Welcome back to the BofA Financial Service Conference. I guess I can call this the insurance sleeve. We're really pleased to have Voya be the company presenting today, mostly Q&A format. I'd like to introduce the people here on this riser with me right now. First of all, we have CEO Heather Lavallee, who started just this past year. A veteran at Voya for a very long time. I just want to read a few things. First of all, she worked at the CEO of the Wealth Solutions business prior to this, and she was the president of the company's tax-exempt markets previously, also the president of the employee benefits business now called Health Solutions of the company.
Before joining the company, she was at Mutual of Omaha and Sun Life New York. Last year, she was named Hartford Business Journal's Top 25 Women in Business. She's on the boards of the National Down Syndrome Society and Junior Achievement of Southwest New England. I want to point out also that we have Don Templin here, CFO since mid-November, joining from Marathon Petroleum and obviously bring a very different set of eyes to a investment management insurance business. Longtime veteran Michael Katz, who was instrumental in getting the IPO underway in 2013. Several in various positions doing CFO roles in various rating agency. Pretty much everything Mike's done at this company, so, I mean, there's no getting around it.
We're pleased to have them here. Just I want to make a note. I calculated last night a 24% compounded EPS growth over the past 5 years, and the company has a commitment to a 12%-17% continued growth over at least the next 2 years. I'm not sure that any of the other companies in my coverage universe have that same EPS CAGR. I could go check it out, I think it's number one. Maybe you guys know that already that's number one. It's really been a impressive journey that's not over with in any way. Let's begin. I want to encourage everyone at any time just to raise your hand. I don't stand on any ceremony.
I have questions, but I'd like to hear your questions, if possible. My, my first question, I call it bringing the whole firm. You know, I sometimes think about Voya as being four businesses I've read. It's articulated as three businesses. In my mind, the medical stop loss business and the group benefits business aren't exactly the same business, even though they're in one hierarchy, investment management and, of course, group retirement. Can you talk about how these, the pieces of these businesses fit together into one seamless, sort of enterprise, and how Voya, when it's selling, brings the whole firm to the clients?
Maybe I'll start and thank you for the kind introduction. When we think about the alignment of our businesses, if I actually take a step back and I think about where we've come from. Over the past 10 years since our IPO, we had first had one major phase, which was an ROE improvement story. We had the divestiture story, where we divested our life and our annuity businesses, our high capital intensive businesses, and those focused on the retail. That really shifted our strategy to focus on the workplace, on institutions, and our capital light high-growth businesses.
When you think about today, the businesses we're in with our Wealth, which is our retirement business, the Health business, which is our former employee benefit, our asset management business, and then the newest addition of benefits administration, these are really the core businesses that we have, and we're equally excited to be in all of them. To more specifically answer your question, I would say the alignment fits under three different dimensions. First, from a strategic perspective, it goes back to what I talked about of the focus in on the workplace. We have a path to be able to help people invest, protect, and plan. You think about all those different components.
Retirement hits the planning, the benefits hits the protection element of it, and then, of course, investing, thinking about helping people to be able to accumulate and generate returns. From a cultural perspective, we have a purpose as an organization where we talk about together we fight for everyone's opportunity for a better financial future. There isn't a day that goes by where we don't think about the businesses we're in, where we're investing, of how we are helping our customers grow and achieve all of those. Strategically, we very, very much like the businesses that we're in. Economically, they're all capital light. They have diversification of revenue. Some are spread-based, some are fee-based, some are equity market sensitive, others are not. There's a really nice diversification.
The last bit of your question, which is, you know, how do we think about going to market? Well, in each of these businesses, they have to stand on their own. When we're working with intermediaries or distribution, we think about we've got to win the RFP that's coming in, whether it's the investment mandate, the retirement, the health or the ben admin.
Over time, as we develop a relationship and do a good job with those clients, we have a philosophy around landing the client, expanding the relationship, which is bringing in additional solutions, and then deepening the relationship at the participant level. That's really kind of the mantra that we take, and we think that the best client for us to target is an existing satisfied client. That's really kind of how we think about this overall interlock between those businesses. Anything you want to add? No?
Perfect. Thanks.
Okay.
One thing I just want to understand, like, obviously businesses stand on their own, but between group retirement, group benefits and medical stop loss, if you're going to a educational institution or you're going to a employer, is the contact point for that sale oftentimes the same person? Or are there different? Does each of the businesses require different fingers into the organization or to make that relationship and broaden it?
It's a great question. On the workplace, on the employer side of it, we're typically talking to the same buyer, and the buyers are gonna be the CHRO and the CFO of a company. That even includes stop loss. Stop loss may be more of a financial decision, but it's usually gonna be made between the CFO and the benefits team.
Maybe a couple stats that I would give to kind of talk about the intersection between these businesses. Within our retirement business, roughly 40% of the assets are somehow tied to our investment management, whether that is underlying funds we have through our Voya Investment Management business or assets that are invested in our general account. There is a significant connectivity from, you know, the economics.
Within our health business, roughly 30%-40% of our health clients have more than 3 lines of health products with that same employer. We're essentially we may win the client on the stop loss, and you do a good job with that client, and over time, they're interested in other solutions that we bring to bear. Again, it really comes down to the relationship and the service over time. Where we've been most excited recently is this connection between the wealth business and the health business. The solution that sits squarely in the middle is HSA. HSA is a solution. You think about a health account savings, where we've embedded that into our retirement experience or our clients when they have multiple products with us.
They say they see their 401(k) accounts, they see their non-qual accounts, they see their HSA all into one. Our teams are really both people who are winning the new deals as well as those, the account management teams. They're working and supporting that client more holistically, we're bringing in the right level of specialization from each business line.
Focusing a little bit on group retirement, I mean, there's, you know, there's probably lots of markets. We can make the markets more narrow by 3 names, 401(k), 403(b), 457(b). I think that Voya punches definitely above its weight, certainly in 457(b). What are the different challenges in each of those marketplaces? In my mind, you know, I think about corporate America as maybe more free enterprise. I think about government as, you know, very controlling. Maybe that's the wrong way to think about it. Is the same skill set the same for all 3 of those things? How can Voya be successful in each of the markets?
We really like the mix of business we're in on the retirement side of it. The fact that we're serving clients of all sizes, from startups up to mega clients and across all the different sectors that you serve, corporate, government, education, healthcare. What's important, it goes back to just, you know, simply you've got to know your clients, and you've got to know their needs. Whether it's a corporate client or a government client, our ability to understand their unique need and be able to service them has really made the difference. Now, what we like about those sectors and where they're very complementary is, you know, take some of the questions we've been getting around the layoffs in different industries.
One of the things we talk about is, you know, more of the layoffs we've all been reading in the headlines are in the technology sector, large financial services institutions. We don't have a lot of those clients in our, in our mix. The corporate sector are more of service, transportation, oil and gas, legal, small, you know, smaller employers, very, very stable. Half of our retirement business is in what we call tax-exempt, so the government, education, healthcare. These are the sectors with very, very stable employment populations, frankly, growing in healthcare and education. They, they act as a really nice ballast across our book of business. In the tax-exempt client base, the average tenure of those clients is roughly 25+ years. You win a client, and maybe the needs are a little bit more complex.
We're gonna keep that client for a long period of time. Corporate clients are gonna tend to be with us for 10-12 years. again, we like that dynamic. The third and final piece that's a little bit different is within the tax-exempt space, roughly 20%-25% of their assets in those plans are usually gonna be in the general account or spread-based products. There's a bit more conservative nature of how they're investing. When you think about a revenue diversification that's opposite corporate markets, it's probably gonna be more like 5% of assets in those products. They serve really nicely.
It goes to the revenue diversification, the tenure of the clients, and if we're able to bring a new solution to market for government or client, believe it or not, we're actually able to leverage those in other sectors, quite nicely.
Shifting gears a little bit to health, and I think about, again, dividing it into one side stop loss and other side group benefits. I mean, you have a nice size health business, but if I break them up and I think about juggernauts like MetLife with huge health business and Voya is smaller by size in that group benefits category. Are there barriers to competing at your size? Are you at the right scale? Do you need more scale over time to deliver on the corporate goals?
Yes. As we look at our health business, and, you know, this has been one of our fastest-growing businesses inside of Voya. You look at our guidance, and we've talked about 7%-10% both premium and revenue growth, and we've actually exceeded our target. First, we like our organic growth within those businesses. You know, some of the companies that you mentioned within our health business, we tend to compete in the middle market space. And, you know, while we have capabilities that can serve upmarket, we think we're squarely in that. We're not a small market provider. We're within the employee benefits arena. You have different competitors serve different market segments. We have been able to compete.
We've been able to grow revenues, grow premiums, and if you look at our operating margins, we've been right within the guidance, coming in right around low 30%, which we think is a very healthy margin. We've managed expenses, invested in the business to grow. You know, to get specifics, our stop loss, we're a top 3 direct writer. We have been. We've been very consistent in our approach to underwriting. We don't need to lean in very heavily to continue to grow that business because there is a medical inflation trend that helps to grow revenues of that business. Our focus there is play our game, focus on underwriting, be disciplined. Voluntary, this is something we've been continuing to innovate in that product space for a number of years, and we have been a top 5 grower in that space.
It's both innovating on the product end but also around our claims experience. One of the other things you may see less of, but they're newer capabilities, is our broad health account savings as well as lead management. At the end of the day, we feel if we've got our ear to what the customers need, both from the end consumer and the employer, we think there's always gonna continue to be a really healthy market for us to continue the growth that we've delivered in the past several years.
In that 7%-10% target, I mean, in my mind, if we just assume that healthcare costs grow at GDP, so there's both, there's both unit and rate in that target over time. So let's just call it 3%-4% rate annually. I don't know if that's the right number, but let's say 3%-5% unit. How much of that unit growth is better penetration within customers you already have, and how much is taking share from people who already or from competitors who are in the market? You don't need to name names, but who are you taking share from?
If I, if I take a step back and kind of think about, you know, think about the question, if I go back to that 30%-40% of our health clients are, you know, we have more than 3 lines of health products with them. You can imagine that there's quite a bit of additional cross-selling we're doing within our health blocks. We have an established client. We're adding additional solutions on. That's currently something that's quite important for us. You know, if you look at our competitors by product segment, we're competing with different folks from the stop loss than we are from the voluntary and life and disability. You know, we're not chasing the large disability providers you think like a MetLife or Prudential.
We think that's actually quite healthy given the fact that we talk about the capital-light nature of the business, the high free cash flow generation. We don't have tail liability in our benefits business. When you think about the penetration we have, a lot of the success we've had in the voluntary has come from, you know, we work with 90-plus benefit administration partners, and the penetration and the participation there comes from the ability to make sure that our product is appropriately placed at the time of enrollment to be able to get that participation in, and then to do ongoing work and support.
You know, there isn't necessarily one client that one competitor that we're targeting it's just that overall discipline in terms of how we manage the businesses that I think has continued to have us resonate and compete across the markets we serve.
If you break it up into the products, Josh, the GDP growth product line is probably group life. We're essentially growing that product line roughly at that rate. If you think about the stop loss business, as Heather talked about earlier, we don't need to go out and win market share. We're gonna be very disciplined how we approach that from an underwriting perspective, and medical trend or medical inflation is really what's driving that high single digit revenue growth. As long as we're consistent on underwriting, you're gonna get the same thing from a bottom line perspective. Then where there's been tailwind is really in the voluntary side. That's I think that's an industry trend. I think most.
We're talking about, like, half of the voluntary we write are with companies that don't offer these products. We still see upside not only in new companies that are looking to offer products like this because they work quite well with high deductible healthcare plans, but also just the attachment rate. As we do a better job and as the industry does a better job of making sure that these policies are set up beside high deductible healthcare plans and drive more money to the bottom line for employees, we think the attachment rates can grow there with the existing companies we have voluntary products with. I would kind of think about it through those three lenses as you think about the growth going forward.
All of that collectively gets to the 7%-10% top line and bottom line that Heather was talking about.
Just on the stop loss, right, and again, I kind of think of it as slightly different business in some ways. That's a mature business where you are a scale competitor and kind of an oligopoly a little bit. There's maybe about, I don't know, seven to 10 competitors in that market, and each one of you has your own niches and positioning of that. Is that fair?
I mean, it's a workplace benefit, but it's focused on the employer. To your point, we're a must-quote top 5 player, and generally, the intermediaries are gonna wanna spread this around. They don't wanna have all the risk with one particular player. We stay in our lane, to Heather's point. We feel good about the underwriting, and that's served us well. I mean, it's been a consistent grower for us, both from a top line and bottom line perspective. I think you're thinking about it right, Josh.
The piece that I would add to it is, while it may feel, you know, separate because it is focused on the employer. How that leads to additional sales of other products comes through in terms of how we show up and follow through. At Voya, we talk a lot about the ethics and our commitment. We've had nine years recognized by Ethisphere. We show up, we do what we say we're gonna do, we make sure we're, you know, under-promising and over-delivering. When we do right by our clients and our intermediary partners, and they have stable underwriting year in, year out, stable pricing, that leads to builds a tremendous amount of confidence and reputation, which creates opportunities for us to expand the relationship with both the clients and the intermediary partners.
Well, I wanna talk about AGI and Benefitfocus, but I also wanna get Don involved, so I'm gonna shake up the order a little bit.
Perfect. That's great.
If anyone has a question, please don't be shy. Just raise those hands up. Come on, you can do it, you know. I'll support you. A capital return, cash flow conversion, I mean, the company's returned a lot of cash to investors over the years, reduced the share count dramatically. A lot of that has been, I sort of feel like archaeology in some ways. You know, you inherited a lot of these businesses that didn't necessarily fit with the full view of what Voya would become, collapsed those structures, take the cash out and return. We're kind of getting into a steady state here.
I've always said, "Oh, this is a company whose free cash flow conversion was above 100%." Well, it's not gonna be above 100% forever. Where is the cash flow conversion right now? Where is it, I guess, let's say, three years out in a normal steady state, and how should we think about it?
Josh, you know, I think you're right. There were, you know, some unique transactions that provided us the opportunity to maybe, you know, to return outsized percentages of cash flow because you had a transaction that contributed. You know, we've guided and feel very comfortable with the 90%-100% cash conversion ratio. You saw that we delivered that in 2022 in an environment where there were a number of macro headwinds, there were, you know, other things that were maybe a little unusual in the business. As we look forward to 2023, you know, we don't see anything that would cause us to move off of that percentage, I think the same would hold true for sort of 2024 and beyond.
You know, we're in a sort of low capital, high cash generation conversion type of mode right now. You know, we're very focused on making sure that we appropriately manage the balance sheet. I mean, prudently manage balance sheet, prudently manage leverage, invest in growing the business organically because we did some strategic acquisitions last year. Then, you know, we see a pathway to generating significant amounts of excess cash or free cash flow. You know, we're very committed to returning that capital to our shareholders.
Where does deferred tax assets stand on the balance sheet right now?
You know, and if we think about that asset, it's a very significant asset. It's probably on a present value basis over $1 billion right now. We don't expect to be a cash taxpayer for maybe 4-6 more years, and we had originally guided, I think, last year to 5-7. You know, we're 1 year deeper into that. Obviously, we're watching closely what's happening with, you know, the regulations around alternative minimum tax. We haven't gotten a lot of clarity around what, you know, what is going to be re-required and how those rules will manifest themselves, so we're closely monitoring that. As it relates to regular cash taxes, you know, we're in a very good position for the next 4-6 years.
Along those similar lines, does the stock buyback tax affect you in a particular way that changes how you think about capital return?
No. I mean, obviously we that tax exists. You know, we will, you know, we will manage through that. It won't meaningfully impact how we're thinking about capital return.
All right. I'm gonna throw out a few numbers here. They run the risk of being wrong, you'll correct me. All right, so debt leverage and interest coverage is about 30%-32% and 5 times when Voya announced the sale of the fixed annuity business at the end of 2017. At least that's what my research says. About 33%-36% and also 5 times when you announced the sale of the life business at the beginning of 2021. Currently, the debt to capital leverage is about 25%-27%, and interest coverage is about 8 times. Is that the right mix? Are we at a steady state here at this point?
I think there's a number of metrics that we look at, and you've obviously stated some. There's a number of metrics that the rating agencies and others, you know, are important to them. We obviously wanna make sure that we're managing around that. You know, we signaled on our last earnings call that we're going to manage to a leverage metric excluding AOCI that's in the 25%-30% range. We think excluding AOCI makes a lot of sense because of the volatility there.
We also think it makes sense because the rating agencies are moving away from having AOCI in their metrics, and we think the adoption of LDTI is sort of a good inflection point or a good time to rethink how we think about that leverage metric you know, we're gonna use a metric that is, as I said, 25%-30% excluding AOCI. Over time, our expectation is to manage to the lower end of that range. Right now, we're closer to the 30%.
We would expect to manage to the lower end of that range, that will be over time. We just feel like a prudent balance sheet provides you lots of flexibility in environments where that can change quickly. I've lived through, at least in the last 15 years, sort of three very interesting cycles. 2008. In my prior life, 2016 was a very disruptive year around commodity prices. Obviously, COVID impacted businesses. The companies that were prudently managing their balance sheet and had prudent leverage metrics were the ones that came out the back end really strong.
This, you know, last year and the year before I came to Bank of America, this was the insurance conference, and we took the gamble this year and made this the financial services conference. My colleague, Christine Hurtsellers in the other room. You know, when I was working on Voya, you know, even though I already had a view, I said, "How much are these investment managers worth?" He says, "Well, is it inflowing or is it outflowing?" You know, like, this is the end of the night. What do I know? I go, "It's inflowing. Is that, is that unusual?" He said, ", that's unusual.
There's not a lot of." He said, "How big is it?" I go, "Well, it doesn't seem as big as yours." Generally in a business that competes on basis points and scale, the idea that given the size pre-AGI of the business that you guys were positively inflowing, what's the secret sauce?
I think it's a couple things, right? Maybe we'll tag team this one. You know, as you mentioned, even pre-AGI, we had seven years of positive flows in the business. I think it comes down to knowing your capabilities, generating solid investment returns. We talk a lot about the culture again of the Investment Management team and strength of the distribution. We think though about where we're headed and, you know, 2022 certainly being an inflection point with the acquisition of AGI, you know, generating $1.4 billion of flows from AGI in the first five months of the year after a transaction. Clearly there was disruption of us coming in and taking over the business given the circumstance.
When we think about the path forward, we are amazingly excited about the breadth of distribution from AGI globally. That was one of the things strategically we talked about is a pivot at our investor day is taking advantage of global distribution. What AGI brings to us is 500 relationship managers globally in 19 geographies. Really, really significant. Creates a lot of ramp up. They also brought in additional capabilities for us within income and growth and equities and some privates, and really shifted our mix of business, which was heavily institutionally focused, to expanding our capabilities in retail. That's an important component of it. But outside of AGI, Christine Hurtsellers and the team have already been making appropriate changes in our product lineup to expand capabilities around privates and alternatives with the growth of Czech Asset, the acquisition of Czech Asset Management.
We've done some things with thematic equities. We've done some things around machine learning, intelligence team in London. All of these are creating some additional capabilities that allow us to compete. Finally is our insurance channel. You look at us in 2018 and our fundamental investment management business kind of grew up in fixed income managing insurance companies and specifically our own, the assets of our insurance products. We've been able to take that expertise and bring that into insurance clients, where we now have over 60 insurance clients. All of those create some different product segments, opportunities for distribution, and then the global expansion.
Heather, I think this really, if you think about the origination of our asset management franchise, it's fundamentally built on the heels of being a company that had a variable annuity business and had a life insurance business. Fundamentally, that drove the assets that particular franchise managed. As we were becoming a public company, it became very obvious that we needed to be able to take those capabilities and offer those to other insurance companies.
As Heather just referenced, we now do business with over 60 insurance companies managing general account assets. By the way, that's what gives us a lot of confidence going into 2023 that we're going to be able to do that in a really prudent way.
That, that's really, I think, Josh, a bit of the secret sauce that's kept us very successful through the years. As I think about the AGI piece, it's just, it's phenomenal to me, especially with the asset management backdrop and the backdrop of why we won this asset with the Structured Alpha piece down in Florida, that we still put up a billion and a half of flows in the last 5 months of the year. That gives us, I think, a lot of confidence in the trajectory of where things are going into 2023.
Fundamentally, like we've been looking for international distribution. We talk a lot about the fact that if we could whiteboard a company to partner with for international distribution, we'd be hard-pressed to find somebody better than AllianzGI. The way we got this is phenomenal. Where we're going to take it, we're really, really excited about.
Can you talk a little bit about performance and equities? I think that fixed income and alternatives have had some fairly strong results. Equities not as much. With AllianzGI, maybe there's a difference. What the plan is there, whether maybe there doesn't need a plan, maybe just it will naturally correct itself.
There's always a plan. look, there's no question about it. I think historically, Josh, I think that's been an area that I think we can get better at. We made some changes in the management of particular equity franchises that we had, going into the AGI transaction. We've made some acquisitions around quant equity capabilities that we think will help us over time. To your point on the AllianzGI side, it gives us some interesting thematic equity that's really in demand internationally, and that's something we feel pretty confident about. It's something that Christine and the team are laser-focused on. I think it's an area where we can get better, and we're fundamentally focused on that.
You made the comment that if you could whiteboard out a partner that you would want to engage in, you couldn't do better than AGI. Coincidentally, AGI was a bit of a distressed sale. Can you talk a little about the process, about how that happened and how, you know, I'm sure there were multiple bidders and the best partner, best price might have been Voya, but also might have made the most sense, and how you think about the valuation.
Relationships matter. Rod had a relationship with the CEO of Allianz. Christine had a relationship with Tobias, who was the CEO of AllianzGI. We had that relationship. When the event happened, it was fast. I mean, the decisions had to be made fast around what they were going to do. Fundamentally for me, I think it speaks to two things. I think it speaks to the quality of our asset management franchise that they would choose to work with us in this. I think second is just our ability to execute. We spent a lot of the day talking about execution. For them looking at us, it really was about the divestitures, and we were the first one really to be able to move a variable annuity franchise.
The deal that we did on the life annuity on the life insurance side, that gave them a lot of confidence because this was really 60 days from the time that this gets signed to when it needed to be closed, and the SEC was fully involved in that. The pace had to be there and the confidence on the execution. I think that really was a big part of it. Heather?
One thing I would add to it too is one really important element of this deal is that they had to have deal certainty. That was really, really important. Because we had been talking to our board about the strategy and where we were headed, we were able to be that company to give them deal certainty. That's one of the components that I think gave us a bit of a leg up, and then being able to move at pace on the execution. We've talked about how that muscle of moving very quickly to integrate them, retain 95% of their assets, 98% of their people is a muscle we've now taken over into the Benefitfocus acquisition around its discipline, its follow-through, its culture, and all of that matters.
Well, I.
Go, please.
I also think the ownership arrangement that we have with them is really incenting them to support us. There's, you know, a real sharing of ideas, of thoughts. I mean, they are a very well-run franchise that's very good at what they do. We have the opportunity to collaborate with them in a way that I think the way the deal is incenting them to help us succeed. When we succeed, they also benefit in that success.
The partnership's been amazing. In a lot of ways, we're manufacturing the product, and they're really the ones out there driving the distribution internationally for us. To Don's point, that partnership has to be there. I think that speaks to the first conversation, to the conversations we just had, even as recently as yesterday with them around how do we continue to grow this franchise together.
If we think about, you've studied investment management deals in doing this deal, this is soon to be there's some AUM leakage, in any deal that goes together. How long is the timeline for those things to sort themselves out? To the extent which, how much have you budgeted, and when will you know whether you're ahead of plan?
I'll start, then I'll toss it to you, Mike. We feel very good about the asset retention. As we said, 95%, you know, from immediacy of the deal, teams really leaned in on the client retention. We feel like that has all sort of settled itself out. We have contractual provisions that protect us.
We were fully aligned with AllianzGI on this point, that retention was critical. As we were approaching this, I think it was we were both laser-focused on that. We did build in protections in the, in the transaction such that when we talked about 6%-8% accretion, we were going to get that no matter what the retention was. I think it was phenomenal to get 95%. Essentially what we did was the 24% that Don spoke about as far as the equity interest unchanged. What we're paying them for distribution fees can go up or down based on where retention was. The amount of distribution fees went down because we retained 95 instead of 100%.
The interesting piece here too is that we have another bite at the apple nine months after close. Roughly four months after here, we get to look at the retention again. To the extent that that's different in any way, that distribution fee would move. We've got an additional protection to ensure we get that 6%-8% accretion. Right now, I think it's been all systems go. I don't think that's going to change things very much, but to the extent that there is any turbulence, we have that additional protection.
If we can switch focus to Benefitfocus. You know, I guess we're not really sure as investors how much it's going to earn in year one, although you've given some guidance because you said that the long-term guidance of 12 and 17 is still intact with 10%+ this year on a very, very difficult prior year comp coming from the legacy business and still hitting well within the 12-17 when you layer in the contribution of Benefitfocus. That might give us some range about the earnings power a little bit. Not perfectly. We can, I can count several different outcomes in that path.
You know, a lot of investors in the insurance space, particularly the life insurance space, have a little bit of a post-traumatic stress disorder from the Assurance IQ acquisition by Prudential. What can you tell investors? I mean, we've heard you speak about before, but given your comments that you thought this is what we need, that it made every sense in the world to do this deal when you did it.
You want to take the financial and I'll take the strategic?
Why don't you start? , strategic.
We'll do that. Okay. Sounds good. Sorry for that, we had a little exchange there. The way we think about this from a strategic standpoint, first to answer the question around Prudential and kind of what they went through. This is an established firm, 20-year-old company. We've been partnering with them for the last 10 years. Established revenue. We know the firm, right?
That is this is not, you know, in my words, kind of a unicorn fintech that we're taking a big gamble on. We know the business. We know what they do. We know how they work. From a strategic standpoint, we felt that as we were thinking about our workplace strategy at the intersection of health and wealth, that this was a critical capability that was going to give us the opportunity to accelerate into it.
It squarely puts us right in the conversation broadly around the whole health and the benefits landscape, similar to where we sit on the retirement side of it. From a strategic perspective, what I will tell you is we bought this for the long-term capabilities, and Don will speak to, you know, kind of 23 and how we're thinking about the deal economics. We think long term, Voya, as an owner, can accelerate the growth plans that this business already had. That's one opportunity. We think that it continues to allow us to accelerate, win new clients, and expand the relationship and deepen. We think it also gives us a real differentiation from a value proposition perspective to clients and intermediaries, because we are thinking quite simply around how do we ease the administrative burden for employers to help them attract and retain employees.
For employees, it is really thinking about how do they deliver better outcomes, how do they make sure they don't overspend on medical and under save on all of the other benefits. It squarely puts us in that conversation strategically. Finally, it gives us an opportunity to grow in a fast-growing health, you know, the health sector, where there is just a huge amount of growth opportunity that we think will emerge over time. Don?
I mean, I think Heather articulated why we think it makes good strategic sense. With respect to 2023 specifically, you know, we indicated that we were guiding to or thought the contribution from Benefitfocus would be in the $50 million range from an EBIT, EBITDA perspective. It's important to note there. That EBITDA number that we're communicating is different, not comparable to the way they measured EBITDA because their EBITDA did not include stock-based compensation. Our EBITDA number does. Our EBITDA number is burdened with stock compensation, it layers onto it the synergies that we expect to achieve this year, particularly on the cost side. The $50 million of EBITDA roughly translates into $25 million or so of adjusted earnings.
If you tax effect that gets you the 2 percentage points that we added to the 10%. We would say we're guiding to the low end of the 12%-17% with a high degree of confidence, including those projections for 2023 around Benefitfocus.
When we talk about the opportunity, maybe year one of Benefitfocus, I think is obviously fees that Benefitfocus generates itself. Longer-term, populating Benefitfocus Voya product is obviously going to be a big part of it. How should we think about the opportunity, between, Benefitfocus as a standalone revenue generator and Benefitfocus as a conduit for Voya's further success?
One of the things we've talked about from the market to manage channel conflict is that we're gonna be open architecture, product agnostic, and intermediary centric, which we think is very important strategically. Meaning our health side, at the end of the day, simply put, benefits consultants make recommendations on ben admin platforms, insurance products, and even retirement platforms, and the employers make the decision. What we're really focusing in on is the connection of all these different experiences to ultimately drive better outcomes for consumers.
While they're standalone, you know, we're thinking about connecting the front-end user experience with a guidance engine that can sit on top of the Benefitfocus platform, which we think is gonna be a meaningful differentiator in the marketplace.
If you think about how Benefitfocus economics work today, revenue is generated from PEPM fees from base ben admin services. There's also additional revenue that can be generated from add-on services, and then there are additional fees that come from voluntary product partners. There's a lot of different revenue opportunities within the organization. Over time, we do expect that that whole component can grow. It's not all about putting Voya product on.
We think there's opportunity to leverage, you know, other organizations, product partnerships. But what it really does is it accelerates that connectivity between the two health and wealth and then making a meaningful difference for the employers and the employees that they serve. We think it's that differentiated capability we think that's gonna win us more business in the market.
Well, we've run over by a minute, maybe by design. I wanna thank Mike, Don, and Heather for being here and the whole Voya team. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Globe Life is up next. I hope everyone else has a very fruitful rest of the day. Thank you.