All right, thank you, everyone, and thank you to Unum for joining us today. So we have Rick McKenney, CEO, and Steve Zabel, CFO of Unum Group. Thank you, guys, again, for being here. So I figured we could maybe kick off with sort of a broad 2026 outlook overview, and, and your confidence heading into the year.
Great. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate UBS for having us at the conference today. We've had a good series of meetings over the course of the day. We meet with people. Good to have a chance to chat about where we are going into the year. We released our earnings and our outlook on Friday, so this is relatively fresh to go through that. Talked about a number of things that we're looking forward to as we get into 2026. I'd start first with the top-line expectations for the company, continuing to go premium as we have over the last several years. We talked about growing premium in a range of 4%-7%.
When you think about that, off a $10 billion base, we see good growth coming over the course of 2026 across many of our lines. That actually translates through with good margins into an earnings per share growth in the 8%-12% range. And so as we look out over the course of 2026, we're actually happy with the trajectory we've got. And I think we'll do a lot of the things that, you know, you've actually seen from Unum out over the last several years, including good capital generation that we've had, and we expect to return that capital to shareholders through both dividends and share repurchase to the tune of about 100% of what we are actually earning over the course of the year.
And so we think that's a good way to be shareholder-friendly as we look at deploying that capital we've earned on very good business. I think our excitement comes out of we had some good momentum on the top line coming out of the fourth quarter. And so we look to continue those relationships, leveraging the investments we've made over the last several years and continue to take that into 2026 and beyond.
Great. Thank you. Maybe drilling down into group disability. I think that, you know, one of the bigger questions and themes that we talk about is we believe the business to be cyclical. But there's also, you know, developing market dynamics, of course, competition. You had mentioned a point of pricing in 2025. Just curious what you're seeing in terms of claim activity and market dynamics and what gives you confidence in your target.
Sure. Maybe I'll start with the overall market and turn to Steve to talk about some of the specific dynamics. I mean, I think the important thing when you think about our Group disability business, it's part of an overall package that we bring to employers today, so it's not just about the singular group disability case, but it's importantly, it's been one of our strengths for a long period of time. When we look at the market today, particular to disability, but even more broadly across group benefits, we like our positioning overall, and we're finding the market to be actually rational in terms of the pricing that we see out there across the competition.
It is a competitive market, no doubt about it, but as long as we're all within a range of pricing that makes sense to our customers, we think we'll do very well, given the connections that we've invested in directly to the employer's HRIS systems, and the other pieces. So we feel good about the competitive environment, how we compete and going to market. Maybe, Steve, you can talk about some of the product dynamics that we're seeing.
Yeah. No, that's great, and it kind of takes back to 2024, when we saw really an evolution of some of our experience within Group Disability. We had very low incidents, lower than what our expectations would have been, and then also saw a continuation of our recovery rates. And that combined actually got us to a benefit ratio that was in the high 50s. And as we were coming into 2025, we knew that that wasn't sustainable, and the guidance that we gave to the market was something that would be more in the low 60% benefit ratio range. And that's really how the year in total played out. The full- year benefit ratio was around 62.5%. It was a tad bit higher in the fourth quarter.
We saw some specific things around levels of mortality in that block of business. But as we look forward, we really do feel like the claims experience that we've seen over the last year will continue into next year. The one thing that we do think is we're gonna adjust prices a little bit as we go through the year, and so we did set a range of 62%-64% for the benefit ratio for Group Disability in 2026. The other thing that we get asked a lot is, "Okay, so you had a really good year in 2024. You saw a little bit of normalization in 2025.
What, what, what's the trajectory of the benefit ratio and what, what that might look like?" 'Cause the history of that block is it had a benefit ratio that was more in the low 70s if you go pre-pandemic. And so we'd ask a lot, you know, just where do we think the terminus point on this might be? And so we thought it'd be good last week to give a little bit of clarity, at least how we're feeling about it, and that's as we look over the next several years, we do think the normalization will be right around 65%. That's gonna occur over 2-3 years, so it's gonna take some time, and that's mostly gonna just be driven by pricing and what we think we'll need to do, both with new business pricing, but then also as we think about renewals.
So, we feel good about that. That still generates a 20+ return on equity on that business line, which we're really happy about, obviously. Also gives us what we need from a pricing strategy to really continue to grow, like Rick said, because we do think that our business is we can grow by 4%-7% longer- term. We're in the bottom end of that range in 2025, but we definitely are building momentum as we get to 2026.
Is there. Maybe just drilling down onto that. So there's the pricing dynamic. Claim activity, though, is there anything in the data or the experience, you know, this year, if you were to ask?... why now, right? In terms of getting more comfort, I know we have the pricing, but is there anything that you're seeing underlying, you know, in claim activity that's giving you more confidence?
Yeah, no, I think we've seen really consistent claim experience over the last couple of years, specifically from a recovery perspective. And if you go back to some of the historical benefit ratios, really the step change has been improvement in our recovery rates, and that's the know-how that we bring, you know, to this discipline every day back at the home office. It's setting expectations with claimants and employers about, for the specifics around every claim, how we can get that person back to work in the most effective way. And so we saw really a pretty consistent improvement over the last really 10 years at this point, that we think is sustainable. Incidence has bounced around a little bit. It was really good in 2024, more even with expectations, probably in 2025, which we think will continue.
Then kind of early days in January, we mentioned this on the call. Really what we're seeing in January is pretty supportive of the outlook that we put out there and the benefit ratio range that we put out there on our call Friday.
Okay. Pivoting, we can come back to the U.S. core business, but pivoting to Closed Block, that was another, you know, piece of news that, you know, you guys put out on Friday, fully closed and below the line.
Yep.
Wondering if you could sort of walk us through the rationale and the mechanics of this?
Sure. Yeah, and I'll probably just start with our Closed Block strategy and how we run that business, specifically long-term care, because there's a few things about it that will create volatility with just quarter-to-quarter earnings. We feel great about our investment portfolio. That will continue as far as how we have our asset allocations to support the liability, but there can be period-to-period fluctuations, specifically in the alternative asset portfolio. And then we'll also continue to work towards shrinking the footprint of that block, and either through transactions inorganically, that can create volatility period to period. It can change margins on that line of business. But then also, as we work with Group cases specifically, we have had some terminations over the years, which can create some fluctuations. And so that strategy is not going to change going forward.
But what we'd like to do is really be able to present our core businesses for what they are, which is a very, stable, consistent generator of cash that's available to redeploy, and do that so that the market can really digest the performance of that on a standalone basis. And so what we're going to do going forward is have our core businesses and our Corporate segment, which in essence is debt service and some of the income on our holding company cash, be what we report on from an operating earnings, an operating EPS, how we give guidance, all of those things. Then when it comes to the Closed Block, it'll be below the line as a special item.
It will be in all of our reporting, but we're going to really talk to it, I think, how the market looks at it, of what, what are the capital needs there and just what are the capital dynamics, what are the protections we have on the balance sheet, how are we executing against our LTC strategy? And we'll continue to do that, but we'll do it in a way that will really isolate the ongoing core operations and the performance from what's going on with the Closed Block. And I think that's, I think that's how the market values us, of the traditional multiple against our really good core businesses, and then any capital requirements that there might be for LTC. So we're just going to begin reporting that way. But our strategy hasn't changed.
Our investment, allocation and portfolio management hasn't changed, our risk management hasn't changed, and the fact that we want to reduce that block, that has not changed.
To that end as well, we also talked about last week that ending the year, the protections behind that Closed Block of business between reserves and capital that we have at our entity, Fairwind, stands at about $2.2 billion.
Yep.
So the protections that Steve talked about are there. They're consistent, and we think they're there to protect us from any adverse deviation we might see over the coming years. And importantly, we've said we will not put more capital in that Closed Block. Three years ago, we said that statement. We still hold to that today.
Great. In terms of schematics, I think one of the things that, you know, is kind of lingering is just wondering from an earnings perspective, GAAP component, right? If I were to just delete the Closed Block earnings from adjusted earnings, not fully getting to sort of the guidance range. So I was just wondering the, the different components of that, if you could briefly speak of that.
Yeah, definitely when you think about kind of the base of 2025, it in essence is we're not really restating. We reset what the EPS would be on the new basis and gave that in the earnings release and on the call, so you had a good baseline for the 8%-12%. We're doing a couple other things in conjunction with making this change. One is we've had some historical transactions which create for GAAP deferred gains and losses that get amortized in over time. We are going to take a piece of that related to the individual disability income part of our LTC transaction last year, and we're going to put that kind of with the business line, which is in our recently issued business. It's part of supplemental and voluntary.
So that's a little bit of additional earnings. But then we also thought about kind of how we think about excess capital and also how we think about debt service. And we want to keep the income on that excess capital, even though it's behind the Closed Block, kind of as part of our core operation allocation, but we're also carrying the full load of our debt service on all the debt, because when you think about the cash generation to pay for and serve that debt, that's all in our core operations. So that better matches off kind of the total economics of what we're doing there. And honestly, there wasn't a lot of value created from just the absolute GAAP earnings.
What's more important is we're able to articulate just the stability of the balance sheet there and just the strategy that we have to mitigate the risk of that Block.
So, so if I think about it, right, we have less GAAP versus stat confusion going forward. We have less questions at fireside chats. And then, in terms of the GAAP optics of a potential risk transfer, you know, putting those together, and then if I think about the reserve actions from last quarter too, just curious sort of how does this what does this change, you know, going forward as I think about risk transfer or other sort of, you know, potential activity? Or is it more of just a cleanup?
Well, when I, when I look at it, it's, it's as Steve said, our strategy has not changed, and so it doesn't change. And what we're trying to do across and managing very closely the block of business does not change in terms of our desire to actually use reinsurance to remove this risk overall from the balance sheet. And so I don't think it's, it's really that. I think the, the things you said are really important, and, and Steve's articulating as well, is because this is a special item below the line, we won't get into all the detailed nuances, which really don't matter ultimately to the longer- term strength of this block of business, which, which we would do on a quarterly basis.
I think that's really good for us to be spending time, and as you say, a fireside chat, to talk about the core business and how excited we are about growing the company and doing the things we've been doing for a long period of time, and really having the investor community be focused on our growth there at the returns that are industry-leading to take the company forward.
Great. So pivoting back to the core business now. Leave Management. You know, I think that's been sort of a topic for a couple of years now. Wondering if you guys could update us on the, on the landscape kind of in that world, in that industry.
Yeah, sure. So Leave Management's been important to us. We've been talking about it now for several years. We started investing in platforms behind, managing leaves for employers, going back 6, 7 years in terms of the overall. And when you think of leaves that are happening, it really makes a lot of sense for us to be managing that on behalf of our employers. We do so at scale. We can do it if, if it's a, employer that has people in different states, we understand the requirements of that. And what you've seen over the last couple of years is really a proliferation of new leave types, whether that's paternity leave, elder care leave, many, many different types, different in each of the 50 states. And so they.
You know, employers need somebody to manage this piece for them, and it leads very well right into our short-term disability, long-term disability. So it fits in the overall package, and we've invested in the technology to do a really good job at that. What you've seen over the last, it's actually been a number of years, but you're hearing about it more today, are states that are putting in Leave programs. You have a number of them out there today that that mandate, that people will need to use Leave Management. It could be done by the state, or it might be done by the private sector. And so when there's a private sector choice, we want to be the ones to to manage that as well. And so you're hearing more about it. We've been in it for a while.
I think we lead on that front. We have over 2 million people on our Leave platform, our new Leave platform today. We do it at scale, and we want to continue to see this be a growth part of our business. And the important thing when you weave it into the overall offering that we have is if you're a human resource professional, this is a big item that you've got to manage on a daily basis. And if we can do an excellent job at this, the conversations about adding other types of services for them, including our Disability products, dental insurance, life insurance, all those things make sense in the overall bundle.
Leave, we think, is a really important entry into the business, and it's something we've been active on now for the last several years, even though you're probably hearing more about it from a market perspective, you know, over the last 1 or 2.
Maybe I'm going to skip over a question and go to the technology side because you mentioned it. You know, on, on your earnings call, you sort of mentioned some of your new technologies and digital capabilities, helping close ratios. Wondering if you could help us. You know, you and I sat down a year ago, talked about this a little bit, but today, right, thinking about it from both sides, the Claim Management, new business, but new technologies that you know.
Yeah, so I talked a little about the new technology side on the, on the Leave Management piece. That's one of those technologies that connects with the customers. But maybe, Steve, you could talk about our HR Connect platform, which really embeds us in, in the HR technology.
Yeah. Kind of our guiding light is to look at each market that we're in and each jurisdiction and really think about what do we need to solve for from a employer and employee perspective. And we've identified a few things that are real pain points. Leave Management's one, so we've developed, you know, our own state-of-the-art platform there. Just the kind of interface that you have between carrier and employer, just around kind of billing and who's actually insured and what benefits that they're provided, we've developed a solution where we're, in essence, in the ecosystem of these employers' HRIS systems, whether it's Workday, UKG, ADP. And we're able to, in essence, give an employee an experience through their own HR system when they do business with us, and we provide the benefits for them.
That also carries through to the employer and how they can manage their workforce. In essence, they can do that through their own system, but still communicate real time with us because of that connection. So that's been a real win. If you get that and Total Leave together, that can really be a game changer from an HR professional's perspective. But then we're doing some other things just around your basic portal interactions that we have with insureds. If you switch over to Colonial, we've spent a lot in technology, a platform called Agent Assist, which really helps those agents not only get leads, cultivate leads, organize themselves, give them tools, give them approaches to be able to sell into the small employee part of the market and make them more productive, more effective.
Then you go over to the U.K., we have a platform called Help@h and. It's something that really became a problem for employers when the national health system over there became very, very difficult to work with. Employees were not able to actually get in to see physicians, even just general practitioners, to just care for kind of their basic needs. This is, in essence, a virtual doc that we provide to those employers that have our other products and services. And that's been a real home run with those employers to be able to add value to their employees.
And so we kind of look at each market that we're in to see how can technology be implemented, not just for technology, but to increase either the productivity of our folks or the experience for both our employer and our employee clients. And so I think we've really made strides. We're leading the market in a lot of those areas, and it continues to just create a stickier client, which is very important as you move from wanting to have it be a pricing discussion every time, you know, you're talking to an employer, to be more of an experience discussion and just how they and their employees experience us as a company.
I would just add to it, I know we have some of our team listen to the call, so I wanna be inclusive across all the different things we're doing.
Great.
We've got Broker Connect that we have out there.
Right.
Across in the U.K., Unum Connect, MyUnum here in the U.S., Gather, helping our folks across Colonial Life. So technology has been a big investment across the board, as Steve said, to work with our customers, our HR departments, and to help people to manage their leaves in a very seamless way.
I thought you were gonna say Unum GPT maybe.
No.
But that is sort of my next question is, you know, and that it layers on to the technology discussion, but obviously, AI is a fascinating tool. Wondering, it's probably not integrated across the entire spectrum of all the products, maybe, but curious, you know, where do you see it as having the most impact at Unum, and then for these, you know, products?
Yeah, it's a great question, Mike. We think about across two different pillars. One is kind of on that go-to-market strategy, how we're using AI to connect with our customers in a seamless way, a very, very quick way. The second piece is how do we use it with our employees to drive efficiency and effectiveness as you bring the knowledge base to them? We've been investing in AI for the last 5+ years with a dedicated team that we've had. That dedicated team has really morphed into focusing on our most complex and challenging issues that are somewhat unique to our industry or to Unum. And I think what we've embedded over the last couple of years are also using third-party solutions to integrate into our overall servicing platform.
So that's really been an important new piece that we've had to bring those third parties in with the knowledge and the know-how. And then, of course, leveraging the technology coming off of the hyperscalers are all part of the ecosystem that we're driving from an AI perspective.
Great. And I should note, if anyone in the audience has any questions, feel free to raise your. Oh, we've got one question from Ron right here.
There's a microphone coming to you, Ron.
Yeah, just a sec. Sorry.
So earlier, you talked about how the 65 loss ratio may be a lid for the next few years. If we get unemployment up to 5.5%-6%, do you think the full year loss ratio could still, forget quarterly volatility, could still stick at that 65 or a garden variety slowdown, you can still hit that?
Yeah. I mean, we've seen over cycles that unemployment doesn't necessarily drive fluctuations in the Benefit Ratio. We might see a little bit of a tick-up in submissions, but these are all adjudicated. They need to be claim eligible. They need to have the right diagnoses and the right occupations to actually be eligible to go on claims. So we actually don't see a lot of fluctuation in our actual paid that we accept liability for those claims. And so I don't see that as being a big risk. When we think about unemployment levels, probably the thing we're looking at the most is just what that means to employment roles out there with customers. And we've seen through the pandemic that we can still grow the company in those types of environments.
But at the same time, that can be a little bit of a headwind, if unemployment levels get, you know, higher than maybe what we would expect coming into the year. But our expectation is pretty consistent with what you'd see consensus out there, coming out of different firms, and we still feel really good about a 4%-7% top line growth rate.
Yeah. We do, we do in our group lines, expect a kind of a natural growth that we talk about that's coming off of employment levels and payrolls, because also it's about wage inflation as well. So, between those two, it could be somewhere in the range of around 2.5%. That's just for our group lines. When you blend it into the overall, you know, it's gonna be more in that one, maybe 2% lift or headwind. We've seen the lift as well, so if you go back to when we saw some pretty rapid wage inflation, we got a little bit of a tailwind there.
Yeah.
And so that's how we think about the dynamics of the employment market and what that might do.
Maybe just extending on the sort of economic scenario in the U.S., you guys touch a lot of different employers. Wondering if you could help us understand their sentiment, you know, and any sort of gauge on their view of their labor supply and demand these days.
Yeah, so when you think about our company, we're kind of after that stage. So I think our insights into that are probably less than others because we're dealing with people once the people are on the books and making sure that they're being protected along the way. But what we've seen in the underlying data is actually that natural growth that we've talked about, that lift between wage inflation and payrolls, has been pretty consistent over that period of time. So the sentiment piece is a little bit harder for us to judge, but certainly, people are very focused on the benefits. And that's one of the things that came out of the pandemic: employers realized they need to make sure there's some base level of coverage for their employees in the event of a Disability, and importantly, in the event of death.
So I think when you think about the desire to have a good benefits package, that persists regardless of what sentiment looks like. People know that that's table stakes. If you wanna have a good workforce, you've got to make sure you have good benefits.
Thinking about the topic of GLP-1s and sort of life expectancies, super fascinating, I think. Can you share your latest views, you know, on those developments and any other health advancements and how they can impact the business?
Yeah, I'll hit on that one. It's really consistent with how we think about all kinds of different medical advancements. First of all, usually anything that is pro-health and, you know, pro the population at large being healthier, that's going to benefit our business. By nature, a lot of our claims are going to be related to cardiac issues and other things that definitely drugs like GLPs, you know, can increase the health in those areas for the general population. But I'd also say consistent with any other types of medical trends that you may see, until we really see it come through our insured population and actually see it in our experience, it's more of we're monitoring. We're not thinking about it from a pricing perspective or kind of setting long-term expectations.
It would need to really work its way into our customer base and into our experience before we would change our viewpoint of how our businesses are going to run economically. So we're encouraged. I think, you know, it's a great thing for society over the long- term to reduce the obesity and some of these other issues. But at the same time, I'd say we're cautious to really see how that plays out over a longer period of time.
And I think in a general sense, if you think about a healthier population is good across our business lines.
Yeah.
Whether it's Group Disability, long-term care even, and even group life-
Group life
... a healthier population is a good thing for us and for the individuals.
Yeah. No, it's, it's definitely fascinating. I would also open up the line digitally for any questions, too. So pivoting to capital, you know, you guys bought back $1 billion in 2025, another authorization for 2026. I do think that we should acknowledge just, you know, the magnitude of that as being historic, you know, and occurring at the same time as you guys executing historic actions on the long-term care business. But just wondering if you could, you know, talk a bit about why you're still projecting to end 2026 well above your targets, and the outlook for capital deployment.
Yeah, sure. Let me just talk about the capital generation that we've seen. I mean, the good part about our company is the capital generation that we have, and then the ultimate conversion has been very strong. And so it was a very active year in terms of looking at a number of different types of transactions, reinsurance, et cetera. But I think also through that time, the capital generation has been excellent, overall, and so we were happy in 2025 to deploy $1 billion back to shareholders through both $1 billion of share purchase. But I also wouldn't minimize the $300 million of dividends as well, and so, so kind of a 100% conversion back to our shareholders. The other piece you mentioned is we still sit on a very strong capital position.
Ended the year, 430 RBC. Actually, 440 RBC.
Four forty.
Yeah, I don't want to leave that 10 point.
Yep.
440 RBC and cash levels of $2.2 billion. We had $2.2 billion- $2.3 billion, so we're really strong from a capital perspective, and we'll have to look at how we do that. Maybe, Steve, you can talk about our view into 2026 and how we see that playing out.
Yeah. I mean, really, our statutory cash generation is pretty consistent as we look into 2026, as, as what we accomplished in 2025, and, and really pretty consistent with how we think about margins within the GAAP earnings for the company. It is kind of interesting. If you kind of go back to pre-pandemic and kind of all the noise there and, and the adjustments we made to our capital deployment, we used to buy back about 400 million of shares on a pretty routine basis. And so we're at a point where we're buying back more than double that, and I think that's a real reflection of the growth in the capital generation of this company, of where we were going into the pandemic and where we are today.
I think we have a lot of flexibility right now. 2026, the guidance we gave would be another year of 100% conversion of cash generation back to shareholders. We think that's a really nice level for us right now, and obviously, something that we'll continue to evaluate as time goes on, but really happy with where we are today.
Oh, do we have a question? Oh, yeah, we're-
One more question, please.
Yeah, go ahead.
So I know, Rick and Steve, you guys aren't in the habit of taking victory laps, but the move from 20- 80 in the stock inside of five years is all about the execution of you two and the team under you, obviously. It's one of the great recovery stories. And under the caption of what will you do for me next? For those of us who have followed you since your 1989 IPO, we remember you trading at 12x instead of 8x. So there's one more 50% move in the stock, in my humble opinion, all things equal. If only 20 points of that will come from long-term care, my math, not your math, the other 30 points of multiple expansion, where should that be coming from? Where is the market not giving that to you now?
Where do you think it might come from over the next several years?
Yeah, I mean, I would look at the market representing... I mean, one of the things is the action we took around the Closed Block. So I'm not sure the rest of our business really was representing the multiple that it deserved because of the overshadowing of the Closed Block. We're hoping some of these moves will actually take that away. And so as we see the growth in the business, the underlying returns, and the ROE being generated by our business, it dictates a much higher multiple. And so we're looking forward to be able to talk more about that, and that's our expectation over the course of 2026. But it's going to come from our core lines of business.
that we have today have been running very well, and they'll get more attention as we look forward.
Yeah, and I also think as we build momentum just around growth generally, and fourth quarter was a good example in Colonial, where that's been kind of a slower recovery than maybe our Unum U.S. and our U.K. business coming out of the pandemic. You're really starting to see more growth momentum in all of these businesses, and so I actually think Colonial is one that's probably undervalued right now, just as, you know, we're building back up to the growth that we had pre-pandemic there. And so I think we just need to keep executing on the strategy, continue to do what we've been doing, and ultimately, I think, you know, we'll be able to show the growth potential and the margins that, you know, I think will get the market to a different place.
Thanks, Ron. That was a, that was a good one. Maybe on, on growth, right? And we haven't really talked about this, but... and I would imagine your stance is similar, but inorganic growth opportunities, not a ton of assets out there. But in terms of bolt-ons, anything changed in the last year in terms of your view or what you might look to?
Yeah, so we've been pretty consistent over the last several years that, to do a transaction where we bring in something similar we have, a consolidating transaction is not that exciting to us. We wanna do something that helps us to grow, and so the places that we're looking are gonna be more of the capability-driven growth that we've seen. And actually, we did two, two transactions last year.
So, we actually bought Generali's U.K. business to consolidate with ours, and we think we can run that well and use that partnership. The other is we bought a company called Beanstalk Benefits. Back to the integration around leave management and other pieces that come in, it really is to work with our customers as they go through, for example, a leave process, to bring them the right surrounding needs that they have, vendors, et cetera, to make that offering even better. And so we'll look at those type of transactions. They weren't needle movers in terms of the capital outlay, but we think they can integrate really well to what we're trying to accomplish. Okay.
That's also a really good example of where some of the new AI technology can help the customer experience. That's one where we know what kind of leave the person is going out on, and it's almost like an embedded coach, where we can help them along the way and point them to not just all these solutions, but the most relevant solutions in one place, so that it makes their experience much more guided, much more seamless, and help them through, you know, whatever event they're going through in their own life. We think that's probably where the most opportunity is around bringing more services. The product set is pretty much set.
It's some of those services and bundling those in a way that we can kind of expose those at the right point in time because we know what their current situation is, and we can apply that guidance.
And, and the last piece I'd add, too, similar to I mentioned, the Generali deal last year, is we actually want to expand. A place we would look to acquire to get more scale would be in the U.K. and Poland. And so those are good businesses today. We just want them to be bigger, faster, because we think that we can execute. So we'll continually be in the market looking for how do we build those out through M&A.
Great. Just 'cause we have an extra minute here. In the U.S. business, outside of disability, we sort of spoke about the competitive dynamic, I think, in Disability. But if we think about, you know, supplemental and voluntary, I wouldn't, I wouldn't think there's a change in the level of competition in group life and AD&D, but just wondering if we could sort of touch on some of those non-disability areas from a competitive dynamic standpoint.
Yeah, I think it's as we talked a little bit about earlier, those things are brought out together in the market. And so if you look at particularly the group lines are together, leave management's a key lead into some of those things, and then voluntary benefits can come along behind that as well as dental as part of the overall package as we go out to the customers. And so these are always competitive markets, but I think that if you do a good job with the overall package, you surround it with the right technology, and you bring the know-how and the employer centricity that we have and the employee's centricity, I think we'll continue to do a good job. So we're very competitive on each of those fronts.
We do a good job overall, but we're always looking for more growth in those areas.
Great. Any other questions in the audience? Well, I think that about sums it up.
Great. Any last words or?
Well, I'd just like to thank UBS for having us here. Thank you, Mike, for your support. Thanks for the questions from our audience, and thank you all for joining us today. So we'll look forward to seeing you in different events over the course of 2026.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.