Welcome to the Ameriprise Financial 2025 Annual Shareholders Meeting. I will now turn the call over to Chairman and CEO Jim Cracchiolo.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Jim Cracchiolo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and I'd like to welcome you to our 2025 Ameriprise Financial Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Our Corporate Secretary, Wendy J. Mahling, is here with me and will oversee our meeting. Shortly, I'll provide my perspective on Ameriprise, our strong position, and the continued success our firm is achieving in the marketplace. Following our formal remarks, there will be time for shareholder questions.
You may submit a question on the online meeting site for the next 15 minutes. The Inspector of Elections has called a quorum, so we will proceed with the meeting, which I now call to order. To begin, I'll introduce the directors on the Ameriprise board who join me in seeking re-election: Robert F. Sharpe, Jr., our lead independent director; Dianne Neal Blixt; Gwennace A. Bryan; Amy DiGeso; Brian T. Shea; W. Edward Walter; and Christopher J. Williams.
I would note that Armando Pimentel, Jr., is not standing for election this year due to his other business obligations. Armando's job responsibilities changed after he joined our board, and he determined he needed to step back. We very much enjoyed having Armando on our board and appreciated his contributions and wish him the best. Now, I'd like to welcome Gwennace Bryan. Gwennace was appointed to the board in March and stands for election as an independent director of Ameriprise. Gwennace brings extensive financial and governance experience, and we look forward to working with her. On behalf of our shareholders and all stakeholders of Ameriprise, I would like to recognize our directors for their ongoing support and dedication. I would also like to acknowledge our executive leadership team. Their commitment and contributions have helped Ameriprise continue to excel.
Together, we've stayed focused on delivering an excellent client experience, keeping Ameriprise strong, and consistently generating shareholder value. Now, Wendy will outline the formal aspects of our meeting: the statement of order of business, the proposals being submitted to shareholders, and the opening and closing of the polls. Wendy?
Thank you, Jim. Our Board of Directors set March 3rd, 2025, as the record date for determining shareholders entitled to notice of and to vote at this annual meeting. Ms. Heather Obey from The Carideo Group will serve as Inspector of Elections. Ms. Obey has taken the customary oath of office and provided it to us, and she has advised me that we have a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum. The following materials will be filed with the minutes of the meeting: a certified list of the holders of common stock of the company as of the close of business on March 3rd, 2025. This list was prepared by Broadridge Financial Solutions, the company's stock transfer agent and registrar. An affidavit from Broadridge certifying the distribution of the Notice of Internet Availability of proxy materials or paper copies of the proxy materials beginning on March 21st, 2025.
The notice and proxy materials disclose the date, time, and location of this meeting, as well as the items to be voted on. Copies of the proxy materials have also been posted on our proxy voting site. To ensure the orderly conduct of the business of this meeting, the Board of Directors has adopted the order of business and meeting rules of conduct posted on the virtual meeting site. On behalf of the Chairman, I now declare the polls open for voting. If you are an Ameriprise Financial shareholder who wishes to vote at the meeting and have not yet done so, you may now vote on the meeting site. The polls will remain open until immediately after discussion of the proposals.
If you previously returned a proxy card or voted online or by telephone and do not wish to change your vote, you do not need to vote now at this meeting. If you have not yet turned in a proxy card or wish to vote your shares in a different manner than you had indicated, you must vote online now. Each of the following three proposals are described in the company's proxy statement dated March 21, 2025, and is presented at this meeting by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is recommending that shareholders vote for each director nominee listed in the proxy statement, for the second proposal, and for the third proposal. The first proposal is the election of the eight director nominees listed in our proxy statement.
All of our director nominees are standing for election for a one-year term, each to serve until our 2026 annual meeting. The second proposal is a non-binding advisory vote to approve the compensation of the named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. The third and final proposal seeks ratification of the Audit and Risk Committee's appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025. The votes required for each proposal to be approved are described in our 2025 proxy materials. We will close the polls shortly, so if you wish to vote and have not yet done so, please vote online now. Mr. Berry, the PricewaterhouseCoopers lead engagement partner, is participating in today's meeting and available to answer any questions after the Chairman's business presentation.
On behalf of the Chairman, I now declare the polls closed. Mr. Chairman, the Inspector of Elections has provided a preliminary report showing that all of the management proposals presented at today's meeting, including the election of each of the eight director nominees standing for election to serve until the 2026 annual meeting of shareholders, have received the required number of votes to pass. Before I turn the meeting back to our Chairman, I want to remind you that certain statements made in the business presentation or in response to any questions may constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of factors that may cause actual results to differ from our expectations. Please see the risk factors in our SEC filings. You can also find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures mentioned in our presentation to their respective GAAP measures on our website.
With that, I'll turn the meeting back over to our Chairman, who will adjourn the annual meeting before beginning his business presentation and responding to shareholder questions. Jim?
Thank you, Wendy. Let's move to the business. I'm pleased to share that in 2024 we had an excellent year and again generated record financial and strong business results. I'll also provide my perspective on our first quarter 2025 results, which we announced last week. But before I speak about that, as shareholders, I realize that the heightened economic uncertainty and market volatility in recent weeks is likely top of mind. Very clearly, Ameriprise is extremely well positioned to navigate this challenging period. We benefit from the strength of our client relationships, advice-based value proposition, and diversified business. Our advisors and market and economic experts have been front and center with clients. We're providing thoughtful insights and solutions to help clients understand the evolving market dynamics and remain on track to reach their goals.
We're working to reach more people, both clients and advisors, to demonstrate the power of our excellent advice, experience, solutions, and service. As important, our financial foundation and balance sheet strength is even a greater differentiator. With the consistent free cash flow our business generates, we can continue to invest for growth and return capital shareholders at attractive levels. And we do this while maintaining substantial liquidity and excess capital. Importantly, our expense discipline will continue to benefit us as we work to mitigate the impact of sustained market volatility. With that, I'll now turn back to reviewing our strong results in 2024. It was certainly a different operating environment. After a period of higher interest rates, the Fed lowered rates for the first time since 2020 as inflation moderated. While the geopolitical environment resulted in spikes of volatility, overall equity markets saw good growth.
As a firm, we have deep expertise in navigating the inevitable ups and downs of the market and other unknowns. And we have always remained focused on delivering value to our clients and shareholders while maintaining our strong position. In fact, we posted a new record for assets in 2024, ending the year at more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management, administration, and advisement. Regarding our adjusted operating results before unlocking, we delivered double-digit growth in net revenues of 11% to a new high of $17.1 billion. Earnings and EPS were also new records, up 13% and 19% respectively. And importantly, we again delivered a best-in-class return on equity at more than 52%. We also generated an excellent firm-wide margin of more than 26%. With these strong results, we again delivered significant growth in total shareholder return of Ameriprise common stock.
In fact, Ameriprise stock increased 42% in 2024, far exceeding the returns of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Financials Index. And since becoming an independent public company in 2005, Ameriprise once again reinforced our position as the number one returning stock in the S&P 500 Financials Index. And that holds true today. In addition to our strong financial results, we continue to set Ameriprise apart in a dynamic and highly competitive industry. Our complementary mix of businesses drives greater asset persistency and generates multiple revenue streams. And Ameriprise consistently demonstrates a greater stability of earnings than our peers. A key driver of that consistency is how we operate. We have a strong track record for effectively navigating environmental challenges, managing risk, and consistently investing to drive growth. Year- after- year, we focus on executing with excellence to meet client, investor, and other stakeholder expectations.
And we're always ready to make appropriate adjustments based on the environment. In 2024, those adjustments included driving greater operational efficiencies across the firm, directly aligned with one of our core principles to maximize our global resources and redirect resources to growth initiatives. While that work is ongoing, we began to see the benefits in 2024, and those will continue today. Now I'll share some business highlights. Wealth management is our core growth driver. We go to market with a powerful goal-based advice client experience built on trusted relationships and underscored by best-in-class client service and technology. I'm proud that our clients consistently rate their experience with us at 4.9 out of 5, which is excellent.
In fact, Ameriprise recently earned Hearts & Wallets Top Performer recognition in the client categories of "Understands me" and "Shares my values," and "Unbiased puts my interests first." Our advisors and employees are committed to delivering the Ameriprise client experience consistently. We work as a team to help clients feel confident about reaching their financial goals and to help the firm drive strong flows and asset growth. Our more than 10,000 outstanding advisors represent one of the largest branded advisor forces in the country, and we work with 3.5 million clients who trust us to help them reach their most important financial goals. With the strength of the firm and the extensive capabilities we provide, we achieved a new high for total client assets at more than $1 trillion, and client flows increased throughout the year, with rep flows up strongly to $33 billion.
With growth in assets, good flows, and increased client transactional activity, advisor productivity also hit a new high at more than $1 million per advisor. Importantly, we continue to invest in our advice value proposition and practice support. We have one of the best advisor platforms in the business in the way we engage and support advisors with our entirely integrated ecosystem. The tech environment that we've built has helped us achieve excellent availability. Important at any time, but particularly during volatility, our proprietary client advisor systems have performed extremely well with increased traffic, and we continue to innovate and use emerging technology, including AI, to further enhance how we do business. I'd also like to highlight the growth of Ameriprise Bank. In a short period of time, we've grown the bank to more than $24 billion in assets.
The bank is generating attractive earnings as we focus on deepening client relationships and bringing in assets held elsewhere. With the bank and our investment portfolio, we're able to generate sustained interest earnings even if the Fed decides to change rates. Complementing wealth management, retirement and protection solutions, and asset management provide critical solutions and strengthen our client relationships. With retirement and protection solutions, we've built high-quality books of business over many years. These solutions offered through Ameriprise advisors serve our clients' income and protection needs and help us build even deeper, longer-lasting relationships. We have an excellent record of managing risk across market cycles, and the businesses continue to generate significant free cash flow for Ameriprise. Our focus on supporting the Ameriprise client experience guides our investments as well, including advanced analytics and tools and our accelerated underwriting program and product enhancements.
Sales were strong in 2024 across variable annuities and variable universal life. To summarize our PS, we consistently generate one of the highest return on equity in the industry. It provides important stability, which is particularly meaningful during periods of volatility. Turning to asset management, we continue to generate strong investment performance and financial results as we better leverage our global capabilities for greater efficiencies and future growth. At year-end, assets under management and advisement grew to $681 billion. With regard to investment performance, our teams continue to generate strong results for clients. At year-end, 70% of our funds were above median for one- and three-year performance. For five- and ten-year numbers, they were even stronger at 80%. And the breadth of our lineup is evident in 108 funds earning either four or five stars from Morningstar.
In fact, in the latest Barron's Best Fund Family rankings, Columbia Threadneedle was in the top 15 for all three periods, one, five, and 10-year time frames. In terms of flows, while we experienced outflows last year, they were largely in line with other active peers. In global retail, we're focused on driving sales in key equity, fixed income, and multi-asset strategies. And we continue to innovate and expand the number of investment vehicles we offer investors. As a complement to our U.S. mutual fund business, we've expanded our active ETF lineup as well as separately managed accounts. And we now rank seventh in terms of model delivery AUA. In EMEA, we saw improvement in both U.K. and European retail, with Europe moving to inflows. We've fully integrated a large acquisition and are focused on growth.
And in institutional, we had a mixed year but feel good about the opportunities for this global business. Importantly, our asset management financial results continue to reflect our focus on profitable flows and maintaining our expense discipline. The team has made excellent progress over the past two years, significantly transforming and improving our cost base while maintaining our fee rate. We've driven important operational efficiencies that combined have helped us to generate asset management margins that compare very well to peers. I'd like to reiterate what I've said at the opening. We have a rock-solid balance sheet, which has long differentiated Ameriprise. The strength of our financial foundation and the level of capital return continues to stand out in the industry. We also want you to know that our investment portfolio is high quality.
We maintain appropriate debt levels, and our hedging program is highly effective across market cycles and periods of volatility. In terms of capital return, as those who have held us for some time know, we have consistently generated return capital to shareholders at differentiated levels. In fact, in 2024, we returned $2.8 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and the dividend, and last week, we announced a new $4.5 billion share repurchase program. In terms of our dividend, in 2024, we raised it 10%, and last week, we announced that we're raising it another 8%. I should note that this is our 21st increase since our spinoff in 2005. Now let me turn to our first quarter 2025 results, which we announced last week, and the current operating environment. Overall, Ameriprise is having a strong start to the year.
With the elevated and ongoing market volatility, we're actively engaging clients, and we delivered strong financial performance in the first quarter with contributions from across the firm. We generated solid revenue growth and continued double-digit EPS growth and return on equity remained best-in-class at 52%. Assets were up nicely, and we had attractive client flows, with wealth management flows up more than 20% year- over- year. Like others, the market challenges and volatility impact our business, but I reinforce that Ameriprise remains very well- positioned. We can navigate what's ahead because of our diversified business, strong client value proposition, and significant experience managing economic uncertainty and market volatility. Before I turn it back to Wendy, I'd like to mention a significant milestone in 2024 for Ameriprise, one that few companies have reached, our 130th anniversary.
At Ameriprise, our unique longevity is grounded in our caring and dedication to many generations of clients we have proudly served. We value the relationships that we build with clients and the trust they place in us. And we look forward with optimism about our future and the significant opportunity ahead. There's also another important milestone on the horizon that's very important to our firm. In the fall, we will mark the 20th anniversary of becoming an independent public company. For those of you who have owned Ameriprise since our spinoff, we are exceptionally proud about these past two decades of Ameriprise and what we delivered to our shareholders and all the stakeholders of our company. Our talented and engaged global team of more than 20,000 people played a critical role in helping us achieve these significant milestones.
Our people are the foundation of our success, and we consistently earn some of the highest employee engagement rates across financial services and more broadly across industries. The team and I are proud of the accolades we earned in the marketplace. In addition to the awards I mentioned, Ameriprise has been recognized as one of America's Best Companies, 2025, Forbes, one of America's Most Responsible Companies, 2025, Newsweek, and we've earned military-friendly employer status 11 times by Victory Media. Fortune called Ameriprise one of America's Most Innovative Companies for 2025, and Forbes included Ameriprise as one of America's Best Large Employers for 2024. To that end, I believe we have the best team in the business, and I'm deeply proud of our client-focused culture. Ameriprise is one of the strongest and best-positioned companies in the industry today. We stand tall as a leading financial services firm.
Regardless of the environment, Ameriprise has a proven track record that we will continue to work diligently to build upon. And with that, let's turn to your questions. Please note that you can expect a brief pause as we review the questions that may have been submitted.
We received a few questions from shareholders that I will now read directly or provide a summary of. So with that, I'll take the first question from a shareholder. Is there any consideration for a stock split?
Thank you for your question. With the appreciation of the stock over the past several years, I can understand why shareholders are interested in the topic. With regard to that question, we're not currently considering a stock split, but we will certainly keep it in mind in terms of accessibility of the stock to retail shareholders as we move forward.
Our next question is the following. Is democracy good for business?
The short answer is yes, of course it is. The reason why America is great is because of our democracy.
The next question from a shareholder was, the company has in place a director resignation provision that provides the board post-election discretion to determine whether to accept or reject the resignation of an incumbent director who fails to be re-elected. Does this provision undermine the voting rights of shareholders by allowing the board to have the final say on the unelected director status?
If a director does receive a majority of votes for the director's election, the board will determine whether to accept the resignation and will publicly disclose the rationale for its decision within 90 days from the certified election results. The board is in the best position to consider the circumstances and make that decision, and our policy provides transparency to shareholders on the rationale.
The House Committee on Financial Services has been holding hearings on the proxy advisory cartel. A shareholder asked how ISS and Glass Lewis are influencing markets. What is the Ameriprise opinion on the issue? Do you support increased regulatory oversight?
We're aware of the hearings, and we're following them, and I would say that we always support appropriate regulatory oversight.
The next item is a comment that we received from a shareholder that I'll summarize. It encouraged us to keep our fiduciary duty of quality services and returns and commented on the Human Rights Campaign and LGBT.
Overall, we are very proud of the values-based culture at Ameriprise. We're focused on delivering for the clients, advisors, shareholders, our communities, and each other. Importantly, we respect each other and work as a team to meet our goals. We'll continue to leverage the many backgrounds and perspectives of everyone at Ameriprise to innovate, deliver strong business results, and serve our clients well. Our focus has always been on attracting and developing the best talent to enhance our culture and meet our client needs.
The next question is our final question. It is, will you be getting some younger directors?
We have a highly skilled board with a range of qualifications, backgrounds, and perspectives. As we've outlined in our proxy statement, the board engages in a year-round process to identify and evaluate potential new director candidates in conjunction with its review of the mix of skills and backgrounds of our board members.
That was the final question. I'll turn the meeting back to you to close.
Thank you, Wendy. And with that, we've now reached the end of our meeting. On behalf of our board of directors and all of us at Ameriprise, thank you again for listening to our annual meeting and for your support of our firm. Thank you.
This concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.