With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.5 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $24 billion.

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Companies that foster an environment that supports professional growth are more likely to thrive and successfully adopt digital innovation. Here are the 100 best places to work in Europe—and how they stay that way.

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<p>Unum Group ranks 30 on this year’s Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For – Europe list.</p>

Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For – Europe

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 300 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-230-Unum Group

As a top insurance company in the U.S. and U.K., the provider has several well-known brands under its umbrella, namely Colonial Life, The Paul Revere Life Insurance Company, and Provident Life.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

The underwriter of disability and life insurance policies protects 36 million people globally and is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Unum Group is an insurance company providing employee benefits to more than 38 million beneficiaries. Unum's offerings include, but are not limited to, disability insurance, life insurance, accident and critical illness insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, and pet insurance. Users can plan time off and perform other HR functions through the online Unum platform. The company’s subsidiaries include Unum US, Unum International, Colonial Life, and its Closed Block segment.

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Unum Group (UNM): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Unum Group

unum group

Thank you for standing by. My name is Kailin. I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Unum Group First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Royal, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Great, Kayla. Thank you, and good morning. Yesterday afternoon, Unum released our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings press release and financial supplement. Those materials may be found on the Investors section of our website, along with a presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations of any non GAAP financial measures included in today's presentation. Please note that today's call may include forward looking statements and actual results, which are subject to risks and uncertainties may differ materially, and we are not obligated to update any of these statements.

Please refer to our earnings release and our periodic filings with the SEC for a description of factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected results. References made today to core operations, sales and premium, including Unum International, are presented on a constant currency basis. Joining in this morning's conference call are Unum's President and CEO, Rick McKinney Chief Financial Officer, Steve Zabel Tim Arnold, who heads our Colonial Life and Voluntary Benefits lines Chris Pine for Group Benefits and Mark Till, CEO of Unum International. Now let me turn the call

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our first quarter results. At our outlook meeting in January, we laid out our expectations and plans to continue our momentum, which includes our ability to maintain industry leading margins, grow our top line at mid single digit levels, maintain robust capital flexibility and actively manage the closed block. Our achievements in the first quarter underscore our advancement towards these goals, particularly highlighted by the long term care reinsurance transactions announced in late February.

The first quarter financial results are highlighted by core operations achieving an ROE of over 20%, premium growth exceeding 4%, dollars three fifty million in underlying statutory earnings and capital metrics significantly surpassing our targets. Even with this solid execution, we came up a little short of our plans with earnings per share of $2.4 reflecting a higher level of disability claims. As we sit here today, we continue to execute towards our full year growth outlook of 6% to 10%. Since our last call, the first quarter has clearly brought about significant volatility in economic sentiment. We do not see a near term impact from the potential changes in prevailing economic conditions as several of the drivers, including higher interest rates, are a positive for our business.

Our strong positioning in this period ultimately enables us to effectively support our clients during periods of increased uncertainty as they support their employees with a backdrop of stability. The first quarter environment concluded positively with interest rates remaining favorable, employment levels remaining healthy and wages continuing to rise. This healthy labor market was evident in our existing client base where we observed levels of natural growth that contributed to our success, albeit at more typical levels. Our offerings, are part of a comprehensive employment package aimed at attracting and maintaining talent, play a crucial role in providing critical protections for employees. Our connection with these employers in today's environment is strengthened through our digital interactions and our ability to deliver quality services.

This includes leave administration, which is increasingly important to them. As these digital interactions are crucial to our growth story, they require continual focus and investment to maintain our differentiated status. Looking across the franchise, we saw sales that were at a comparable level to 2024. There was a slight increase in Unum U. S.

And we were pleased to see Colonial Life starting to get growth back into the sales results. The International segment did see a large decline, but was more impacted by a current period lack of large case sales. And given the size of this business, we can see that volatility period to period. There was also variability across product lines with strong sales growth and voluntary benefits and a little bit of softness across our group lines. The reality is it remains early in the sales cycle.

Our pipeline for group sales for the remainder of the year looks promising, and we expect to achieve our overall sales goals as we proceed through 2025 in a similar pattern that we saw the strong full year results of 2024. While still early in the sales pipeline, we are seeing the success of last year's sales play through our top line with earned premium in our core operations growing at 4%. Persistency in some products line was lower than last year's high point and remains in line with more historical levels. Over time, as our digital capabilities embed further within our customers' processes, we will look for increasing levels of persistency as there will be increased ease of doing business with Unum and with Colonial Life. Across the franchise, we continue to generate strong margins.

Our expertise in addressing our customers' needs, combined with our pricing discipline, has served us well. Of note this quarter, we

did see an elevated benefit ratio in group disability. While consistent with our outlook of low 60s and still delivering high margins, the benefit ratio in 1Q moved up several points driven by a higher level of incidence in both long term and short term disability. After multiple years of positive performance, we currently believe this quarter is more about near term volatility, but we will continue to watch as the year plays out. Importantly, recoveries remain good and the higher level of incidence in long term disability was more acute earlier in the quarter before settling down.

Rounding out the rest of Unum US, we saw good broad based performance. Group Life and AD and D continued to generate earnings levels higher than pre pandemic levels. Supplemental and voluntary saw good margins in both IDI and voluntary benefits. International results were in line with expectations with The UK earnings in the higher £20,000,000 range and Colonial Life saw ROE close to 20%. Outside

the core business, Long Term Care experienced a good first quarter. While headline results are below our annual guidance range, this was driven by lower returns in our alternative asset portfolio, which backs our long term care block. Underlying liability trends were generally in line with our expectations. These good results paired with continued active management of the block driving further confidence in our position. Our multifaceted approach continues to execute on premium rate increases, examining ways to further insulate against interest rate through hedging and explore further action to reduce the size of the book through reinsurance.

It was just over two months ago when we announced our two long term care transactions, which will remove 20% of the risk of this block at favorable economic terms and released significant capital through our internal restructuring. While we are pleased with the expected outcome of these deals, we continue to be active and strive to further reduce this exposure. As we funded this business fully in 2023, we have remained committed to not add capital to this line of business. Differently this quarter, our capital position was bolstered and capital was released by the internal reinsurance we discussed in February. As a result, we ended the quarter with record levels of holding company liquidity at $2,200,000,000 and one of the highest RBC positions we have seen at 460%.

Statutory earnings were also strong with one time benefits from our restructuring that drove the headline result of nearly $500,000,000 This position enables high levels of optionality with capital deployment. And as such, we repurchased shares in the first quarter of roughly $200,000,000 This is one way we return capital to shareholders, but also important is consistent dividend increase, which we will announce as part of our annual shareholder meeting process in May. We remain excited about the opportunities ahead and are committed to delivering on the present. Now let me hand it over to Steve, who will provide further insights into our performance and discuss how these results shape our future trends. Steve?

Great. Thanks, Rick, and good morning, everyone. As Rick described, the first quarter was a good start to the year. From a top line perspective, we're seeing strong levels of growth in our core operations with premium growth of 4.2% aided by the strong levels of new sales we saw last year. We are pleased to see this result as persistency levels for some products eased slightly as expected from record levels experienced in 2024.

Overall sales for core operations were down slightly with lower large case sales offset by strong voluntary benefit sales. When considering the first quarter results, the seasonality of our sales and a healthy pipeline, we are maintaining our outlook for full year 2025 sales growth of 5% to 10% across core operations. In addition to growth, our margins continue to be robust with benefit ratios at or favorable to our expectations and historical levels across all products. I will dive into the group disability benefit ratio more in a moment, but will note that we do not have reason to believe the increase in the first quarter is indicative of a reversal of recent favorable trends and therefore believe we can achieve our annual expectation of low 60% for the full year. In the first quarter, adjusted operating earnings finished at $466,800,000 leading to after tax adjusted operating earnings per share of $2.4 This result was down 3.8% from last year, driven by the disability benefit ratio dynamics mentioned earlier as well as the impact of our current year operating expense pattern which will decline throughout the year.

We recorded statutory after tax operating income of $489,800,000 which incorporates an estimated $131,000,000 favorable impact from the internal LTC reinsurance transaction we announced in February. With an underlying run rate of approximately $350,000,000 we are well positioned to achieve our annual expectation of $1,300,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 of statutory earnings from our traditional insurance subsidiaries. While we are only one quarter into the year, we remain confident executing against our capital targets for 2025. Now let's move into segment financial results. Starting with Unum U.

S, adjusted operating income decreased 14.6 to $329,100,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $385,200,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Natural growth of lives and wages continued at normal levels of between 23% and along with total group persistency of 89.3% supported premium growth of 4.3% in Unum US. Overall Unum US sales were higher in the first quarter of twenty twenty five by approximately 1% year over year driven by strong voluntary benefit sales. As Rick mentioned, the pipeline for group sales over the next two quarters is healthy and we expect overall all sales to meet our expectations of 5% to 10% growth for the year. Adjusted operating income in the group disability line of 119,200,000 was lower compared to $164,800,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four.

The decrease was driven by higher incidence across both short term and long term disability with continued strong recoveries for long term disability. While the group disability benefit ratio of sixty one point eight percent compared unfavorably to the year ago period of fifty seven point five percent and was slightly above our expectation, it was within our low 60s expectation for the year. Also, as a reminder, we decided to exit the stop loss business in 2024. While insignificant to earnings, group disability premium growth in the first quarter would have been approximately 3% when excluding stop loss in both periods. Adjusted operating income for Unum U.

S. Group Life and AD and D finished at $69,200,000 in the quarter compared to the year ago period of $78,800,000 The benefit ratio of 69.3% was slightly elevated compared to 68.2% a year ago driven by higher incidents, but was in line with our outlook of approximately 70%. Adjusted operating earnings for the Unum U. S. Supplemental and voluntary lines in the first quarter of twenty twenty five decreased slightly to $140,700,000 from $141,600,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four.

The voluntary benefit ratio was in line with our expectation of mid-40s, however, increased from very favorable levels experienced a year ago, offset by a reduction in the multi life individual disability benefit ratio. As a result, supplemental and voluntary segment earnings will not be impacted by the recently announced reinsurance transaction with Fortitude Re until the transaction does close. Moving to Unum International, adjusted operating income in the first quarter increased to $38,700,000 from $37,400,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Adjusted operating income for the Unum UK business increased in the first quarter to £29,500,000 compared to £28,200,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Premium income for our Unum International business segment increased by 7% year over year, including 18% growth in Unum Poland.

Strong persistency in excess of 90% in both Unum UK and Poland helped to offset decreased overall sales in the quarter. Next, operating income for the Colonial Life segment increased to $115,700,000 in the first quarter compared to $113,700,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Premium income of $457,300,000 grew at a rate of 2.3%. Record levels of first quarter earnings and premiums were supported by persistency of 78.1%, a similar level to the year ago period. Sales in the first quarter of '1 hundred and '5 point '3 million dollars grew 2.2% over last year.

After several quarters of reduced sales growth at Colonial Life, we are very pleased with the strong start to 2025. In the Closed Block segment, adjusted operating income of $24,400,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $27,700,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Earnings were lower due primarily to lower income on alternative assets, which yielded 5.1% in the first quarter on an annualized basis compared to our long term expectation of 8.1%. As we've experienced in prior years, a lag in reporting in the first quarter can impact timing of results and delay recognition of earnings into the remainder of the year. A subset of year end partnership statements for alternative investments will be received and reported in the second quarter results.

As a reminder, our annual outlook for this segment of 140,000,000 to $170,000,000 assumes a normalized level of alternative asset returns and therefore can be impacted by quarter to quarter fluctuations. Within the closed block, aggregate benefits experience for LTC was generally in line with our expectations and we remain committed to no longer requiring capital contributions to support this block backed by our $2,600,000,000 of protection at Fairwind. The LTC net premium ratio was 94.7% at the end of the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to 94.6% in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Sequentially, the increase of 10 basis points reflects modestly unfavorable benefits experience relative to long term expectations in our uncapped cohorts. In terms of rate increases, we continue to make progress and have achieved approximately 55% of our current reserve expectation through the end of the first quarter.

Finally, I wanted to provide a brief update on the external LTC reinsurance transaction we announced in February. As a reminder, we have agreed to cede $3,400,000,000 or approximately 20% of long term care statutory reserves along with a portion of our multi life individual disability in force to Fortitude Re. Overall, the transaction is expected to generate approximately $100,000,000 of capital benefits. We are working through the approval process and customary closing conditions now. The process is progressing well with no changes to our overall timeline.

While the breadth of our financial impacts will be reported in the period the transaction closes, some aspects of the financial reporting requirements are reflected in our first quarter results. This was notable in first quarter reported net investment losses of $206,800,000 A significant portion of this amount or $152,400,000 is attributable to recognizing losses on assets in the transaction transfer portfolio that were in an unrealized loss position. Unrealized gains on assets within the same portfolio will be recognized once the transaction closes. And for your reference, the transfer portfolio had total unrealized gains of $115,400,000 as of the end of the quarter. In addition, asset sales associated with generating liquidity for both the external and internal LTC transactions resulted in realized losses of $42,600,000 Considering the impacts from both of these transactions, the realized losses generated by routine portfolio activity during the quarter were under $10,000,000

my commentary on the segment's financial results, the adjusted operating loss in the Corporate segment was $41,100,000 compared to $46,100,000 loss in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, primarily driven by higher net investment income as a result of the first unit dividend to the holding company. Shifting to investments, we continue to benefit from the favorable environment for new money yields and effective risk management. Our strategy supports a comprehensive through the cycle approach. In addition, we have taken opportunities to derisk our investment portfolio over the past several years highlighted by a significant reduction to high yield exposure from 7.8% of our total investment portfolio in 2020 to 3.4% as of the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Also in the first quarter, total net investment income was $513,200,000 compared to $513,500,000 in the same period last year.

Miscellaneous investment income decreased marginally to $20,200,000 compared to $20,800,000 a year ago with income from our alternative assets totaling $18,300,000 Additionally, we have maintained our hedge program to manage interest rate risk. Through the first quarter, we had entered into $3,600,000,000 of treasury forwards with approximately $2,500,000,000 of notional hedges outstanding at quarter end. These open hedges secure the underlying treasury rate for a significant portion of our investable LTC cash flows over the next ten years. I'll wrap up my commentary with an update regarding our capital position. We expect that our strong statutory earnings will persist in enhancing significant capital strength and financial flexibility, similar to our experience in 2024.

The weighted average risk based capital ratio for our traditional U. S. Insurance companies has further strengthened to approximately 460%. The liquidity at the holding company has risen to $2,200,000,000 which does include a $630,000,000 dividend from First Unum resulting from the internal reinsurance transaction. Although these metrics are expected to vary throughout the year, we anticipate a year end RBC of 425% to 450% and holding company liquidity exceeding $2,500,000,000 both in excess of our long term targets providing us with capital flexibility.

This flexibility is integrated into our strategies for share buybacks and annual increases in the shareholder dividends. Having repurchased shares valued at $200,000,000 during the first quarter, we aim to achieve at least this amount in the second quarter. As we have previously communicated, we will review our plans for the year as a whole following the successful conclusion of the external LTC reinsurance transaction later this year. Overall, we are pleased with our first quarter results and remain well positioned to implement our strategy and meet our financial objectives. Now I'll hand the call back to Rick for his closing remarks, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Great. Thank you, Steve. And I would just summarize today by saying that our commitment excellence in growing our core business and protecting more people is combined with robust capital strength. I think this sets us up on a promising trajectory for the year ahead. So I'm sure there are plenty of topics to discuss.

And so with that, we will move to your questions. Kayla, please open the Q and A session.

Our first question comes from the line of Ryan Krueger with KBW. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. My first question is on disability incidents. Can you give us a little bit more color on what you saw with incidents as the quarter progressed? And then in terms of the normalization back down during the quarter, any can you help us understand if that kind of continued into April at this point?

Yes, Ryan. It's Steve. So yes, you're right. During the quarter, we did see elevated incidents above our expectations in both short term and long term disability. Long term disability, obviously, is a big driver of overall profitability.

And what we saw in the trends there were very high early in the quarter, specifically January, very high incidence rates. And those did come down closer to what our expectations would be as the quarter played out. Don't really have anything to talk about April yet, but as we're looking forward to the remainder of the year, we do think that, that overall benefit ratio will come down a tick and be closer to kind of what our internal expectations were for the remainder of the year and really is one driver where we think we will have kind of a different trajectory of earnings as the year proceeds. I guess the other thing that I would say and I mentioned in my remarks as well as Rick did that recoveries were really close to our expectations. So we felt really good about the level of recoveries that we saw.

We just saw a little bit spike early in the quarter on LTC incidents.

Okay. Thanks. Then just related follow-up. I guess, would you characterize your view of the economic sensitivity of disability claims? I think it's there's been correlations within the industry at times, but it doesn't seem to be consistent in for I think for Unum itself, it has not always been correlated, but just any updated thoughts on how you see disability claims being correlated to the economy overall?

Sure, Ryan. We'll talk about that. And I think there has been a lot of exploration on the topic over the or really over the last decade. And so it's hard to predict exactly what the environment will do going forward. But we can look back in terms of what we saw in previous recessionary, previous difficult environments.

I think what we've said, particularly in long term disability, and so short term can be a little bit different dynamic as well. But in long term disability, we can see submitted claims go up. That's just as reflective of people's as they look at their employment status, etcetera. But we don't see that the higher level of submitted incidents necessarily turn into paid incidents. And so we can see a little bit of movement there over time, but it's not as sensitive as might expect.

These are people that our long term disability policies are to protect people that have suffered something that allows them not to be able to work and protect their income over time. It's not an economically sensitive policy. And so, you know, it's it's hard to predict the future and how that works, but certainly over the the last couple of recessions we've seen, those submitted incidents does rise, but it doesn't flow all the way through to paid. And so that's our best expectation of what we might see in the future as well.

And your next question comes from the line of Suneet Kamath with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you. Good morning. So you reaffirmed the 6% to 10% growth guide for the year, which implies a pretty healthy bounce back relative to the first quarter level. I think you talked a little bit about the group disability coming back, but can you talk about some of the other drivers that kind of get you there?

Yes. Let me start on that, Suneet, and talk about in aggregate, I think one of the things that we highlighted is this quarter was a little bit lower than our expectations.

of our expectations is that we have anticipated an increasing trend throughout the year. I'd also say this is quite early in the year, and so we have a lot of work to do to continue throughout the year. So it's a small snapshot at the beginning of the year and not certainly some time where we would look to change what our outlook is overall. But you did ask for a couple of specifics that you can plug in there and maybe Steve you highlight a couple of things that we think will be different in future quarters than you might have seen in this quarter.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mentioned really three things, and I'll kind of go click down on these, Suneet. One is group disability loss ratio. The loss ratio was a little bit elevated from our expectations in the first quarter.

We don't think we're going to somehow make that back over the remainder of the year, but we do think that loss ratio is going to come back closer to what our expectation would have been coming into the year and how we set our outlook. So that's number one. All the income, our yield was just over 5% due to the issues with the lag in the reporting. We had anticipated that. And so when we set our outlook at the end of the year, we'd anticipated 8% to 10% yield for the full year on that portfolio.

Even with the first quarter results, our expectation is that that's still a good assumption for us that we'll be able to do that. So that's going to give a little bit of an over weighted increase to earnings as we proceed through the remainder of the year. And then operating expenses were a little higher in the first quarter. We also anticipated that just the pattern of some of our expenses throughout the year. And so when we gave guidance around a slight uptick in operating expense ratios in '25 over '24, we still feel good about that, and we do think we're going to have a downward trajectory in our operating expense ratio as the year progresses.

And so those are kind of the three things that just in general, we think will make the last three quarters a little bit different than the first quarter. But then there is also two things that just build momentum naturally throughout the year. One is just organic growth. We think we'll have top line growth as the year proceeds and that will be good margin business that will drive higher earnings in and of itself as the year progresses. And then also share repurchase, that builds a lot of momentum as far as EPS growth goes through the year.

We evaluate that every quarter, but that will build momentum as we go through the year and really drive that EPS growth. So when you put that all together and based on the planning assumptions that we have today, we do still feel like 6% to 10% is a reasonable place for us to be, and we'll just have to evaluate it as we get through the year.

That's very helpful. And then you had said something in the prepared remarks that I wanted to drill into around technology and that potentially leading to higher persistency going forward. Can you give us a sense of, like, what percentage of your book at Unum US is using leave and, some of the other technology initiatives that you have just to get a sense of how much more upside is there?

Yes. Suneet, it's Chris. Thanks for the question. It isn't a stew point to say where we have our tech investments, including things around leave or integration with HCM platforms that we do see and expect to see an increase in persistency. You you know, you you picked up on the fact that, yes, that is not our entire book right now.

We do have some businesses traditional and and, you know, does persist quite well, but more at at traditional levels. You you saw some of that in the quarter. Rather than giving exact percentages, you can be sure that we're working hard to do two things. One is the significant percent of our new business that comes on tied to those capabilities is quite high. And we also have a migration strategy to make sure that we're moving the block toward that preferable those investments at the right time at the customer pace.

Sometimes it depends on when they're ready to make the shift, but we do have teams set up and momentum in that direction. So it will be an increasing part of the story and therefore, rises over time. And hopefully, that level, it gives us some steer.

And your next question comes from the line of Joel Hurwitz with Dowling. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Just sticking on the persistency topic. Can you unpack what you saw in group? I know you indicated it would come down last quarter, but I'm a little surprised by the magnitude of the drop. Then just following up sort of on Suneet's question, are you are you seeing noticeable differences on persistency customers who utilize the HR Connect or Total Leap platforms?

Yeah. Thanks, Joel. Chris, again. So, again, thanks for noticing. We did we did expect to see persist to see more traditional levels as we went into this year.

We we we did know last year, you had a market dynamic that was, some pent up demand, say, post COVID where we saw fewer marketings, and and we knew there were some projects that were going to come to market. We benefited from that significantly with the oneone sales cycle. But we also knew at the same time there were some parts of our book that had been quiet for a period of time that went out to market, which presented some risk. You saw that and some persistency challenge, through the the course of the of the quarter. You know, in in terms of, you know, what we expect to see when when we have tech enabled, connections and leave management.

You know, it it is that important to a customer, that not only are we are we targeting the right customers that will work really well with the with the program, but we also do a great job setting expectations in terms of, you know, how this new way of doing business in a modern digital way is going to work. And that takes time. We we we've we've done a an increasingly good job of targeting the right types of customers, so that they, you know, win even bigger when they take advantage of it and also making sure they understand the new world and and and, you know, how you when you leverage technology, it can really change that customer experience, which is both their experience as an employer, but also the employee experience, which is really important in high transaction things like lead management. So you can expect us to continue to get better at that. And, you know, again, that's been a multiyear program that, though, you know, we're deep into and we'll continue on.

to that is, you know, when when we think about the dynamics of sales, persistency, and then also natural growth, the overall objective here is is overall top line growth. And I I think you saw in the first quarter that the results were pretty good, that that even with those levels of persistency, we're growing top line, and that's the ultimate goal. Sometimes you're going to have more activity in market and sometimes you're going to have less. But all in, we want to grow the business, and we were able to grow it over 4% in the first quarter.

Yes. And I'd add to that, Joel. When you look at our persistency levels in this quarter, 90%, I mean our customers are quite happy with what we're doing today. And so we're talking about continuing to increase that and how that plays through in persistency. If we have relationships that are digitally embedded with our customers and their overall satisfaction rates with us are high, they'll stick with us.

But I also want to say they're good today. They're good today. We're a leader in this space with the right products, the right solutions, the right capabilities. And so this is about how can we get even better with our customers.

Got it. That's helpful. And then one on disability. And just taking a step back and looking at experience over the past couple of years versus maybe pre pandemic, How much have incidence rates on long term disability and I guess recoveries changed? And on the recovery side, can you just help dimension what that improvement has done in terms of reducing, you know, average claim duration?

Yeah. It's Steve. You know, we we haven't really put out statistics just around number of recoveries and those types of things. I'll I'll just refer back to some of the the comments that we've made in the past. If you go all the way back to pre pandemic and kind of play the movie forward, through the pandemic, we definitely saw increased levels of incidents.

But then as we saw that play through into the 2324 time frame, those incident levels really came back to kind of historical norms and stayed consistent. Notwithstanding what we saw in the first quarter of of this year where they were a little elevated, we kinda feel like we're back in on stable ground there as far as level of incidents. What what was kind of masked throughout the pandemic was our recovery rates continued to increase, and you saw that in a couple ways. One, we made multiple changes to our best estimate assumption within our LTD claim reserve. And so it was kind of a consistent improvement throughout that period of time.

And then just as we think about going forward, we felt comfortable with the operational sustainability of the levels of recoveries that we saw in 2024. And those did maintain into the first quarter. So we haven't given specific statistics around that. But just kind of general directional, that's what we've seen really play out from pre pandemic until the current state.

And your next question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. My first question is just on capital. Obviously, guys gave us the Q2 outlook, which is close to the Q1. You guys obviously have a lot of extra flexibility, right, with the reinsurance deal.

So why not raise the buyback and kind of lean in here versus I know you guys said you would revisit once the LTC deal closes later this year?

just step back a little bit from our overall capital deployment plans that have been fairly consistent. And I think the big thing here is our capital generation has been significant. We have that last year. We have that in plan this year. And so it does give us a lot of flexibility.

Like we said, our priorities are going to be about how do we continue to build out those good operating businesses, invest in the right places. That can be both on an organic basis as well as M and A, how can we bring new capabilities from running M and A structure. So you start with that. Then you talk about, and I mentioned in my comments, an increasing dividend, which we've done for a period of time. And so those are kind of underpinning type levels that we have out there.

And your question focuses on the share repurchase. Purchased $200,000,000 in the first quarter. As Steve said in his comments, we expect that we'll increase that, be more than that as we look to the second quarter. The dynamics that we have around that in terms of things we factor in, one, you mentioned the long term care transaction closing. So we're looking forward to that and making sure that that happens at a reasonable timeframe.

And then we'll be dynamic. And I think that that's what we've said really coming into last year given the significant flexibility that we have, we're going to make sure that we're dynamic in how we deploy that capital. And so really don't want to give you much more insight in that. We take all those factors into account as we do that. We'll give you some more insight as we close the long term care transaction.

But we're going to be active in the markets, like we said, and we do have capacity to do more if the situation warrants. And so we'll give you that view as work along the way. So appreciate your comment. I just take us back to we're in a really good position from a capital perspective. As we mentioned, these levels of liquidity, these levels of RBC are the highest some of the highest we've seen.

And we want to return that to our shareholders after we've done a good job of the growth of the business, but do so on a responsible but a dynamic way, reflecting the environment that we have around us.

Thanks. And then my follow-up is just on sales. You guys reaffirmed the core sales growth outlook for the year. And it seems like you pointed, I think, to some seasonality like last year. So would your expectation be that sales would pick up steam and be the strongest in the fourth quarter?

Or any color you can just give us on the quarterly projection of sales that you see for this year?

Yeah. Thanks, Elyse. I think this would be

a good opportunity to talk to the teams about what they're seeing in the year. I know it is early in the sales cycle, and so we haven't done a lot. But I think we can probably give some good context in terms of what we're seeing and why we feel like our overall sales growth is tracking. So maybe you start off, Chris?

Yeah. Great. Thanks, Rick. Well, we had a great fourth quarter, and obviously, that was a good start to the year. Momentum was a little bit slower, very early in the quarter.

But I would point you to the fact that first quarter for group effective dates, particularly on the larger end, I think Steve mentioned it in his comments, it can be a little volatile. There just aren't a ton of larger employers that move for twoone, threefour and type effective dates. So you don't see you can see some volatility in those results. We saw that this quarter. But when we look to for the balance of the year, and we're really getting into that exciting sales season for larger employers for one1s, but we'll see seven1s and third quarter effective dates in market right now.

Great pipeline as it relates to strong levels of activity, but the qualitative element of that relative to targeting customers that will respond well to the tech investments we've made that are that are very anxious to get into a better situation around lead management, where we know we'll have higher close ratios. That that is very encouraging at this point. So our teams continue to get better at kind of finding those customers and then the close ratios hold. And again, we really like where we stand right now in the year and are excited for the next three quarters.

That's great. Tim, we can talk about voluntary benefits. We had a great first quarter, but I'm talking about how we're feeling about it and then with Colonial Life as well.

sure. So on the unit on BB side, we were very pleased with first quarter sales results overall. It came in at 14% growth, and that growth occurred across all segments. So it wasn't just a large case here or there that drove it. We saw really strong new client sales growth, again, across all segments.

And that led with persistency slightly above expectations that led to revenue growth north of 5%. So pleased with that. We're also pleased with the degree to which we're cross selling into our existing group business block. We're cross selling into clients who have the tech platforms that Chris talked about earlier, and we're also cross selling into clients who have the Unum lead program. So very excited about what's happening on the Unum VB side.

Unum Group (UNM) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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