Started with the next presenter, two brokers in a row. We're very pleased to have Greg Case with us. Greg is CEO, President of Aon. Greg assumed leadership of Aon at what one would argue was a very difficult time at the company and the industry. What struck me when Greg started talking with investors was his optimism. He said, "This is a great business, and we can really grow this business." If you remember back then, it was not a time period that would engender any optimism. It's been very interesting to see the development of the company. Within two years, we thought about this company differently than we did before Greg got there. He's been a builder of businesses within Aon, and he's balanced making investments in the business and managing its margins as well. With that, I will turn it over to Greg.
Thanks, Jay. Appreciate it. It's great to be here today and get a chance to spend some time with this group, talk a little bit of the story of Aon, our progression, and what we've done. The story Jay described to you started about 10 years ago. We came together, and really, our team saw an industry with tremendous promise. I must affirm Aon, I came into privilege to serve there for 10 years but came in with high expectations. Candidly, when you look at the raw capability of Aon, those high expectations were exceeded. What I want to try to do today is tell a pretty simple story, and I'll tell it in three parts. One is I want you to understand the core assets of Aon, what exists today, what we have in place, and how those have evolved over time.
That's first piece. I'm going to tell you a story about risk and people. The assets we have in place and the importance of those assets in the global economy today. The second piece, I want to talk to you about how we're investing behind those assets and how we're strengthening that platform. For better or for worse, we're making a set of investments that we believe are unprecedented in our industry and we believe are giving us tremendous economic leverage, greater operating leverage as we build our business, but also a greater ability to serve and support our clients. Second piece of this equation is how we invest behind this platform to be sustainable and meaningful in terms of what we're doing. The third part of the equation, the third part of this is I want to, forgive me, Jay's point before, we still are very optimistic.
We see a platform candidly that has tremendous potential. The Aon story is not a story that sort of has run its course. We have made progress, yes, I will highlight that. The opportunity going forward is tremendous. One specific piece I want to make sure you take away from this discussion this morning, is we are not just making the statements I just made in concept. We are translating them into an outcome that you can measure. That measure is free cash flow. I will highlight the growth piece to Aon, organic growth. I'll highlight the margin piece. Very, very important. I'll highlight the EPS growth piece, very, very important. Understand the evolving story around the mechanics, the metrics that we use are really focused on free cash flow. That's not something the brokerage industry has really embraced for a long period of time. We are.
We think it's fundamental to the story of our firm and fundamental to the story of our valuation. I want to talk to you about how all I described, this platform, how we're investing in it, the progress we made behind it, is translated into a Revenue Engine which has continued to generate substantial levels of cash, and they were about to increase. I'm going to talk to you about some of the structural pieces that we've had in place for now the better part of a decade. They're now starting to push and pay off, and some of the operational improvements that will reinforce that. The punchline is that we will say, and have said, that in 2017, we will double free cash flow from our levels of 2012 to $2.3 billion.
Walk away from the conversation today, if you would, understanding the platform, understanding the investments behind it, but also understanding the very specific tangible outcome that is a double in free cash flow in 2017 from a 2012 level. That punchline, by the way, from our standpoint, we think is pretty exciting if we were in your shoes thinking about the prospects of Aon. That's really what I want to cover. When you think about Aon, pretty simple organization. We're 60,000, 65,000 colleagues around the world, connected, reinforced by data and analytics, but 65,000 colleagues around the world. We touch two areas in the global economy, risk and people. The risk platform we feel pretty good about. It's developed over a period of time. Number one in primary reinsurance or primary brokerage, number one in reinsurance, number one in employee benefits.
Very, very strong across the board of risk. In essence, if you think about it, we probably touch more companies every day on the topic of risk than virtually any company in the world. We do it very, very globally. A very, very strong platform, helping companies understand this idea of risk and what they want to do about it. In addition to that platform, we have the people platform, helping companies understand how they serve their employees' needs on retirement, on health, on talent, on all the pieces that go around that. If you consider these two platforms, the firm splits about 60% risk and about 40% HR solutions, or 65/35. It will evolve over time. That's roughly where we are now.
What I want you to understand on that, though, is that these two platforms have really been under development and a focus of ours for a long, long period of time. If you consider on the Risk Solutions business, we're putting through that platform over $110 billion of premiums flow a year. That's a tremendous amount. We're roughly 22%, 23% of all of Lloyd's, as an example. The engine is unique. It is global. It is networked. It is still, however, under development. This is one of the things about the Aon story, the assets I'm going to describe to you, they are not complete. They are not done. We are in development. As we continue to network and connect these assets globally, we call it Aon United, our ability to serve our clients more effectively goes up, and that's what we're trying to do with the platform.
That's why we've made substantial investments in technology, substantial investments in data and analytics. I'll come to that in a little bit. It's why we've invested in multiple solutions, new solutions around the world. If you look to the right-hand side of the chart on the HR solutions side, we think equally compelling when you think about the investments that have gone into that. Again, we would position none of these as perfect. When you think about our ability to help clients with their retirement issues, with their people issues, health issues, benefits issues, talent issues, we think those two platforms are exceptionally strong. These two platforms exist, we would say, at a time when the economic uncertainty or the demand for these two areas is great.
You will hear a lot, I'm sure today, if you listen to all the presentations, around what's happening short term in the marketplace, what's happening with the pricing cycle, what's happening with capital. Happy to talk about any of those if you'd like to do that. Fundamentally, when you step back and ask the question, what is going on in global demand in the world of risk today? Is it going up or going down? Is there more demand for risk understanding today than there was five years ago? Will there be more five years out? We would make the argument that what we do, touch more companies every day on the topic of risk, we're very fortunate. We're at a time in the global economy when clients need what we need more than ever before.
If you think about the global economy, the urbanization of the population globally. In 10 years, half the global population or 60% of the global population will be in urban environment. That creates opportunity. That creates need for property, casualty, P&C. All the traditional risks are going up. That doesn't mean that short-term demand goes up and down, prices go up and down, but fundamental demand for risk in the world today, we believe, is going up. By the way, you take that and you add into it the non-traditional risks, the new risks on the horizon. You add cyber, you add global warming, you add pandemic, all the different pieces. Fundamentally, we believe we're very fortunate as Aon.
We happen to have a platform in risk, touching more companies every day in the world on this topic at a time in economic history when we believe demand is going up. If anything, on the risk side, our industry needs to collectively fight for greater relevance. We need to fight to make sure we're involved with the biggest companies in the world on their biggest issues, with the insurers on their biggest issues. That's what the opportunity is. That's why we're very excited about what we believe the future holds for our industry and humbly for Aon in particular, in terms of what we bring to the table on the topic of risk, because the demand is so high. If you buy that on the risk side, you would say we've got this platform in risk at a time when demand is going up.
Take a couple of areas on the people side. Let me just pick on retirement and health for a minute. How is retirement going in the global environment today? All the companies you invest in, are they all comfortable on their retirement plans? Are all the companies comfortable that they've got retirement covered? Are all the employees comfortable that they're actually in good shape for retirement? The answer is no. It's a joke. Terrible. In fact, it's getting worse. It's different by country. Think about where we are in the U.S. and the percentage of employees, less than 20% are truly prepared for retirement. Think about the situation in Europe, equally troubling, where governments have made commitments that fundamentally cannot be kept. In other areas of the developing world, where the whole retirement issue is just coming onto the fore, will also be a substantial issue.
Point being, the issue of retirement is going to become more acute over time in terms of client demand over the next five years than it has been over the last five years. I think that's just the truth. In Aon, on the people side of this for retirement, where do we sit? Well, take pension assets. There are $31 trillion of pension assets in the world today, give or take. We happen to touch about $6 trillion of them. We don't manage money, we don't have a balance sheet, but we advise on the $6 trillion. We touch 20% of the global assets in pension. We feel pretty good about the idea that we have this platform around retirement at a time when economic and client demand is going up in the area of retirement. Take one more for you.
I'm just trying to give you examples of sort of where this platform is at a time in economic history. Health. If risk demand is going up, interesting. If retirement demand is going up, interesting. How are we sitting on health? Pretty good shape. U.S. is good shape. Healthcare costs are going down. People are becoming healthier. Global economy's figured it out. Exactly. That was my sense of humor this morning. It's incredibly troubling. We know that. You ask yourself, are we figuring out health? The answer is, if there's one part of the P&L that every single one of the clients or companies you invest in has trouble with, no matter how good of operator they are, that one line in the P&L that says healthcare costs, they're having trouble with. I guarantee you.
That cost is going up 5%, 10%, 12%, sometimes down over a year, but over time it's going up. They're having an incredibly difficult conversation with their leadership team. The conversation has to do with the fact that we've made commitments to our employees. The cost of those commitments are going up. We're going to do one of two things. We're going to break those commitments, or we're going to incur a lot more cost. That is a tremendous vice grip in terms of what some of the issues they face. What does that do for us? That creates opportunity. If we can help them address some of those issues and sort some of those issues, the power of what we bring to the table is actually pretty interesting.
What we're doing in health, not surprisingly, is trying to align capital, health insurers, and the providers, and the companies, and the employees to try to bend the healthcare curve and to try to change behavior to actually change the economics. All I really want to highlight for you in the first part of this is Aon is a firm in risk and people with, we believe, platforms that are very unique in the world today on these two topics. We believe we have them. We are fortunate. We've worked hard to build them, but we're fortunate. We have them at a time in economic history when they're actually more relevant than ever before. We absolutely sweat what's going on in interest rates, we sweat FX, we sweat prices, we sweat everything.
From a macro standpoint, risk, retirement, health, talent in the current global economy, we feel pretty good about that platform. That's the essence of Aon, and we have the number one platforms on both those pieces. What are we doing about that? Who cares, really? How are we building? How are we developing? What we would say is, look, we're investing more to strengthen those platforms now than ever before, and I'm about to paint you a cash flow profile which says we can invest more back into that business than ever before. Let me start 10 years ago, because talk's cheap. I can stand up here and say whatever I want to say. What I want you to understand is, and this is one of the things about Aon, this is not a Greg Case story.
The story of Aon is our leadership team globally and what they've done to change our firm. Fundamentally, we put down some markers, and we've done our level best to try to address those markers. Here's an example. Left-hand column, 2004, 10 years ago. That's Aon. A third of Aon is an underwriting company. Literally, a third of Aon is an underwriting company. By the way, over a third of Aon, we didn't even go to the market as Aon. Right-hand chart, right-hand column. Today, we're risk and people. I showed you that at the beginning. We literally made a decision. We got out of underwriting. We sold off a third of Aon. We literally sold off a third of Aon and made the biggest bet in the history of risk and people on risk and people.
If you're wondering sort of are we committed to this gig? You need only look at this. That conversation was not pleasant. That conversation was not comfortable. That conversation was important and decisive, and that's what we tried to do. Just want to give you a sense on sort of our level of excitement and commitment to the topics of risk and people as we build our firm. In addition, we have made a set of investments, these are only just a select few we are highlighting for you today, around content and capability that we believe can set us apart. I'll describe this. If you've got the platforms around risk and people I described, and you've got them at a time in economic history that they're powerful, what really makes a difference with a client across the table?
Relationships, connectivity, all these things that are historical parts of our business are critical. On top of that is content, data, analytics. If you can give an advisor or a broker the ability to say something to a client around how they price product, how they get fulfillment on service, how they come up with new ideas, how they connect globally, you've done something different no one else can do. Historically, our industry was networked around individuals and relationships. We want to reinforce that. We love that. We reinforce that strongly with data and analytics. When you do that, you've actually made them more effective. In fact, if you think about we invest in something we call the Risk Insight Platform. It's not rocket science. In essence, we place all this business.
We would look back on the course of a year, like every broker would do, and say, "Wow, looks like it went up. How'd we do that?" We would know at a top level how we did. We would have no actionability on that. Literally, if a company comes to us and says, "We'd really like to grow more with you." Pick any Lloyd's syndicate. We'd really like to grow more in the U.S. What we would say is, "Well, we'd like you to grow more in the U.S. Let's go work together and do that." Your ability to operationalize that at the frontline level, almost zero. What we did is we essentially captured every single piece of flow we have in our world, the Aon world, real time. We can tell you exactly what we're placing right now in every category.
We can tell you what's going on in property globally, by company, by underwriter. We can then basically understand what our demand's going to look like, and we can actually better match their capital through our brokers with our clients. We actually can change behavior for the first time ever using data and analytics. We've made huge investments on that. By the way, anybody can duplicate that. All you need is $100 billion of flow. By the way, the data is completely difficult, garbage in, garbage out. We have 100-plus people in Ireland. We have a Singapore Innovation Center. We've invested in a proprietary software we call Rosetta Stone that actually translates policies across the globe, so you can actually make them apples to apples. That's all you need. This is non-duplicatable capability when we actually put it in place that helps us serve our clients.
An example of investment. By the way, it took a long time, though. It's straight through the P&L, pure pain. Nobody saw that, nobody believed that. They're starting to see it. There have been periods of time when people don't like it, then they're too excited, then they don't like it, then they're too excited. We'll see how it goes, it's really, really important. That's Risk Insight Platform. There's a whole series of other investments we don't have time to go into today. We are making a set of investments. Just for reference, in Aon Benfield, our insurance business, we spend over $120 million a year, hard dollars, on content capability. Unprecedented. Much more than that on the retail side.
We're talking tremendous investments to sort of strengthen the platform, which I started with as a pretty interesting best-in-class platform at a pretty interesting time in economic history. This allows us, again, at the end of the day, if we're not making progress financially, what are we doing for you? All I want to highlight here is a period where we've done reasonably okay. We highlight four metrics, growth, margin, EPS, free cash flow. We added free cash flow over the last two years as we've dropped out a number four. You can see we've grown every year except one, where we're down 1%. Operating margin increased 140 basis points. EPS increased 15%, 16% a year for the last 10 years. Free cash flow is at our unprecedented high levels.
I'm about to tell you a story on the next three years that takes that number, $1.3 to $2.3. What, 2017, $1.3 to $2.3. We don't ever say anything externally. That means we have real line of sight on exactly how we're going to add the $1 billion to do that. Not bad. Could be better, but reasonable progress. Our view is, by the way, we've done that while we've made tremendous investments that increase operating leverage in our business. The operating leverage inside of Aon is much greater than it ever has been before. What does that mean? That means when we don't grow at 5%, we can still improve margin. When we grow at 2%, we can still improve margin. We grow at 5%, interesting what margin can do.
We have real economic and operating leverage inside of our business that's greater than anything we've ever had before, which we think is pretty interesting. That's the platform, that's the investments, that's what we've done with it. Let's get to the interesting part of the story. The interesting part of the story is how we continue to bring this together. We truly, in our view, when you think about where we are in the journey, on a scale of zero to 10, we think we're about a four. On a scale of zero to 10, we think we're about a four. We've invested in 10 years in the same strategy, the same focus, the same absolute push against this idea of risk and people in a global client connected client service world. We've gotten the results I just described to you.
We go forward, we're just on the cusp of how we connect our global firm more effectively. I called before Aon United. How someone literally in Germany can pick up the phone and connect globally and make sure we're bringing the best of our capability to the backyard of Germany or Australia or Omaha, wherever it is around the world. The power of that and all the things we've done, how we've connected, how we go to market, Salesforce, how we've actually talked about a year in life with Aon Client Revenue Engine, how we've done risk analytics I've just described to you, how we've done market analytics, very different, a whole other basket I could go into and talk about. How we've talked about now it all comes together in Aon Client Promise.
What does it mean to serve a client distinctively, and how do we actually get better as a client service firm every year? We've got great client practitioners. Aon's got to get better as a firm every year. That's what that's all about. How we bring this together with Aon United. These pieces give us great confidence that we're going to make our way toward the targets we've laid out on the Risk Solutions side of the business, which is a 26% Risk Solutions operating margin and a 22% HR solutions margin. Here's the business. The platforms are there at a time in economic history when there's high demand. We've invested into those platforms at an unprecedented level to create operating leverage, and in doing so, also Still performed. Still performed while we were doing that, funding that as we were doing that.
We're at a place now where I would describe on a scale of 0 to 10, we're about a four. In the next three years, I will highlight how we're going to add $1 billion of free cash flow, which will be a double since 2012. This is really the part of the story that I was going to pause on it for a minute. It's really important you understand. The engine, again, our world is client service. Our world is colleagues. That's what we focus on every day. That's our maniacal focus at Aon. You should understand, as potential investment partners or investment partners, the derivative outcome for you is very powerful, and it is the generation of cash. Aon, at its core, is a cash-generating engine, and we've worked very hard to strengthen that engine.
A number of those areas of strengthening are around operational improvement, we're going to do that. It's also in some other areas that we've structurally changed that actually are strengthening our ability to generate free cash flow. What you see here in 2013 in $1 billion and four, our $1 billion four on four, then where we are roughly in 2014, this number is increasing. Let me just describe the three buckets. One, two, and three there on the left. What are we going to do to improve it? Operational improvement, very important. We're going to continue to do that. I've talked about some of the categories there. We also, having spent literally the better part of a decade now focused on cash, have a few areas that require less cash. I wish I could tell you this is rocket science.
We're not just going to create $1 billion of free cash flow out of whole cloth. We've actually worked for a decade and created a less demand for some of our cash, which means you have it, and we make decisions on what to do with it. Where is that? This is the bottom of the page. You go back to 2012, and you're just looking at capital expenditures, pension contributions, and restructuring cash. By the way, the bottom part is CapEx. That's roughly the same. We're not changing that. I've already told you we're investing behind the firm. Our pension efforts, we've worked for a decade on our pension efforts. If you just think about what we've done to de-risk those, the cash requirements of pension are going down substantially. In addition, the restructuring efforts we've undertaken are going down substantially.
The difference between the add up the bar in 2012 and add up the bar in 2018, it's $653 million difference. Again, think about the companies you invest in. I've just told you the operating strength of the business, that's exciting. In addition to that, we have a $650 million increase in free cash flow from 2012 to 2018 without changing operations. We think that's interesting to take note of in terms of some of the operating free cash flow of the firm. Then in addition to that, we have been able to focus, think about free cash flow around the world and generating lower effective tax rate. If you literally said, what's going to drive Aon's move and double free cash flow in 2017 or in 2013, apologies, to 2017 to $2.3 billion, what's going to drive that?
It's going to be operating improvement, it's going to be the reductions in uses of cash, which I just outlined, and it's going to be the reduction in effective tax rate. We have a real line of sight on how that's going to be achieved. That is a cash flow generating engine, which again, is unique in the industry. A cash flow yield as we continue to buy back stock on a per share basis, which is very unique in the industry. We're getting that outcome on behalf of our investors at a time when we're making all these investments on behalf of clients. If you take away nothing else from the conversation today, spend some time on the cash flow characteristics of Aon. Spend some time on what we're about and how we've actually changed this profile. It's very, we believe, unique.
A large chunk of it, you can actually have very clear line of sight on. Then a piece of it, then you have to get comfortable with the operating story that I've just laid out, you're comfortable with. Which is an important part of the story, but it's additive to the other parts of the story. That's really, when you get down to it, the story of Aon. We've done okay in the last 10 years if you compare us to our competitors. This is total shareholder return, one year, two year, five year, eight year, and 10 year. By the way, who knows, we only show this only because we want you to understand our level of conviction around the importance of doing our best on your behalf.
Doesn't mean we always get everything right, but we've done okay in each one of those time periods from a total return standpoint. I want to emphasize again, our view is the journey, scale of zero to 10, we're about a four when you think about where we are overall. I would just end literally, Aon platforms around risk and people, strongest in the world today at a time when the world needs what we have more than ever before. Again, lots of issues going on, but that's fundamentally, we believe, absolute truth. That platform, very strong. We've invested very heavily behind and are continuing to do that. The outcome of that investment is more operating leverage in our business than ever before, which we think actually helps us tremendously and helps us from a client service standpoint.
The ability to generate free cash flow at a level that is unprecedented in Aon's world, and certainly we believe unprecedented in the brokerage world. On a free cash flow per share yield basis, exceptionally strong. That's a little bit of the story of Aon and our progression over the last number of years. We are, as I will say, as Jay started with, apologies if I'm a little enthusiastic about the firm. It's genuine, but I understand I can get a little enthusiastic, but we're excited about the next few years, and we'd love to take a couple questions before we break. Mr. Ronnie. Right here. How are you?
You've been investing in the health exchanges, but from when you first started to now, maybe looking forward, how do you see that developing and changing? It seems like the demand is there, but it's slow to come.
I would say there's a lot written on the exchanges, and a lot of misinformation, I think, out there on the exchanges, too. For us, remember, I described health, and the assets we have in health, we love. We love the health space tremendously for all the reasons I described. From a benefits standpoint, we place benefits for over 10 million American citizens. We've actually placed more benefits than anyone else. For us, this whole category is very powerful. One piece of that category is the health exchange. We happen to have invested in the health exchanges before many invested in the health exchanges. They've been very successful. Of the 10 million, we have a million two lives on them. They grew at 60% last year. We have a tremendous pipeline of companies who want to come in.
By the way, if you're a company, and you're a large company coming into a fully insured health exchange, your value proposition is if you've been in our exchange for the last 2-3 years, the curve I described before, 200-500 basis point, 400 basis point reduction. Not so bad. Second, how much volatility do you have on your balance sheet? Zero, fully insured. By the way, were your employees excited? 87% satisfaction. They're kind of excited about the progress, and I think we've got a big pipeline, and it'll evolve, and it'll be part of the overall story. Same approach for middle market, smaller companies, huge opportunity. We think it's going to be part of the equation for a number of companies that could be really compelling, and it'll continue to contribute, we think, very well to our progress.
It certainly has in 2014. Yeah, Jay.
With the margins, you describe the company as being at a point where the leverage is the highest you've seen. Why is it? The margins, frankly, have been somewhat flattish over four years down then back up. Why is the leverage now higher than it's been in the past?
Well, part of the reason we were flat for a couple of years is the investments we were making. At the end of the day, we believe in the outcome. We know, we've seen it. Jay, the question is, how do we scale it? As we scaled up GRIP more effectively, it cost us in margins for a couple of years. What we have now is the ability to actually get a higher yield per dollar premium placed. By definition, that's operating leverage. GRIP, Aon Client Promise, things like this, the Revenue Engine, these are investments that make us more operationally efficient. That's the operating leverage. From our standpoint, for the last two years, we increased operating leverage. Last year, we increased operating leverage the year before, or margin the year before.
Our view is we're at an inflection point where we can actually meaningfully increase operating leverage as we march towards the 26%. That's what we're going to do.
Got it.
Okay. Listen, I appreciate your time today. If we can be helpful with any thoughts or reaction to any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.