Let's give a warm welcome to the stage, CEO of Citizens, Inc., Jon Stenberg.
Thank you, Kendall. I know you've all been waiting for this session because the life insurance session is the one everyone rushes towards. We will try to make life insurance exciting for you in the next 25 minutes, though, because I think we do some things in a very unique way, very fun way, and we have what I think is really amazing growth potential, and I'll explain why that is. First of all, we're easy stock ticker to remember, CIA. So that makes it fun when I go visit our partners in South America. No, I'm the other CIA. So that's fun. What we do is we sell life insurance, endowment, whole life, basic life insurance, but we do it in a very unique way. How is that? Let's start with who we are here. There we go.
You're going to see a few dots here on the map, and for those who are listening audio, I'll explain that we have four dots on a world map here. You're going to see one in South America. That doesn't represent a specific country. That's just that we have a base of production of sales and in-force business in South America. We also have a dot over Puerto Rico. We issue our international products out of Puerto Rico, so these are our life insurance policies for the international market is a U.S. issued, U.S. dollar life insurance policy. The dot in Texas is in Austin. That's where we're headquarters. You're also going to see a dot on Taiwan, and we have great partners there, and we do a lot of business there. You can see we have almost 250 employees.
We counted up the countries of birth of our 250 employees. I think we got to 26 different countries, so we're very internationally aligned in our employee base. We have policy holders in over 80 countries. That's very unique, and I'll talk about that later. We are producing over 3,000 producing agents on nearly $2 billion assets. We cover over $5 billion of total life insurance, and our premium revenue is $189 million in 20 25. Let's quickly talk about the circle with the countries. United States is our most important country, followed by Colombia, Taiwan, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Argentina, and then 15% of the rest of our in-force and premium comes from other countries. Let's move to the snapshot because I want to try to get through this so we can get to some fun Q&A. Our international life insurance, why are we so successful internationally?
Well, we have a fairly unique value proposition. If you live in Argentina right now, things are going great. The economy's doing well. They've stabilized their currency. Government spending has reined in. But they're just one election away from that flipping to the other side and potentially dealing with hyperinflation. For the one thing that you really want peace of mind with might be the life insurance for your family. If you are middle upper class or lower affluent, a U.S. dollar denominated life insurance policy might be really exciting for you. That's true peace of mind. It's protected from asset confiscation from your country. It's protected from hyperinflation. That's why our products are so appealing to many people overseas, and if you're Taiwan, for example, you have China breathing down your neck. You don't know if and when that's going to blow up.
You can protect your family in a U.S. policy. That makes our international business very unique and very expandable because we don't have brick and mortar in those countries. We're only scratching the surface of the opportunities we have in this market. Domestically, which is most of our sales growth, we offer basic whole life policies to the underserved, and that business is growing very rapidly. That's where we're doing a lot of investment currently to mature that business and build the policies and procedures we need to have a really high quality, profitable, and sustainable long-term business. We do business in 43 states, and this combination makes us very unique because we're the only company that does business in over 40 states in the United States and has clients in over 70 countries that has a unified management team.
Most companies like AIG or others, they have multiple management teams around the world. There's acrimony, and they fight with each other, and it stifles innovation. We have one. We have a global perspective as an American company. That's one very unique thing about us. Okay. I'm not going to go deep into our history. I will just say one also unique thing about us is I consider ourselves a growth stock. Personally, my family is not buying our stock, and we're buying a lot of it. We're not buying it for the reasons of our current quarterly results over last quarterly results or year over year. We're buying it for what we will become. Most growth stocks lose money. We're a little bit unique, and it kind of hurts us in a way that we're a growth stock that makes money year over year.
That's something very unique about our company also. Okay, I'm not going to go deep into a lot of this stuff. We just don't have the time. I will say, let's finish up the list of things that make us a very unique stock. I mentioned the unified management team. We're also in a very unique point in our history, and that is we're moving from a very stable but very old assembly language administration system. We own the code. Yes, we're kind of in the code business, which you probably wouldn't think we should be, and you'd be right. But we own the code. They started coding that in 1969, and it's really hard to find people that code in assembly language.
W e've kicked that can down the road because it's been a fairly stable and affordable system, far enough that we actually have bypassed multiple generations of life insurance technology that other companies have not. Other companies are stuck in a quagmire, a morass of the multiple administration systems that have to talk to each other and underwriting feeds and customer service feeds that just create a real paralyzing effect on those companies. We're leapfrogging all that. We're going right to the only life insurance administration system out there that I would call seventh generation. We will have the cleanest technology of any life insurance company, I believe, in the world, and will really allow us to do some things that others can't. We already do some things others can't, and that is we white label our life insurance to key distributors.
That is a unique thing that we do. 60% of our domestic final expense business comes in through our white label program. What all that is if you've built an amazing life insurance distribution sales force, well, every other company, you're just going to sell their off-the-shelf product. But what we'll offer you is you get to pick the name, you get to pick what it's called, the colors, the motif, the logo on it, and we power it. So that's very unique. But we only do that domestically. With this new system, we can take that global. We can, I think, have amazing opportunities in Asia and all through the world using this technique. The new technology will also allow us to build a truly modern life insurance portfolio, an American-style life insurance portfolio that doesn't exist outside of the United States.
The United States is very advanced in its life insurance. If you're very wealthy, you will fly to the United States often to get life insurance at up to 50% discount than you can buy it in your local country in a more sophisticated product. Our new technology will allow us to build indexed universal life, guaranteed universal life, various flavors of annuity, both index and fixed, linked benefit products, custom term. We can create a very modern portfolio and potentially partner with companies around the world or distribution systems around the world to offer those very sophisticated products to locals in countries all over the world. So hypothetically, somebody in Turkmenistan could get a more modern policy than somebody in Munich, Germany.
We have a very unique opportunity there, and we're really excited about it. I think I will wrap up my comments there because there's probably some good questions out there to be answered. How am I doing on time? 14. Okay, yeah. Right on time. All right. Thank you for your attention. If you have any questions, I'd love to hear them. Yes.
[audio distortion] Are you guys branching outside of life insurance at some point?
The question is, are we interested in branching outside of life insurance? Yes, if you consider annuities and linked benefit products outside of life insurance. They are related. We do intend to pursue opportunities outside of life insurance, yes. There are policies like Med Supp in the United States that we are interested in. There are hybrid long-term care products we are interested in. Not traditional long-term care, those are somewhat dangerous, but hybrids which very distinctly limit the risk to the company. The answer is yes, and with this new technology that we have agreed to adopt, we have full access to all of those products. Great question. Thank you. Yes.
I have noticed in the presentation y'all put a lot of emphasis on the Latin American market. Would y'all be focusing more on the Asian market or the European market or even the African market later on?
That is a fantastic question. First of all, appreciate that you said y'all because we are from Texas. The question was, we have a high focus on South America, do we intend to branch out? Yes. We absolutely do. We think Asia is an amazing opportunity for us, where life insurance is still stuck in where the U.S. markets were 20, 30, 40 years ago. We have an amazing opportunity for disruption there. There are some markets that we might want to do a partnership with a local company. Not really interested in creating a separate entity, but a partnership. There are some companies where our current model would be more appropriate.
You mentioned Africa. Yes, we can make money in Africa by partnering with local companies and allowing them potentially to, if you will, rent our modern portfolio, where the risk may stay on them, but we'll make money on fees. Again, would diversify our income beyond mortality spread, which is where it's focused now. We'd really like to diversify our revenue into asset spread and fee income also. Right now it's pretty focused on mortality spread. Great question. Yes.
You said this new technology is based on your historical history [audio distortion] or is it that you're achieving different revenue? Can you give a little bit of what makes it out of the ordinary?
Thank you. Let me clarify the technology. The question was, is the new technology related to our history? It's no. The way we've handled life insurance administration is we own the code. We have the coders. The problem is good luck finding somebody that is fluent in assembly language, which is a language they quit teaching in 1983 in the colleges. You're having to go to further flung places around the world to find people that program this. We intend to get out of the code business, which is not one really we should be in. That's not our specialty. We are entering into a partnership with a technology firm. That's all they do, is they're dedicated on creating the most modern life insurance technology ecosystem in the world.
The advantage is that we're able to leapfrog from the oldest to the newest without all the in-betweens that create a big mess. In every life insurance company I've worked for, it's where 80% of the technology budget goes is just to keep all this crazy multiple systems going, and only 20% goes to new stuff. We won't have multiple systems that need to talk to each other once we decommission the current one. Good question. Thank you. Yes.
[audio distortion] How do you make your products more affordable in the countries that you serve when the customers, they essentially earn in their local currency, but they pay the premium in dollars?
The question is, how is our product affordable in local economies that may be struggling or where the dollar is strong? Our international policy right now is not affordable for the majority of folks in the world. That's why we're targeting currently, again, currently, this will change in the future where we will have a more expanded approach to the world life insurance market. But currently, our product is a U.S. Dollar whole life that for, if you buy a reasonable amount of face amount, let's say $200,000, is still a hefty bill for a local family. So who buys it? The upper middle class and the lower affluent.
A business owner who's doing well but is worried about hyperinflation and/or is worried about asset confiscation if the government changes. If a Maduroistic regime comes in, they could be in trouble. They want their life insurance to be safe. In the future, I do believe we'll be able to make life insurance more affordable for many in the world. But right now, our international product is targeted there. Thank you. Good question. Any other questions? Yes.
Okay, I guess from the underwriting standpoint of your risk assessment, can you give domestically versus internationally benefit of?
That is a great question. Domestically, the way we would underwrite somebody, it would be based upon a combination of what they write down on the application and our data pulls. When you make an application, you authorize us to pull your data. We'll see what medications you've been on. That provides, in our domestic final expense, the majority of risk protection, by the way. Most of these customers are fully in the database in terms of what medicines they're on, and you can make a very accurate mortality assessment based upon that. The United States is very automated. The industry's been automating life insurance underwriting since 2012. So 14 years now we've been doing this.
Internationally, the way we underwrite is we have people that speak the language, and they will read through the local MD reports and the labs, a human will. In combination with our reinsurance tools, some tools we have electronic and just a very experienced underwriter, we're able to accurately assess the underwriting for internationally. Now, over time, certain markets, Argentina, we just heard that Kazakhstan is really moving forward in a lot of data. Over time, we'll want to move towards more automation in some of these countries as the data becomes available. We would want to be on the leading edge of that, and we plan to do that as we can. Good question. Yes.
Consistent quarterly growth in direct first year premiums. What's driving that consistency?
Yeah. It's be careful what you ask for a little bit because we entered the domestic final expense market and a little bit of a test for demand before you fully commit, and there's tremendous demand in domestic final expense. Our product is an attractive product, and we have no problem selling it. So that's largely what's driving our consistent first-year sales growth is domestic final expense. The thing we've been doing the last couple of years is heavily investing in all the policies and procedures and tools that we need to make sure that business is profitable and make sure it is profitable for a sustainable long-term period. I believe we will get to a really good point where it's a profit engine that will just keep running and running.
Right now, we're still, if you will, handcrafting some of it because the factory's almost built, but not quite built, and so we're getting better and better at it. So the results of the policies we're putting on the books today should be vastly better than the policies we put on the books two years ago, and the policies we put on a year from now will be better than what we put on today. We're building that factory, and that's where a lot of our current investment is going right now. Great question. You guys are on point with the questions. Yes.
So two questions on that. One, when you say that the policies are better than they were two years ago, is that just getting the pricing correct? And then two, what's the average type of premium on that type of policy?
The question is, what does it mean by better quality? The second question is what's the average premium? The average premium is just under $1,000 the last I checked. It fluctuates between $900 and $1,100 for our domestic final expense product. Our international product is higher. So what I mean by quality is I think our mortality projections and our pricing for mortality is we're there by my estimation on quality. Where we want to continue to invest and make improvements is in the persistency. What I mean by persistency is our acquisition costs in the first year are higher than the premium we get in. We need the policy to go to the second year so we can make up for that.
Once it makes it to the second or third year, it usually persists for a long time, and you have a nice, solid, steady stream of revenue from that client, that policy for years to come. The challenge is when I say low quality, it's business that falls off in that first year at a rate higher than you priced it for. So yes, we are able to reprice the product and get those assumptions closer to the reality. But really, I think the key is making sure you're working with the right agents and getting the right client for the right amount of coverage, and that means a quality long-term profitable business. So good question. Okay. Are we on time? Yes.
Is price to book your main valuation ratio? Can you make any comments on return on capital goals going forward?
Yes, we look heavily at our price to book, and we think we're a good value on that alone. But we also think we're a good value with what's to come and looking at us through the lens of a growth stock that's building towards new markets and new opportunities that others can't or can't pursue. What was the second part of your question?
Return on capital.
Return on capital, we don't plan on becoming a dividend stock anytime soon with our very ambitious growth goals. We think we can make outsized returns on the capital that we have. Life insurance is fairly capital intensive to grow. As we grow, we focus on capital efficiency and making sure we utilize our capital in the most profitable way possible. I think for a while, that'll mean we're not going to be a dividend-paying stock because we have so many very profitable growth opportunities with this new technology. Good question. Thank you.
Okay. Great questions. I really appreciate everybody's time and for you attending this session and catch me afterwards if you have any more questions. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.