All right. Well, I guess we're mic'd up, so we might as well get started.
All right.
I'm Ryan Krueger, Life Insurance Analyst at KBW. It's great to have MetLife back with us again this year. Up on stage with me to my immediate right is Michel Khalaf, President and CEO. To the far right is John McCallion, CFO and Head of MetLife Investment Management. Also want to acknowledge John Hall, Treasurer and Head of Investor Relations, and other members of the IR team in the front row. So with that, Michel, you launched a new five-year strategy called New Frontier last December at an Investor Day. Can you review the key components of New Frontier, how they differ and have evolved from the prior Next Horizon strategy, and then just how things are going so far, even though it's only a couple of quarters in?
Sure. Thank you, Ryan. It's great to be with you today. I think to put the new strategy in context, it might be useful just to take a step back and reflect on the journey that we've been on for the last five, six years. We've undergone an important transformation, moving away from capital-intensive businesses, improving the return profile of the company, as well as reducing risk. This was sort of all through intentional actions that we've taken, starting with continuing to grow our most attractive businesses, such as Group, LATAM, and MetLife Investment Management. It was also helped by the divestitures that we made, especially in relation to sort of a more volatile business, for example, such as Auto & Home business, as well as other businesses that were not meeting our return thresholds.
I think the transformation also from capital-heavy to capital-light was turbocharged by strategic reinsurance transactions that we made to accelerate the runoff of our legacy business. All that while continuing to drive efficiency in the company and reducing our direct expense ratio as well. I think an important proof point of this transformation is reflected in our return on equity. Back when we launched Next Horizon, we set a target of 12%-14%, and we were running actually at the low end of that. Last year, we posted a 15.2% ROE, and I would argue without necessarily hitting on all cylinders. We have the confidence now, as part of New Frontier, to commit to a 15%-17% ROE, which is not very common in our space, I would say. I think that's important because New Frontier really builds on Next Horizon.
It's not a departure from it. We've set more ambitious targets that reflect some of the opportunities that we see in terms of important trends and how we're positioned to be able to capture those trends. We've set four major strategic priorities, I would say, that will drive our sort of higher aspirations as part of New Frontier. The first is extending our leadership in Group Benefits, where we're the leader by some margin. The second is further leveraging our global retirement platforms from an origination perspective and some of the most attractive retirement markets, the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. The third is to accelerate the growth of MetLife Investment Management with an aspiration to reach 1 trillion in AUMs. And lastly, in terms of international markets, it's really expanding our presence in some of those key markets, such as China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.
So those are sort of some of the priorities related to the strategy. And I would say that its launch has been extremely well received. I've been able to tour many of our offices since we launched it, and there's a lot of excitement. But I would also emphasize that whereas it's important to have the right strategy, I would say equally important is to have strong execution, because that's ultimately what determines success. And I think we understand that really well at MetLife. I'm pleased with how we've sort of started on our New Frontier journey in the first half of this year. Aside from alternative investment income, which has been challenged in the first half of the year, I would say very strong execution.
We announced three important strategic initiatives this year: the PineBridge Investments acquisition, the Talcott reinsurance transaction, both of which we are working very hard to close in the second half of the year and on track to do so. Then we launched Chariot Re with the reinsurance transaction that we announced also in July there. Coupled with that, growth is a central theme for our New Frontier strategy. When we look at the top line and the momentum that we're seeing there, very encouraged by it, 9% growth in group sales in the first half. RIS liability balances have grown, total balances have grown 6%, so above the 3%-5% range that we had committed to in our outlook. Really good growth in Asia also, Japan posting a 29% growth in sales in the second quarter.
And then, EMEA and LATAM also very strong top line growth. So all in all, pleased with the underlying momentum when it comes to sort of the early days of the strategy and with the execution levels as well. And I think this bodes well for the future.
Great. I think that's a good overview to start and then dig into a lot of those topics. One was on the expense ratio. So you have a target of improving the direct expense ratio 100 basis points over the next five years. Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing to achieve that? And also, should we expect the improvement to be fairly gradual throughout the five years, or is there any aspect of it that's more back-end loaded?
Yeah, first, I just want to say thanks for having us again, and thank you for these nice loungers. They're very comfortable. Just using the ROE concept that Michel talked about, maybe there's really three legs to that stool. One was kind of the returns we're seeing on new business. The second is looking at our portfolio mix, and then the third is expenses, and going back to Next Horizon, we dropped the expense ratio, I think, a little over 200 basis points over that period. Our plan is to continue to reduce the expense ratio over the New Frontier strategy, another 100 basis points, and we really think of this as like a growth lever for us, actually. We believe that we have operating leverage that we can build upon.
Some of that can be moved to the bottom line, but we also want to just increase the capacity of discretionary spend to fund growth. And that goes back to really the New Frontier strategy, putting our thumb on the scale when it comes to growth and responsible growth. And so that discipline and that cultural piece to kind of who we are right now, we think it's very important. And I think the team has done a tremendous job. It's become part of our DNA. We really try to embrace the concept of moving away from these big bang expense initiatives where we're going to spend a lot of money to save a lot of money. It's all built into our expense ratio. And we see a lot of momentum.
And certainly with the advent of some of these new technologies that are coming in front of us, we certainly see a nice path to the 100 basis points. And right now, at least in the outlook call, we assume kind of an evenly distributed reduction over the five-year period. But in the first half, we're at 11.8%. The second half tends to be seasonally higher, but we are off to a really good start.
Great. In the Group Benefits business, you raised the premium and fee growth target to 4%-7% from 4%-6% previously. You're already the market leader. So what are you doing to drive top line growth at or above the industry at this point?
Sure. Yeah, and as you said, Ryan, we're the market leader by some margin, I would say. We're three times the size of our nearest competitor in that space. And I've described Group Benefits as the most attractive segment of the U.S. life insurance industry. I believe that. It's a business that benefits from economic growth. So typically, GDP growth translates into growth in the profit pool for that business. It's a business where scale really matters. And scale drives further scale. And there are important barriers to scale in that business. And what we've seen over the last few years is that investing in capabilities that customers tell us they need to meet their expectations is absolutely critical in continuing to grow this business, something that we've been doing for a number of years now.
Beyond just sort of the growth that comes from economic growth, the way that we extend our leadership in group is through adding more employers, adding more products to existing employers, and increasing employee participation in employee-paid products. In national accounts, where we have a leading position there, and we have a very large customer base there, it's about really focusing on increasing the number of products that we have with our customers. And with the trend that we see in terms of customers wanting to do more with fewer providers, this is something that plays to our strength, just given having just the widest and most comprehensive product portfolio in the industry. And just to give you a sense of the opportunity there, on average, we have just over three products on average with our customers. The longer a customer with us, the more products we have with them.
On average, customers tend to have more than 10 products on offer. Still a lot of opportunity to grow there. In regional market, which is much more fragmented, there it's about adding more employers. We benefit there from channel consolidation that, again, plays to our strength, given our broad relationships with the broker community. There also, it's about bringing our full product suite to that market. Transferring sort of the product set that we have in national to regional as well. Across the board, it's about increasing take-up rates or employee participation. Here, investments that we made in a benefits experience digital platform called Upwise, which actually we showcased at Investor Day, is very important in closing the sort of confusion gap that exists when it comes to employees choosing their benefits and making their benefit selections.
We're continuing to deploy this capability, extending its access to more employers. Our recently announced partnership with Workday is another step in that direction, and for those that have used this platform, what we've seen is, one, they're telling us that it's made their selection experience much easier, and two, we've seen a significant uptick in take-up rates for our voluntary products in particular, so all of these sort of factors combined give us confidence in terms of our ability to continue to extend our leadership in this space.
In the first half of this year, it seems like you're trending towards the lower end of that 4%-7% premium growth target. Are there any unique factors that are causing some headwinds in 2025 that you would expect to abate going forward?
Yeah, that's partially due to the rate action that we took in 2011 on our dental block. So that had an impact on persistency for dental and for some of the products that we tend to bundle with dental as well. Just to be clear, we're perfectly willing to let business move away if we can't clear our return hurdles for that business. And although this has sort of somewhat dampened our growth in the first half of the year, I would argue it's value-enhancing because it improves margins in dental as well as earnings as well. And we've seen our experience in dental back to very much in line with expectations. Most of the rate action is behind us now. We have good line of sight as far as the second half of the year is concerned. And we think persistency is going to be strong going forward here.
From a margin perspective in Group Benefits, you saw some elevated non-medical health claims in the second quarter. You also continue to see favorable group life mortality. Can you review a little bit again what you saw in the second quarter and then what your outlook is going forward for the rest of this year?
Yeah, so we did see the non-medical health ratio above our outlook range for the year. So that's in the second quarter. And our expectation is that we're going to see improvement, mainly due to seasonality, both in the third and fourth quarter, so in the second half of the year. And to sort of frame that for you, we're expecting a two-point improvement sequentially in the non-medical health ratio in the third quarter and a further two-point improvement in the fourth quarter. What we saw in the quarter is, from a dental perspective, experience in line with expectations. This is a seasonal business, so second half tends to be more favorable than the first half, especially the fourth quarter. So we're expecting that trend to play out in the second half of the year.
For long-term disability, again, I would say very consistent with expectations, both from an incidence and recovery perspective. And again, we keep a close eye, obviously, on this business, and we're not seeing any signs of deviation from that. What we saw in disability is, in the second quarter, our elevated claims with two specialty customers. Those are accident-related, so nothing that would suggest a trend or something that would persist going forward. The disability and dental, from a PFO perspective, constitute about 2/3 of the non-medical health ratio. The remaining third are other products. Think about A&H and hospital indemnity, critical illness, and other products. And those products tend to fluctuate within a certain band in any given quarter. What was unusual in the second quarter is that we had elevated loss ratios, and so everything went in one direction. Typically, they tend to offset.
Again, there's no connection between these sort of the experience when it comes to these products. There's nothing macro that would suggest that this is a trend that should persist. So our expectation here is that this will moderate in the coming quarters. And that's why, as I said earlier, our expectation is that we're going to see a 200 basis points improvement in the ratio in the third and a further 200 basis points improvement in the fourth.
Great. Moving to the Retirement & Income Solutions business, there's a few different products that are within that business. Can you talk about where you're seeing the best growth opportunities right now?
Yeah, I'm really pleased with the growth that we're seeing in RIS. And I think we're benefiting from the diversification that we have within RIS in terms of our product set there. That's leading to strong but also very balanced growth, I would say. We expect to be within the 3%-5% liability balances growth range for the year, even after ceding the $10 billion to liabilities to Chariot Re. In the second quarter, we were at 6% in terms of total liability balance growth. And I think the nice thing that we see is that we see strength in our spread earning generating businesses such as PRT and structured settlements, as well as our fee earning businesses such as U.K. Longevity Re and stable value. And we continue to see a healthy pipeline going into the second half of the year as well.
If you consider some of the demographic and retirement trends as well, I think the outlook for this business in terms of ongoing growth is quite positive.
Can you discuss in that business the outlook for spreads, excluding variable investment income, and then just how to think about the potential impact of more Fed interest rate cuts or the shape of the yield curve and how that could influence where spreads end up coming out?
Yeah, sure. So in the second quarter, spreads were around 100 basis points, roughly. And that's pretty much on target with what we projected in the first quarter earnings call. And we talked about there being a stabilization of spreads. We had a number of caps roll off last year. We thought this was probably a good landing area. We did say that in the third quarter, there tends to be a few basis points of seasonality for some real estate investments that we have. They tend to be hotels, and corporate events tend to lessen during that third quarter period of time. So all else equal, we would expect that to revert back to the roughly 100 basis points. Now, that's with the current forward curve. That's also with an inverted or flat curve, depending on how you look at it.
The reality is for our collective business, which, going back to Michel's point, has a diversification of product both in terms of duration, and the short end of those products, the shorter products, I should say, tend to do better when there's a steepening of the curve, right, and so lower short end of the rates, higher longer end of the rates. That tends to be kind of the sweet spot for RIS generally. Sometimes there's some transitional pieces to that. I wouldn't consider them to be material, but overall, a Fed cut and a steepening of the curve is beneficial for that business.
Got it. You talked a little bit about Chariot Re, which is your new Bermuda-based reinsurer. Can you talk a little bit about the motivations you had to launch Chariot Re and also just how do you anticipate utilizing it going forward?
Yeah, and I'd go back to Michel's opening remarks on the strategy. And if you think through the four strategic initiatives there, one of which is retirement. And that's a function of trends. And given the higher interest rates, given the demographic shifts that are occurring globally, certainly for us, that's RIS in Japan, as well as using our capabilities in the U.K. Those trends are what caused us to think through the formation of Chariot Re. We're doing that with our partner, General Atlantic. We launched at 2021. Super excited about the launch, $10 billion out of the gate. The other thing you kind of to remember, that's scale, right? I mean, it's $10 billion. And people would, I think, be pretty happy to get to $10 billion sometimes when they start these sidecars. So already a sizable entity. And this allows us to augment our existing capital generation.
Up until now, our annual capital generation was sufficient to fund our growth. Based on the trends, we believe there is more growth opportunity out there, and supplementing our own capital generation with third-party capital helps us take advantage of that trend, and then at the same time, we get to leverage the collective best-in-class asset management capabilities between us and General Atlantic to produce a unique value prop, and that ultimately helps us also fund the growth of another strategic initiative of growing our asset management business, so again, it just fits nicely into that New Frontier strategy and set of initiatives and off to a great start, and looking forward to continuing to grow that.
Let's shift to the international businesses, starting with Asia. You've seen a pickup in growth this year, really, especially in Japan and Korea. Can you talk about what's driving that and just how are these markets evolving and reacting to higher interest rates and a continued aging of the population?
Yeah, I'm really pleased with the growth that we're seeing so far in 2025 in Asia overall, and I would say in particular in Japan and Korea. To the point that you made, I think what we're seeing in terms of demographic and economic shifts provide a good sort of tailwind, if you like, for growth in those markets going forward. We posted a 10% increase in sales in the first half of the year in Japan and over 40% in Korea. And for Asia overall, for the full year, we think we'll be at the top end of our sort of outlook of mid- to high-single digits there. What sort of drove the momentum in the second quarter in Japan in particular is the stabilization in the yen exchange rates. So that benefited our foreign exchange denominated products in Japan. We saw very strong demand.
Provided the yen continues to be stable, we think that demand should continue. Korea is a really good example of us taking the know-how, expertise that we've built in Japan or in any given market and transferring it over. Because again, there, the growth has been fueled by foreign exchange products. Sort of we honed this expertise in Japan, and now we're able to leverage it in Korea, which again goes to showcase, I think, the importance of what we call one MetLife and this ability to transfer capabilities from one market to the other. I think what we're likely to continue to see in Japan, in particular, with inflation coming back into the picture, potentially higher rates, is this shift away from cash and bank deposits into market-linked instruments.
This will play out over time, but I think this will be beneficial to the industry as a whole, and I think to MetLife in particular, given the strength that we have as a leading player in that market with a strong brand, as well as our strong distribution and product capabilities as well.
I guess the other side of the sales equation is you've seen some volatility in policyholder surrenders in Japan. Can you talk about what you've seen and just how has it come through and impacted your financial results?
Yeah, with the more stable yen, we've seen a drop in surrender activity in the first half of 2025. And we think that's likely to persist for the remainder of the year. Whereas this sort of has a somewhat of a near-term impact in terms of lower earnings from surrenders. If we compare it to higher levels last year, this is, I would argue, this is a good thing in the medium to long run because better persistency translates into sort of margin improvement over time and more earnings over time as well. So all in all, I think this is really what's caused the sort of somewhat of an impact to earnings, I would say. However, we see it as a positive, and we expect it will continue for the balance of the year.
Got it. Then Japan is finally implementing the Economic Solvency Ratio or ESR next year. Can you talk a little bit about how that may impact MetLife or if at all?
Yeah, I think for us, as we've talked about, we were very supportive of moving to an economic framework. We felt, quite honestly, SMR created some volatility that wasn't really reflective of economic value at times. And so we were a proponent of the move. Look, I think there are a few things here or there that I know the industry is still talking about and maybe won't get implemented right away, but maybe there's some time. But ultimately, we think that all in all, we're fairly pleased with where it landed. We've always kind of operated under an economic framework when thinking about pricing product and things like that. So I'd say the transition has been fairly seamless. I put this in almost like a BAU category for us.
Quite honestly, if we thought that there were some challenges, we probably would have held back on some things this year. But it really has had no impact on dividend capacity, dividend remittances. We've continued to remit dividends this year. We will continue to do so based on what we see going forward. And all in all, based on the prescribed regulatory framework, we think this will just kind of be a BAU matter for us.
Got it. In Latin America, I guess really ever since we've emerged from the pandemic, you've had very strong growth momentum. Can you talk a little bit more about what's driving that? And do you see any risks to that slowing down, or do you think it can continue at this type of level?
Thank you for mentioning that. Again, I think LATAM is sort of an underappreciated business for MetLife. As you referenced, it's a business that's performed phenomenally, I would say, in the last several years from a top-line perspective, as well as from an earnings perspective. And our earnings have more than doubled since the pandemic. And we have line of sight to $1 billion in earnings as we look ahead here. And so I think it's going to be hard to ignore LATAM going forward. We have a very strong presence in the region, a strong footprint when it comes to the markets that we're in. We're leaders in Mexico and Chile with also a strong presence and growing fast in Brazil as well. 30 million customers in the region and very well diversified from a distribution and product perspective as well.
To give you a sense of that, we're leaders in employee benefits in both Mexico and Chile. We have 10,000 agents supporting our face-to-face distribution in the region, and third-party distribution, where we distribute through banks, utility companies, retailers, and the like, has been our fastest growing channel. We have about 100 partners in the region, and like I said, this is growing fast for us. It's also complemented by the emergence of digital natives, especially digital banks, digital e-commerce providers, and we saw that phenomenon sort of first in Brazil a few years ago, and now it's spreading across the region, as a matter of fact, even to other parts of the world, and we had invested early on in a capability which we call Accelerator. We also gave everyone the chance to test drive Accelerator at Investor Day.
It's an embedded digital embedded insurance platform that integrates seamlessly with these native digital banks and financial services companies. Here we're seeing, again, tremendous traction. We already have 21 partners on the platform, five million customers already on it in a couple of years' time. The expectation is that these numbers are going to grow significantly going forward here. We feel really good about our footprint, how we're positioned in LATAM. I think we stand to benefit also from market dynamics there, economic, demographic, and the like. Still relatively low levels of insurance penetration, I would add. Feel good about the sustainability of our growth trajectory there.
In EMEA, it's your smallest region, but the earnings have been coming in quite a bit better than you expected, at least coming into this year. What's been causing that? And have you changed your outlook at all going forward now?
We keep kidding our regional president for EMEA that one of these days she will get a question on an earnings call. Hasn't happened yet, but very pleased with EMEA's performance so far this year. Very strong volume growth, PFO growth. And we've seen good momentum from a PFO perspective for, I would say, several quarters now. This is starting to find its way into earnings more rapidly, which is a positive. And this is really across the region. So it's not one country or one product that are responsible for this. It's broad-based, which is also, I think, helpful. And our expectation is that EMEA will come in above the 70-75 quarterly outlook that we had shared in February, not sort of at the Q2 level, but certainly above the 70-75 level that we had shared.
MetLife Investment Management, or MIM, was highlighted as a key area of potential growth, reaching an inflection point at your Investor Day, and then afterwards, you announced the acquisition of PineBridge. Can you give us an update on how MIM is performing and also how the PineBridge deal will fit in?
Yeah. And as we mentioned earlier, this is one of the strategic initiatives for New Frontier. And look, it's an already scaled top 25 asset manager with unique capabilities in public fixed income, private credit, and real estate. That's kind of our broad platform. And as you mentioned, we announced the acquisition of PineBridge, which is a really exciting thing for us. We're hoping for that to close in early fourth quarter. We're already kind of gearing up to welcome the team. And I've already met a number of folks, and just what a great cultural fit. Also brings complementary investment capabilities in the private credit side and public fixed income. And then geographically, they have a great presence outside the U.S., in addition to some great products here in the U.S. And again, that helps us scale our global platform distribution capabilities as well.
So we're super excited about the growth aspects of that acquisition, and we're looking forward to bringing them into the MetLife family.
Just last question on capital management. How are you prioritizing M&A, buybacks, dividends at this point? And then also, should we think about any potential further divestiture activity?
Sure. I think we have a well-established framework when it comes to M&A in particular that we've sort of applied consistently over a long period of time. And so there will be no change when it comes to that. First, I would say we want to continue to support organic growth, especially that we see good opportunities to do so. When it comes to M&A, we look at strategic fit as a key criteria. Cultural fit is very important as well. And then the type of opportunities that meet a number of financial criteria that we've set, mainly being accretive when it comes to EPS, to free cash flow, to ROE. And obviously, any transaction would have to clear a minimum adjusted risk hurdle rate that we set as well.
We typically look for complementary capabilities, whether it's product, whether it's sort of an investment from an investment perspective, something that would help accelerate revenue growth, and again, fit in nicely with our core business, with what we consider as core. From a divestiture perspective, I would say, and again, we've built a track record here. We're going to continue to sort of look at our portfolio through the lens of strategic fit and whether a market or a business continues to meet our expected return hurdles. If that's not the case, then we would take appropriate action. As far as dividend and buybacks, I would say for dividends, we want to continue to have an attractive dividend yield that sort of continues to grow, call it in line with earnings growth. On buybacks, again, I think we built a track record here.
I think for the last few years, we've averaged $3-$3.3 billion in buybacks annually. This year, we had our foot on the gas pedal in the first quarter with $1.4 billion. We're at $2.1 through July, and we had pointed to a more measured pace for the balance of the year, which is still sort of our view here, so that's a little bit on sort of capital management.
Great. We're going to wrap it up there. Thank you very much to Michel and John and the MetLife team.
Thank you.
Thanks.