the IRR purpose. You're going to buy it as multiple, and then to generate your 15%+ , you need those expense synergies. It just gives you more scale going forward. I think what we find when we get business in then as well, we do a very good job for customers within those businesses. We tend to expand the product best. We're more active, I think, than other players. I'm guessing people play it more for retirement. It gives us a bigger bank of customers to serve. That's going to be a bigger bank of customers that are going to transition into retirement.
It's more than just an expense play. It's a belief that we're the best provider for those customers and to do the best job for those customers.
On that point, with the Q2, you announced some product initiatives, right? Zero cost S&P 500 index.
Yeah.
Also to band-aid relationships with investment managers and private asset classes. That's part of the play in terms of encouraging more savings. Is that how it benefits Empower?
It benefits in a lot of ways. We're very excited about the product expansion, and we're very passionate about bringing private assets to the 401(k) market. We're really proud to be leading that at the moment. The zero sort of fee-based funds are just about improving our competitive position and giving our savers more choice. We're very excited about adding the health savings accounts as well. That's supposed to be supported by some new regulations in the market as well. We think that's a fantastic path for people. Option Facts I mentioned as well. It's important that we do a really good job for our customers. In the long term, if we're doing a good job for our customers, we retain those customers for longer, particularly as they transition into retirement.
It's doing a good job for them now, but we would get rewarded for that over only the long term.
Sure. I want to back up a bit and talk sort of again at the sort of the all-Lifeco level, if you will, or the all-company level. Really curious on the expense initiatives sort of driving operating leverage to be a big part of that ROE story in coming years. Yeah, like what you've, what you said is Great-West is targeting an efficiency ratio of sub 50% by 2029.
Yeah.
It was around 57% last year, and I think close to that 57% number in the latest quarter. It's like, today, when I look at it, it's a fairly ambitious target. It's good to have that target. It's a fairly ambitious target, though. I'm just wondering, why does the opportunity exist, and what are the key actions required to achieve the efficiency objective?
Yeah, it's the hard one so that we can continue to deliver value for our customers. There's a lot of parallels, I think, just with the ROE target. This is not, you know, obviously, you need to manage their costs to deliver on it. People shouldn't think of it as a cost-cutting initiative. We're in a very strong position in capital-light businesses, and even, you know, our capital-supported businesses as well in each of our markets. We expect those to grow. A lot of this efficiency ratio will just come from revenue growing faster than cost. We are taking a number of actions to support it on our cost as well. We've announced transformation charges of CAD 250 million-CAD 300 million this year, which will happen over the next 36 months, largely in Canada and Europe.
Some of that investment is to modernize our technology infrastructure, rationalize our application suite, and take out some of the costs as well where we have surplus. Given the scale of the company, that's a relatively modest investment to help us improve, but it will help us manage costs and limit cost growth. That's then combined with just the natural growth in the business, you know, improves the efficiency ratio. As I said, there's a lot of parallels with the ROE target. This is coming just from strong scale positions that we have already.
Got it. Understand. Is that scalability? Is that really unlocked because of these investments in technology? Is that what enables the scalability and efficiency gains?
I think it is. Even going to the U.S. business, we took a lot of care on integration. Sometimes people shortcut on this, but we took a lot of care on those integrations to get all those businesses on a single platform. There's a lot of pain doing that. Even to transition those teams onto a single platform and have the retention rates that we have, the U.S. team deserves a huge amount of credit for that. When you have a single operating platform like that, it gives you a lot of opportunity for process improvement and continued improvement in any process. That's about once you can sort of get it in front of you. There's just a natural human innovation area that can improve any process by 10% per year. If you get yourself set up for that, that's a pain that can happen within businesses.
I think that's largely where we are at the moment. We need some of those transformation charges that I talked about just to get all of our businesses into that position. I think we're probably, you know, AI is going to make this easier for companies to do as well. That's a common thing. These investments just look to leverage off that opportunity as well.
Okay. Pretty clear these technology investments are going to play a role in efficiency gains in the coming years. Curious to what extent are you also investing in technology or maybe using the same technology to enhance customer engagement? More on the revenue side of the equation.
Yeah, no, the goal hand in hand really. I think the thing we really like about our markets is our customers do want to save more for retirement and they do want more protection in their lives. Sometimes the bind is a little bit daunting as an industry, as dealers are, these are big decisions for people to make so they can naturally procrastinate on it. Obviously, we rely a lot on our own advisors and working with advisors to help people make those jumps that they need to make. The same kind of technology enables intuitive experiences that just make it much easier for customers to act as well. Modernizing our platform and what's going to come with AI, I think it's just going to help us with all of that.
I think people would be surprised maybe just talking about AI, just how much is in the industry already. It's slightly in the background, but just to give people a sense of what's coming, if we look at call centers, AI isn't quite at a conversational level yet. It's still people having the calls with customers. If you think about a call, there's prep for the call, gathering information. Most of that now is AI prepped. Call centers are monitored for training and coaching purposes. They're being monitored by AI now. There's full-time live coaching or effectively a permanent coach on all people, and then on wind-up on calls and actions as well. It's AI that's doing that. That capability is only going to grow. You can see that capability growing in to help advisors.
Similarly, on the automation side, people will have heard of agentic AI, and it's effectively AI, but considered over a number of processes being together and gives you full end-to-end automation. We have already agentic AI covering full automation on a number of processes, and that's going to be built out more. I think all of that is just going to make it easier for customers to interact with it. We have this nice thought that AI can make Great-West Lifeco a more human financial services company, and we're pretty excited about that.
Good, good. One topic I feel like we don't talk enough about for Great-West Lifeco, but for life insurers broadly, is risk management. Paul, hopefully this speaks to you given your actuarial background. We focus a lot on ROE, a lot on EPS growth. I think risk management and avoiding the negative impacts to earnings and balance sheet over time has been just as important for shareholder performance in the LifeCo space over time as those other factors.
Yeah, it's very important then. Yeah, like insurance companies are built to last, and particularly life insurance companies have to last. Some of our contracts are decades and many decades. We are built to last. You always have to be optimistic about growth and lean to the positive, but you need to be cautious and conscious of things that can go wrong. When I think about Great-West as a brand, obviously our consumer brands are Empower, Canada Life, and Irish Life, but Great-West is a brand that sits behind that. I think the brand Great-West Lifeco has with investors and maybe some of our institutional insurance or large corporate clients is, we are seen as a safe harbor and somebody that is good at risk management. We were one of, I think, only two large American financial services companies that wasn't downgraded during the global financial crisis.
That gave Great-West Lifeco the opportunity to go and buy Irish Life at that time, which obviously had a personal impact on me. I think people see evidence of it as well. Generally, our general account assets, we'd have more, we'd have more investment-grade assets maybe than other insurers. The ratings of those assets would be higher than other insurers. People see us as very disciplined when it comes to underwriting and pricing of insurance as well. If there's markets we don't like in a particular find, we're quite happy to stand back from them. I think generally just at the moment, as I said, we like our services. We've favored stable markets that we understand. I think that's a good position for us to be in at the moment. We've announced diversification by currency as well. That's a good position for us to be in at the moment.
I think we have a safe risk posture and good position in the capital-light growth business as well. That's a good combination, I think.
Okay, good. I don't see any hands raised. I just want to remind those that are on the line, please do put up your hand or, again, send me an email, Paul.holden@cibc.com. If you want to ask David a question, please, please fire away. We've already talked about Empower quite a bit. It's obviously an important part of the story. I want to drill a little bit more here.
Yeah.
On Empower, a very high-level question, right? The target, I think, is to make Empower 35%- 40% of total earnings for the company by 2029.
Yeah.
Why, from a shareholder's perspective, is an increasing proportion of earnings from Empower a good thing? Why is this the right thing to do for shareholders?
Yeah, so it is a good thing for shareholders. Empower is already at 30%, and I'm not sure of the number going back a few years, but it's already journeyed, I'd say, from 20%- 30%. Largely, that continued journey to 35%+ is just a continuation of the investments we've made into businesses for the last few years. If you like the journey from 20%- 30%, that's come from the successful acquisition and integration of those businesses we talked about earlier. That's positioned the business for double-digit growth over the next number of years, which continues to grow to that 30%. In a way, that is obviously good news for shareholders. Those shareholders through the company effectively made those acquisitions, and the growth in Empower now is the successful reward for that. That growth is not dependent on further acquisitions in the U.S.
It's not coming at the cost of growth in other businesses or anything like that. This growth is a successful reward for what we've done already, and that's clearly very good news for our shareholders.
I get a lot of questions on the net participant outflows from the workplace solutions business.
Yeah.
You've heard those questions on the conference calls as well. You've actually given guidance, right? I think your guidance is 50 basis points, 100 basis points roughly of annual net participant outflows.
Yeah.
Over time, there are some people that worry given a recent experience it might be higher than that. Yet, you're forecasting, I think, annualized double-digit growth at the business. Can you kind of help us bridge the gap between that sort of persistent net plan withdrawals from existing participants and the expectation for a low double-digit earnings growth?
Yeah, I think it's this fascinating area because, you know, like in the day-to-day market generally, it sort of grows, then it stabilizes, then it declines, and then decline generally accelerates. When anybody sees a market in decline, alarm bells start ringing. Like, what's the future of this market? Now I think, and the market we're talking about here is the 401(k) market in the U.S. It's not the post-retirement wealth market. It's the 401(k) market in the U.S. There's a couple of really interesting dynamics about this market. The first is it's just the whole baby boomer generation and what happens there. The interesting thing about baby boomers is more of them save for retirement and they save more than subsequent generations. Everyone will hear now, baby boomers are set fair for a good retirement that saves very well.
More of them save as well as they've done well in real estate as well. What's happening in the market at the moment is the baby boomers are essentially transitioning out of 401(k) into post-retirement. That's what's causing that 2% participant outflow rate. That's been underway for maybe the last five years or so. It's going to continue on for the next five to seven years. The thing then that's different about this market is it's not a decline rate that's going to increase. It's actually a temporary decline rate that's going to go back to zero. It's going to go back to growth because the workplace is not going to reduce in the U.S. The population is going to continue to grow and the workplace is going to grow.
I think increasingly what we're seeing is, why was it that we're accepting that subsequent generations should save less for retirement than the baby boomers did? Why should less of them save? There's strong bipartisan support now in the U.S. to get more people to save for retirement and even the people that are already saving for retirement to save more. I think we have, there's an amazing statistic. We have 700,000 401(k) plans in the U.S. at the moment. There's bipartisan ambition to get that, to add a further 350,000 to that. We have this baby boomer dynamic at the moment, but it's temporary. This is going to reverse back to be a growth market in time. I think one of the reasons Empower has been so successful, aside from the integrations, is just its performance in the market.
It just has that passion that more people should be saving for retirement and people that are already saving for retirement should be saving more. I think that's what that means. We win more schemes in the markets than other players, so we're in a great position. The sort of average player at the moment is in a 2% asset outflow because of that baby boomer dynamic that I talked about. Our net plan wins mean we reduce that to less than 1%, sometimes to 0.5%, sometimes to close to zero. We know that 2% drives what others have because of our performance in the markets. The other dynamic that's important is, again, as I said, this is 401(k) only. These people are not moving to Mars or anything like that. They're just transitioning into wealth post-retirement products.
It's the workplace, our providers that are best positioned to continue to do a job for those people. That's really where our double-digit aspiration comes from. Probably if you were to take a standard 401(k) provider with that 2% drive, they can expect maybe 3% growth if they're doing a good job. We get that close to 6% because we're just doing better than others with product expansion and all of that. To jump from 6%- 10% or 10%+ comes from the performance then of the wealth business and just how fast that should grow.
Let's talk about that dynamic, right? The Empower wealth business.
Yeah.
That rollover capture, which looks like, I mean, I think the official target is a 30% improvement in the capture rate. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but I think it's 30%. I know you saw good results and good flows in Q2, and that follows a good Q1, by the way, also. It seems to be working. The question I get, I guess, from investors is, what is Empower Wealth doing that's different than maybe the traditional advisors? How are you improving that capture rate?
Yeah, it's really a key area for us. Just to get a close sense of how important this is, our desire to the opportunity. Like, you know, if you go to the market, our assets under administration are $1.6, $1.7 trillion. Our current assets in wealth are $90 billion. I don't know how long it's going to take. Maybe it's a decade, maybe it's longer, maybe it's shorter. Wealth will be a trillion-dollar company for us as well. That's how big the opportunity is here. We're already, and we're just about to start this, but we're already the number one sort of destination for our 401(k) savers. Now, it's quite fragmented and it spreads. We have seen a 30% improvement in that rollover rate in the last few years, and we're targeting that improvement in the rollover rate again in the next planning period.
There is a very successful playbook here. One large provider, competitor, who I don't need to call out, see if you can guess who they are, are very good at this. The playbook is pretty simple. You do a really good job for your participants while they're saving for retirement. If you can engage with them, if your brand can be well known, and if you can do more for them than just the 401(k) product, if you can get other products across them, they're the provider then that's your trust when it goes to retirement. We have a lot to do on that. Our, say, brand is very important in this because it gives people the confidence. Empower is a young challenger brand. Our unaided brand recognition at the moment is about 50%.
We need to invest to get that up to 70%+, that's why the extension that I talked about earlier on is a core part of this strategy as well. You can't be just a 401(k) provider. You need to put more solutions in front of people. That's part of the strategy as well. I think we have a passion to engage with customers. We try and get our own advisors and work with advisors to talk to people as they say through retirement. Obviously, you need a very good seamless experience at the point of retirement. The battle is sort of lost or won before retirement. The playbook here is doing a good job for our participants while you have them as they save for retirement. That's something we're improving at all of the time. That's why our rollover rates are improving.
Let's talk about some of the other business segments because they're also important. When I look at the European business segment of business, you know quite well, obviously. The underlying growth drivers look strong. Whether I look at CSM growth, the group benefits in-force premiums, wealth and retirement assets, all growing, all growing double digits.
Yeah.
When I look at that, it looks to me like Europe should be on track to beat that mid-single-digit growth objective you put out at Investor Day. What's driving those strong growth rates over the last year? You know, why not something a little bit better than mid-single digits over time from Europe?
Yeah, the performance this year has been stronger. We set, I think, pretty tough targets for all of the segments or ambitious targets. The performance this year in Europe has been better. Essentially, Europe breaks, like we're in Ireland, the U.K., and Germany. Our two big markets in Europe are Ireland and the U.K. We have different positions in both, but very good positions in both. Ireland is like our Canadian business. It's broad-based, but it's a bigger, more dominant brand. The basic thing is, it's a good market position in Ireland. It's a very dynamic, fast-growing economy. Obviously, there's a lot of trade uncertainty between Europe and the U.S. and Ireland as part of that. That actually hasn't had any impact on economic growth this year. It might moderate a little bit next year. Growth the last few years has been very strong.
The other dynamic we've experienced in Ireland is it's a sort of young country from a savings, wealth, retirement point of view. It's an amazing success story, but it's a country that's transformed from second poorest in Europe 40 years ago to the second richest. There's very young wealth in Ireland. It's where they are like us. It's naturally a high growth market. Maybe as I think about it, we should be setting a higher than mid-single digit plus target there. The U.K business has performed very strong as well. It's more targeted in the U.K. We've got a fantastic insurance franchise. Our big risk workplace protection business does very well. We bounce around number one, number two player. Annuities we do very well in the market. We have aspirations on both annuities.
That's been a little bit quieter this year than expected, but as you pointed out, other areas in Europe are more compensated for that. Another area where we've seen very strong wealth flows in Europe this year is what we call our offshore wealth business. That's performed very strongly at the moment. Maybe it's probably just the demographics in Europe play well as well. Germany is older. That business does well for two. Germans like saving. We're a good, well-respected brand there. Our products are just well positioned in the U.K.
Okay. In the last, maybe I'll call it five years, maybe even shorter term, seen a lot of moving pieces in Europe, right? A number of acquisitions, a number of dispositions. None of them, you know, massive in terms of size, but there's been quite a number of them. What's kind of been, first off, what has been the high-level objective, the purpose of these sort of, I'll call it trading assets, right? Is the process mostly complete or is there more to come?
No, I'd say it's largely complete. There may be opportunities that come up, but I'd say the process is complete. It's just, I think it's part of the overall thing of what we've been doing on sharpening our portfolio overall. It hasn't been, it's just the execution of that within Europe. If we don't have leadership positions or a right to win, we get out. There were a couple of markets that we were supposed to be in in the U.K. I think that the team there has done a great job just repositioning to be in markets where we're either leading or people see we've been absolutely right to play and expect us to do very well. Wealth add-ons in Ireland, that was just an obvious go-to area for us, just given how Ireland is performing.
We had a nice acquisition in Germany as well, which we think will grow over time. We like to shape up the portfolio in Europe. It's probably not that easy to get into other geographies. I see us continuing to be the Ireland-U.K. business, with a German add-on that has growth potential going forward.
Okay. I want to ask you a very specific question on a very specific product line. Again, question I get from time to time.
Yeah.
On the U.K. bulk annuities, why is this a good business? Why do you continue to participate in this business?
It's a long-term insurance business. It's one that we're going to underwrite. We understand the risks and the very little illiquidity from the customer side to buy the product, to receive the income. We understand the longevity, you put the assets behind it. It's a natural type of product for us to write. I think the reasons we like the U.K. market, it's a tightly regulated market. I think the PRA there takes quite a conservative posture versus other markets on the players. I think that's just a strategic decision for particular markets or economies to take. They like that product to be quite safe. They're all safe, but I think that the PRA takes a slightly even safer view on it. That restricts the market a little bit just on players and what you can do with the assets. I think we just naturally fit into that profile.
That's a good space for us. It's probably just to say as well, I think the other reason we do well generally in insurance-related businesses is they're only part of our portfolio. It's a good fit for us under a term for a company playing us. That's what we see in the U.K. now. It's been a little bit more competitive than that this year. There's been a few players coming in. Longer term, we still expect that to be the attractive market for us.
Okay. You're happy with the ROEs, the returns of that business?
Oh, no, absolutely. If we're lost, we don't lose.
Good. I really like the capital and risk solutions business. When financial results come out, I think where people struggle a bit with that business is it's a little bit of an enigma, right? It's hard for people to wrap their head around exactly what's underwritten in capital and risk solutions. I think you pulled back the veil a bit on Investor Day and certainly some helpful new disclosure there. What are the unique capabilities that enable Great-West to generate such high returns and good quality growth over time in capital and risk solutions?
Yeah, it's a business we really like as well. We're very proud of it. You're right, we did unlift the veil a little bit at Investor Day. I think we continue to do that and explain more about the business and look to educate people on the business. It's an important part of our overall portfolio. This is really good diversification of earnings and risk. The reinsurance market is a very large market. The reason the reinsurance industry exists is to support the broader insurance industry. That's the P&C, non-life insurance industry as well as the life insurance industry. Generally, reinsurance plays an important role in the industry more broadly. It just plays a very important role in spreading out risk for insurance companies. The second role it plays, which is very important also, is just providing capital support to insurance companies.
All insurance companies will have their own economic view of risk and the capital that's required. It's impossible almost. It's too much of an ask for regulatory regimes to almost get the regulatory rules right that are just going to align with economic capital. The reinsurance industry plays a very important role in smoothing that out. Ultimately, that allows better solutions and better price product to customers at the end of the day. We provide support in two ways then, just along those lines. We provide sort of risk support where insurance companies, they're too small on their own to carry the risk and they look to lay it off. That's sort of at the money type risk. You see that on the mortality side and on the longevity side in particular, and even some of the non-life risks.
Then there's our capital solutions space, this part of the business where we're providing more of that regulatory capital release. Again, that's a very sensible and important part of the overall industry. I think the reason we're good at it then is there's something to do with the DNA we've got from the rest of the business. As a business, we're used to working with advisors and customers and corporates. You have to be good at relationships to do that. I think the people in our reinsurance business are very good at relationships. They spend a lot of time with the insurance companies, even spend a lot of time with other reinsurance companies as well. We often spread risk around between each other. They're good at building these relationships. They're good at taking time, understanding needs. We're just naturally good underwriters.
I think we have an advantage then as well in that this is a portion of our overall portfolio. We're disciplined. If there are particular areas that are not attractive at a good point in time, we don't need to play in them. We can be a little bit selective as well. It's a nice position to be in.
Yeah. Going back to the point you made on the primary insurers laying off risk, I think with the complexity of this business, that's where maybe investors get, you know, let's say it this way. It leads to a lot of investor questions, right? Like how do we know Great-West is not taking on bad risk versus good risk? Maybe walk us through a little bit, like the risk management process at CRF and the risk tolerances put in place there.
Yeah, like we've created a diversified portfolio, I'd say, within the reinsurance business. Some of it is that, you know, maybe like half the portfolio is at risk money. That's insurance companies, you know, laying off mortality. Obviously, we've exited out of the new business on that in the U.S., but we have a block built up from the past. Insurance companies, you know, in the past would have laid off a longevity risk within where we've flown through. I think that's a pretty easy business for investors to understand. There's very strong parallel similarity between just writing that business directly yourself. If you're good in the primary insurance market at writing mortality, which we are, and writing longevity, which we are, you can expect us to be good at that on the reinsurance side.
I think probably where we need to do more work and what we started to do on Investor Day is just explaining the capital support that we give to businesses. This is more out of the money risk because what we're trying to do here is really smooth out regulatory regimes that just require the primary insurance company to carry too much risk. We're helping get that back closer to economic risk. In a way, it's probably in some ways similar to lending capital to a company and your debt to production for it. Ultimately, there has to be some risk possibility to it, but it is remote. I think what we have to show to investors then is the way we structure those contracts, we're properly understanding the risks and that they are remote. I think that's just something we have to educate people on over time.
The experience of the business, I think, shows how we go to this.
Yeah, for sure. Okay. We're almost out of time, but we haven't talked about Canada at all. Maybe one question on, yeah, and a sort of broader one. I mean, you've alluded to it already, I think, a little bit, right? Canada is a relatively mature, slower growth market. Maybe you can kind of just review your growth and ROE ambitions here in Canada. I think importantly, though, maybe how you're differentiating from the other life insurers here as well. What are the points of differentiation?
Yeah, I think we've created a position in Canada. We're very proud to be a Canadian company. Great-West is headquartered in Winnipeg. The strength of the Canadian business has effectively transformed us into a global company. We're very proud of those roots. We have four great positions in Canada: our group benefits business, the wealth business that we're building, our retirement business, and our insurance business. Where I see the strengths, we're a leading player on the group benefits side. We continue to invest in that product. It's a very important product for Canadians. It's a product line we expect to do very well. I think on the wealth side, there's a huge opportunity for us. We're the third biggest player ex the banks at the moment, and we see a pathway to be number one there. I think that's an opportunity for a number one position for us.
A brand like Canada Life should be the biggest wealth player after the banks, and that's a very achievable objective for us. The interesting thing for me in Canada is I think the retirement conversation in Canada, and this would be out of the country, is maybe a little bit behind what I see in Europe and the U.S. I think the country could do more to encourage defined contributions to savings. It's like that conversation I mentioned in the U.S. I'm surprised we're a number three player in the retirement space. This would be maybe a bigger ask than what I see on the wealth side, but it's, again, I think it's a natural position for a Canada Life to be number one on the retirement side. That journey is a little bit longer to build.
I think we're happy for now with our sort of mid-single digit aspirations and discounting periods for Canada. I think as we move out beyond five years, our growth ambitions for Canada can be hardened.
Okay, good. David, we've spent almost an hour doing Q&A. You've allowed me to pepper you with lots of questions, so thanks for that.
Yeah.
I don't know if you want to kind of provide any quick closing thoughts. I think we've covered a lot of ground already, but maybe some concluding thoughts from you would be great.
No, it's just thanks very much for the opportunity, Paul, to tell the story this morning. I think the core key message is that we've used CFO to join a while ago, a new CEO. With both of us saying it's very much a continuation of the playbook that's been there before, we're excited about the opportunity ahead over the next few years.
Okay. All right, David, again, thank you for your time. Thanks everyone for dialing in and listening. Have a great day.
Thanks a lot, Paul.
Thank you.