All right. Well, I think we're just about at time here, so we'll get started. Very happy to be joined up here on stage with Edmund Reese, CFO of Aon. Thanks for joining us, Edmund.
Thank you for having me, Rob. It's always good to participate in this conference.
Yep. And so, Edmund, maybe we just start off with some background. You've got some unique insights coming to Aon with a fresh perspective about one and a half years ago. Can you give us some insight into where Aon's business stands today versus when you joined, and maybe just walk us through the key strategic priorities for the firm?
Yeah. Yep. Remember, you're right. It was just about a year and a half ago. Remember, I was coming into Aon after we just exited a 20-year period of what I'd call financial outperformance. TSR was at 16%. That was above the S&P. That was above the industry. I met with a lot of investors as I was coming in. Therefore, I think investors were wondering if we had reached an inflection point, and they wanted stronger conviction, I'd say, in three key areas. One was, were we going to be able to continue to drive organic revenue growth at industry levels? Two, were we going to be able to continue to expand margins, and I'm sure we'll get into what our history has been there, but were we going to be able to continue to expand margins given our already industry-leading 32% margins?
And three, were we going to see a return on our capital investment, our inorganic investment, that still allowed us to be at industry-leading ROIC? We came out and had an investor day. Six months after I joined, it was the first one that we had in two decades. The objective there was first to talk about how our 3x3 Plan (because you asked about our strategic priorities) was helping to accelerate our Aon United growth strategy, primarily in three areas: bringing together our content and capabilities (this is the strategy part) in Risk Capital, in Human Capital, enhancing our client-centric model, so expanding across geographies, expanding across solutions through Aon Client Leadership and Enterprise Client Group within that, and all of that being powered by ABS. That's the strategy. Those three items over three years: 2024, 2025, and 2026. You're asked today, where are we?
And after sitting here now, I think we're past the strategy point. And the key word, the key discussion that I have with investors is execution. And I think we have been executing. 2024 was 6% organic growth, 10% in earnings growth. We're now nine months through 2025 and very similar results through nine months, 6% and 9% on those two metrics. But very importantly, double-digit free cash flow growth. Again, we're 13% year to date, and we continue to have the active portfolio management. So that means that we are in a position of strength from a capital standpoint. So when I think about that, I think that we are inflecting up in growth, delivering results today, but have a foundation that gives us momentum as we move forward here. So position of strong financial performance, but momentum executing on our strategy today.
That's super helpful. Thanks for all that background. And if we could set the stage for the market environment, I know you guys talk about these four megatrends over the long term. It's trade, technology, weather, and workforce. And you all outline that very well. How does the current environment in 2026 fit into that? And are there any headwinds to capitalizing on those megatrends, or is this full steam ahead?
Yeah. Well, the short answer would be full steam ahead, but a little context on it. Our corporate clients are facing increased complexity, increased volatility from these trends that you just talked about, the four megatrends, but more importantly, the interconnected risk and people challenges that are connected with those trends. There's interconnectivity there. And so they look to Aon with our data analytical capabilities to be able to provide solutions to help them protect and grow their businesses. And if you think about those trends, the extreme weather events continue. As an example, our insurance-linked securities business has nearly doubled this year. That's the business that captures catastrophe bonds, which are up 20%, nearly a $54 billion market right now. We're the leader in catastrophe bonds. We have over 135 catastrophe models in 90 countries. So weather continues to be an issue that impacts our corporate clients here.
The technology boom with the AI boom within that, obviously. I'm sure we will talk about data centers. Everyone's asking about that. Our construction business has grown at a double-digit level over the last three quarters. That captures that data center. But we're seeing now, and I think as we look further out, increases in cybersecurity coverage as you think about resiliency associated with it. The healthcare costs, premiums for employees and employers have gone up over four times over the last five years. Employees are spending nearly $7,000 in premiums. Employers, $20,000 per person. They've gone up, and so our global scale and insights help corporations and clients with benefits, with Health coverage to help them maintain their workforce.
And then I'm sure you—I don't have to say anything about trade and the continued uncertainty in that environment, how that disrupts global supply chains and our supply diagnostics help with them. So look, the short answer is those things continue to drive complexity. We think our analytics and capabilities help clients protect and grow their businesses. This is a $4.6 trillion industry right now. It's a great time to be in it as we use our capabilities to help clients and drive our revenue growth.
Great, and maybe somewhat related, but the market impact, I know since you joined the firm, you've been talking about the zero to two-point net market impact on growth. How should we be thinking about that going forward? Is there any differences between the Risk Capital and the Human Capital businesses when you think about that, and does a changing outlook on that potentially drive any difference in the sort of mid-single-digit or greater organic outlook?
So that's a really relevant question. First, just to define for some of the folks in the audience who may not be as familiar, Risk Capital and Human Capital, just to be clear, those businesses through the first nine months are growing well within that mid-single-digit or greater level of growth that we've been talking about. Risk Capital is 6% through the first nine months. Human Capital is 5%. So we feel very confident in our performance there. Your question is about net market impact. And to define that for the audience here, that is both the impact of pricing and exposures. Pricing and exposures. And you rightfully pointed out that we guided at the beginning of the year to zero to two points of contribution from the net impact of pricing and exposures. In every quarter throughout this year, it's been about a one-point contribution.
It was quite strong in Q3 as well. But your question astutely points out that Risk Capital, I would say, has had less of a contribution from the net market impact. If you think about the impact of 10%-20% declines in price and property, or you think about the treaty business being down 5%-15% because it's Reinsurance and Commercial Risk that make up that business. So the contribution has still been positive, but just under one point from that. Human Capital, and as you think further, because that's what your question is about, think further out. And of course, we'll give specific guidance at a later point. But as you think about Human Capital, the contribution has been greater, nearly two points, as you continue to see medical costs increase. We help clients with that.
As you continue to see us price for the value of our retirement solutions as well. It's Wealth and Health that make up that human capital business. And on the flip side, we have a client-centric model. So the reason why I think we will still be able to perform is because we're helping clients in this environment. In this pricing environment, we think it's an opportunity for our clients to future-proof their risk program. So that means more limit as the values at risk increase. That means more lines of coverage. I just talked about cyber as another line of coverage. And we're also innovating. We came out earlier in this year. My IR team is here.
I don't know if it was Q1 or Q2, and we introduced a Stop Loss Surge Program, really to help with cyber events that might go on over longer time periods and might hit multiple things. That was innovation in our space that clients are taking advantage of in this environment. We recently launched the Data Center Lifecycle Program, and again, I'm sure we'll get into that, but those things are innovation that still allow us to be able to perform despite the net market impact in the pricing environment that we're in, so we certainly feel comfortable in 2025, and we'll give guidance on 2024 on 2026 as we come to our Q4 call, but for me, I always bring it back to this. You and I have talked before. Your question is about net market impact. The drivers of our growth have been new business.
I've talked about a range of 9-11 points. We are at 11 points of contribution from new business over the past two quarters. And retention has continued to hold up. We estimated that, when we talked about it at investor day, a 4%-6% impact from retention. And we've continued to have our Enterprise Client Group and ABS increase service, strengthen the relationships. So those drivers of growth are strong. That's what gives us confidence in the mid-single-digit or greater growth that you're asking about here.
That's super helpful. And if we could think about just geographically, Aon is a global business. You're brokering insurance and advising clients globally. How do you think about the different areas around the globe right now? Are there any areas that you're particularly excited about or have unique opportunities?
Yeah. I suspect you won't be fulfilled by my answer here. I mean, we are operating in 120 different countries. So that means we're bringing our local expertise in those countries and combining it with our global capabilities, and you think about our business, all the geographies are performing well right now. The U.S. is up over 5%. Our international businesses are well. Both EMEA and LATAM are over 7% through the first nine months of the year. So we feel good about the business globally. If I were to highlight some pockets for you, in the U.S., the commercial P&C business, particularly in middle market, and we continue to drive organic and inorganic growth in that space, is a focus of ours. Global Benefits in EMEA, like France and Germany. We see a lot of activity in that space.
Construction all over the globe, but I'll call out the Middle East is a place for us. The Japan market is opening up to moving from in-house to our carriers. We're partnering with firms to help our positioning in LATAM markets as well, so that answer sort of signifies to you that the growth today is broad-based across our countries and solutions, and the opportunity is broad-based across our solutions and countries, both inorganic and organic, so we're excited to be in this large and growing industry. We're expanding geographically, and again, that's what we think helps support our mid-single-digit or greater growth guidance here.
Sticking with the topic of growth, one thing Aon has been doing is investing in talent and key revenue-generating areas. Can you talk about the hiring trends, what type of strategic impact they're having in key focus markets, and how to think about it more quantitatively going forward?
Sure. Yeah. We've been focused, you said an important thing in there, on priority areas. We've been focused on areas that we think there is high client demand, that we think are growing faster than GDP, and places where we think we are well-positioned to win, a right to win, and when we think about our hiring, that's where it's been, so think things like infrastructure projects and construction in the area of hiring. Things like energy. That's renewables. That's oil and gas or fossil fuels, but also nuclear as you think about things like powering data centers, hiring in that space. Also in Health. I just talked a moment ago about the global nature of our business helps multinational companies and global companies in their Health, so our hiring has been focused in those priority areas because we think they outpace GDP growth.
We think they're areas of high demand. Without a doubt, you pick up the headlines on this industry and what's been going on. The competition on hiring has been increasing. I think it's always there, but as of late, it's been increasing. I still think Aon is on its front foot, though. I communicated at investor day increasing our revenue-generating hires by over 4% through the first nine months of this year. We've increased by over 6%. So again, I think we're faring well. It's hard work day to day. I've mentioned 11 points of contribution from new business. I would say these hires focused in these priority areas are contributing to that new business growth.
And to your point or question about quantifying it, we talked about the 2024 cohort, that 4% increase contributing, ramping up over time, but contributing 30-35 basis points to organic growth in 2025. And that was a ramp where the fourth quarter was over 40-45 basis points. We now have the 2025 cohort on, which has a modest contribution to 2025 as well. But the cumulative impact of those hires, plus our continued focus on investing in talent, I think will continue to be a benefit for us as we move forward into 2026. So we're a growth company. That means investing for that growth in talent and capabilities is where we're going to be focused. And that's how I think about quantifying it.
Then I think it's pretty similar, but you talked about construction and energy. I think those are two lines of business that might help you with the data center opportunity. Can we talk about data centers? Can you help contextualize the $10 billion premium number?
Yeah. Our CEO said through the call is what you're referencing.
Yeah.
And the opportunity just for Aon specifically.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to have the context that we've either advised or brokered capital on roughly a third of U.S. data centers thus far. And when you think about data centers in the U.S., estimates vary, but think about 5,500 data centers in the U.S. today. They're just not fit for purpose. When you think about AI, what needs to be in them aren't fit for purpose. And that means that companies are spending $400-$500 billion today on infrastructure and construction of these data centers. And that number is estimated to be $2 trillion five years from now just on the construction part and maybe another $5 trillion when you think about the operations and the technology part. So we have some expertise in this space given how we've been involved thus far. We have the engineering expertise.
So that means we can help with what site? What's the design of that site? And as I mentioned earlier, we actually put in a facility recently called, we call it, the Data Center Lifecycle Program facility. So that's helping with the construction component of it. So think Builders Risk or Delay in Start-Up. That's helping with the operations part of it. So think General Liability. That's helping with the resiliency component of it. So cyber as well. So the 10 billion number, I just gave you a sense about what we think our share has been thus far. And you can estimate a premium, a fee, or a yield on that amount. And we think we're going to be strong participants in it.
The key point for me, though, is that this data center opportunity is just another one of those places where Aon has the expertise and is leading in providing the facilities to help clients. No different from pooled employer plans where we're leading and brought that to the table. No different from master trust. These are areas where our analytics, our capabilities, and expertise and experience allow us to lead for the industry, bring in new sources of capital and ideas to help transfer risk. And by the way, these are large construction. These are large numbers. So the risk cannot be concentrated. So the need to be able to bring in alternate sources of capital, Reinsurance and alternate sources of capital, that's an area where we've been focused and we think we excel as well.
So again, it's another one of these spaces where we think we have an advantage and will help support our mid-single-digit or greater growth.
Yeah. That's a super interesting space. How about something you guys talked a lot about more at your investor day, but the Enterprise Client Group? I wanted to ask about the expansion there and to think it focuses on some of your largest clients. Can you talk about how that model differentiates Aon from competitors, and what are you seeing from benefits from that model?
I'll hit the differentiation point first. I'd call it Aon Client Leadership, of which Enterprise Client Group is a component of it. We have enterprise clients. We have large clients, middle market clients, etc. So Enterprise Client Group is a component of our Aon Client Leadership. But the differentiating point is the fact that it is a client-centric model instead of a broker-centric model. That means you're going to the client as opposed to the client trying to find who in Aon they need to talk to. You're going to the client and bringing the integrated solutions across the entire workspace as opposed to having a siloed and transactional conversation broker to client here. You need both of those things. If you have Aon Client Leadership, that means you have more client loyalty because they have more solutions and likely higher lifetime value from the clients as well.
This point about differentiation, I think, is probably unique for this industry, not unique for other industries, but we've had great success. We see the success in the second part of your question. When you think about our Enterprise Client Group in 2024, we've seen 97% retention. We've seen those clients have over two and a half times the number of products and solutions that non-Enterprise Client Group clients have. We've seen growth across the geographies. They hold 50% of their revenue as international. And we've seen the contribution to new business from existing clients because new business is from existing clients and new clients from ECG increase year- over- year. So there's no doubt that we are seeing tangible economic benefit from having this as a part of the 3x3 Plan. And we're driving it. We're looking to scale it.
Anne Corona came up on stage, the person who leads that for us during investor day, and saying that we are looking to expand our Aon client leaders across the 500 enterprise clients and the next 1,500 large clients as well. We want to go as fast as possible on that. The thing is hiring the right client leaders who know the business and training them to know all of our solutions because we see the types of benefits that I just mentioned there.
How about artificial intelligence? Aon has, I think, a significant amount of data you've been collecting for years supported by Aon Business Services. Can you talk about the revenue and expense opportunities you're seeing from leveraging AI? And what's the magnitude of investment?
Yeah. So I've heard this question. My view, Rob, as the CFO of the company, I don't view AI as a separate line item or a high-risk bet in the corner of the room. For us, we are embedding AI into all of our solutions. And I'll talk a little bit about it. And so that means it's embedded in our CapEx, which, look at the financial statements and you'd see, has been roughly 1.5%-2% of our revenue. It's embedded in our tech development as well because we embed AI at scale across our suite of analyzers that model risk, that model volatility and determine how much you should retain versus transfer. And when we evaluate those analyzers, the contribution to revenue growth, the products themselves, the AI analysis is embedded in that.
We also think that there's margin opportunity associated with it as we embed it across our back office workflows, our back office and our workflows, things like Aon Broker Copilot, our proprietary Copilot, the Bloomberg for insurance, I would say, as you think about the data that we see on pricing in that system or as we embed it in things like claims or policy management or certificates of insurance. And in fact, I talked at investor day about having 5%-10% productivity improvement from back office workflow and code development as well. So look, I think with our bespoke data, Reinsurance and Commercial Risk data, human capital data with over 40 million in our database with no silos cut across our geographies, we think we embed AI at scale. And that differentiates us in terms of players in the insurance brokerage industry here.
Maybe that's a good segue into the margin discussion. You've got guidance about, I think it adds up to 80-90 basis points of overall margin expansion this year, and you all highlighted at Investor Day, 70-100 basis points of ongoing adjusted operating margin expansion. Is that the right way we should be thinking about the next couple of years, and can you kind of walk us through the core building blocks?
The answer is yes. And I'll walk you through the building blocks. And I'll give you a little bit more context. So you just had 120 basis points per year of average margin expansion through the 10 years through 2024. 2024 itself against the adjusted NFP baseline, 90 basis points in this year to the point that you just made 80-90 basis points, as you said, is the expectation. So we have a long history of being able to drive margin expansion. It is important to note, though, that we see margin expansion not as the end, but justification for what we're trying to drive, which is strong earnings growth that we can translate into free double-digit free cash flow growth.
We think we now have, through Aon Business Services, a foundation in place that when our organic revenue growth is over 4%, it allows us to receive scale benefits. I talked about some of those scale benefits at Investor Day, like reducing our applications, like moving to the cloud. Importantly, as we think out into the future, continuing to move to our target operating model into Global Capability Centers and doing that offshore in ABS. We quantified that as we thought about this overall 70-100 basis points. We said that would drive 100-120 basis points as sort of step one of our model. The second component of it, as we talk about these building blocks, is what I would just call the ongoing expense discipline in management.
And I highlighted items like the 16% reduction that we've had since the beginning of the 3x3 Plan in real estate or savings from managing our supplier management program. Those things collectively have contributed, and we think on an ongoing basis should contribute 10-20 basis points of more. So that's 100-120, 10-20 from that. We continue to manage the portfolio, things that we may need to dispose of so that we become a higher growth, higher margin business. The impact of that has been 0-10 basis points. You add that up. And the important point is that we have capacity to invest in the business, 40-60 basis points. And all of those numbers, the net of all of those numbers is 70-100 basis points. So we do have margin expansion.
So that means that the scale in our business gives us the capacity to invest in medium and long-term growth, investment capacity for medium long-term growth. That's the flywheel. That's the growth engine that we're after. And we think we have a long runway to be able to continue at those levels given where we are. It's early innings for the movement in ABS.
And you mentioned the double-digit free cash flow growth there. I know you've recently announced NFP Wealth deal. How should we just overall be thinking about the trajectory of free cash flow? You also have, I think, restructuring spending winding down. So what's the trajectory look like?
Yeah. I mean, we committed to 2025 being double-digit free cash flow in the three-year double-digit CAGR from 2024 through 2026 as well. And we're right on track for that. 2025 is 13% year to date. I might have said that earlier. And the drivers of that, we're in a strong position for free cash flow. The drivers are our continued strong operating income performance. That includes NFP. We continuously push on days, DSO and Day Sales Outstanding in our supplier program. That drives working capital improvements for us. And we're now starting to complete the integration of NFP. So transaction and integration costs that impacted 2024 and 2024 free cash flow is winding down. And to your point, going into 2026 is our final year of the accelerating Aon United restructuring program. So to your point, we have line of sight on the conclusion of that as well.
And so double-digit in 2025 is right in line of sight. We'll be specific about 2026 as we again come onto the Q4 call. But the drivers of double-digit free cash flow are very clear to us as those items.
I did want to touch on NFP, which you mentioned there. Can you just talk about the strategic rationale of that deal and sort of the early results that you've seen? Maybe more specifically, I think you guys talked about a 50 basis point revenue synergy going forward on an annual basis or so. Is that still all on track?
Yes. It's on track. And at the very beginning of the conversation here, I talked about the return on our capital as being an area where investors wanted more conviction. One of the first priorities that I had, and I've shared this with many of the investors in the room, I used these words, was re-underwriting the NFP acquisition. And there's no doubt in my mind that Aon made the right decision to get into this fast-growing $31 billion middle market space. To be able to combine our capabilities with the NFP distribution is a smart call for us. And as I think about the financial commitments, you're asking about revenue synergies. We committed to $80 million in 2025, $175 million by 2026, and OpEx as well. I'd add to that $30 million and $50 million for those two time periods. Those things are on track.
But I normally begin the answer to this question with what's really important, and that's producer retention. The engagement from these producers, from the sales force because of the access to the capabilities and their synergies has been beyond expectations, beyond what was happening in terms of retention prior to the acquisition as well, so we feel very good about the financial performance of the business, and we feel very good about the acquisition as well, the continued tuck-in acquisition where we did $36 million last year and are already up to $32 million through nine months here this year as well, so I think about NFP and the engagement from the producers, the integration, the financial performance, and the acquisition are all performing well. What we're focused on right now is I was actually in India two or three weeks ago, and the NFP team was there with me.
So we think there's opportunity to move even faster and move more into our ABS target operating model. And that's what we're assessing as we close out the year right now. And by the way, I will say that it sets us up for a comprehensive middle market strategy. Having globally consistent technology platforms and policy management systems in ABS right now gives us the scale to look at middle market and do it in a way that doesn't dilute our margins and still allows us to have the type of growth that we've had.
I think we're coming up on time here, but maybe just to ask you, finish up with capital management. I think at investor day, you all highlighted a pretty strong number for capital, excuse me, available for M&A and share repurchases in 2026. Since then, you've closed the sale of the majority of the NFP Wealth business. So how are you thinking about balancing the capital deployment priorities?
The important point and the number that we said during investor day, available for those two items, M&A and share repurchases, was $5.6 billion at that time, and we announced, obviously, with the NFP Wealth sale proceeds over $2 billion as well, so needless to say that we are in a position of capital strength with flexibility to execute our capital allocation model, and you know the priorities right now is to get the debt leverage back down to levels that we think are acceptable and that we committed to prior to the acquisition, 2.8x -3x by the end of this year. We're at 3.2x at the end of Q3. We've again increased the dividend. We're doing the tuck-in acquisitions through NFP, and we have flexibility to look at acquisition if they meet our strategic criteria.
During Investor Day, I talked about IRRs above 20% still getting to industry-leading ROICs. So they have to meet the strategic criteria. They need to meet the financial criteria as well. If not, we'll continue to return capital to shareholders. We've returned $750 million in share repurchases alone this year. So right on track for the $1 billion-dollar commitment that we've had, a $1 billion for, I think, including the dividends in it. So for us, it's all about balancing investment for growth with capital return to shareholders. That's been quite balanced for us when you look across our history. And we're even more diligent about it as we move forward in this strong position that we're in.
Fantastic. Thanks for sharing all your insights, Edmund.
Thank you. Thank you.