Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 155,000 U.S. employees.

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Employees say:"I love the culture—volunteerism is really important here and I love that. I love the mindset my team has of working hard and performing quality work; but also have fun and be kind to each other, lead with compassion and understanding. Benefits are great, pay is competitive, and work life balance is real. I feel trusted and respected by my peers and leaders to use my judgment and make the right decisions for my customers. I truly enjoy working here."

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Employees say:"I love the financial support from this company. This is my first employer where I feel like the company actually cares about the wellbeing of the employees with benefits like the student loan assistance, generous 401k match and pension plan. I also enjoy my department a lot and how many opportunities we get to be involved with larger projects, as well as opportunities to lead meetings to develop our leadership &amp; collaboration skills. The volunteer time is also a huge plus for me, it is nice to see the company want to give back."

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Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 145,000 U.S. employees.

Employees say:"I love Voya! This is the very best company I have ever worked for, and my loyalty will always be with them. My manager is amazing and supports my dreams here at Voya. Very encouraging and positive. I run to my computer every morning and it's a blessing in itself to work here! I'm proud to say I'm a Voya employee as they put the customer and employees first. We focus on teamwork and always keep the vision in mind. The benefits are phenomenal and I'm confident they give us all the tools we need to be successful. We also have additional training websites for those who want to grow in the organization at no cost! This is unheard of!"

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Employees say:"The support that this company gives women is incredible. Full access to programs like Maven truly shows how much the company cares for women and recognizes the need to provide additional support. Regardless on how difficult things might get at work, the support I have via Maven and other benefits help me to show up to work at my best. I also am a very big fan of the paid volunteer time - it is enough hours to feel that I truly can give back to my community and have a presence. It also allows me to set a great example to my children on social responsibility."

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Employees say:"We love to experiment with new ways of doing things. We strive for better efficiency and better experiences for both our customers and ourselves. The company recognizes that we are human and our experiences are vital to connecting with the people we partner with and service."

The companies on this annual list make a conscious effort to be supportive, inclusive workplaces.

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Employees say:"They create an atmosphere where all individuals are accepted for who they are, both in their professional lives and personal lives. Being honest about who you are, being open about who you are is a beautiful way to spend eight hours daily."

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Employees say:"I feel the Voya Cares group is what makes Voya Financial unique in our industry. We really care about people with disabilities and special needs. This team makes a point to discuss this underserved group in our society and how we can look to help individuals and families with these certain circumstances plan for a better retirement future and have their companies help make this happen."

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 140,000 U.S. employees.

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Employees say: 
 
"The Voya culture is exceptional and continuously reinforced, and the company is very successful. The leadership is extremely talented and visionary—the response to the pandemic was immediate and effective, and Voya has reiterated its commitment to offering a hybrid working environment and not enforcing a full return to the office. Combining forward-thinking business sense with compassion and disability and inclusion, Voya Cares® sets the company apart and seems to resonate with prospective clients as an appealing differentiator."

GPTW Financial Services & Insurance Large 2023-Voya Financial

Employees say: 
 
"The company has a history of giving back to the community, which really brings the employees together and makes you very proud to work for Voya Financial. I love that we can pick a cause to donate to and the company will match your donation. Also, the company gives you 40 hours a year to volunteer, which shows to really want their employees to participate in giving back to their communities—and not just with money but actually helping out."

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The companies on this year's list stand out for celebrating innovation, promoting cooperation, and more.

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Employees say: 
 
“I think their ability to adapt is unique. I feel this is a great place to work because in the pandemic and even now while things are getting better Voya is listening to their employees preference to where they would like to work from. They might prefer all employees return to the office, but I feel valued and heard because of the work from home opportunity they are giving.” 
 
Read the Great Place to Work review .

GPTW Financial Services Industry Large 2022-Voya Financial

Employees say: 
 
“There is a healthy culture here from the bottom to the top, you can count on others to operate within an inclusive, diverse culture and trust comes easier. I appreciate the opportunities to grow in my career and be my true self at work.”

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Employees say:  
“They've provided me with the means to have a career, care for my family, feel a sense of accomplishment, and so much more. From day one, I've been accepted fully and considered for promotions and advancement based on my skillset and work ethic.”

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The American financial, retirement, investment, and insurance company is based in New York City and serves more than 14 million customers.

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The 40 companies highlighted on this year's list support personal growth, outside-the-box thinking, and diversity in the workplace.

best workplaces new york 2020-Voya Financial

Employees say: 
 
"This job has allowed me to balance family life with work. Due to this job, I am allowed to still play a very active role in my children's life. I can be present during the first day of school or be part of school activities."

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

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The financial services company offers retirement savings plans, investment management, and life and employee benefit insurance to corporations and individuals.

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Getting workers ready for retirement is the focus of Voya Financial, which provides workplace benefits and savings solutions and technologies in the United States and internationally. The company operates through three segments: wealth solutions, health solutions, and investment management. Voya serves some 39,000 U.S. employers and over 7 million individual retirement plan participants and has approximately 450 financial professionals serving retail and workplace clients. The company was formerly known as ING U.S. and changed its name to Voya Financial in April 2014. Voya Financial was founded in 1975.

Q2 2026

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Voya Financial (VOYA): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Voya Financial

voya financial

Good morning. Welcome to Voya Financial's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone.

To withdraw your question, please press star two. Participants are limited to one question and one follow-up. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mei Ni Chu, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning for Voya Financial's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, materials for today's call are available on our website at investors.voya.com. We will begin with prepared remarks by Heather Lavallee, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Katz, our Chief Financial Officer.

Following their remarks, we will take your questions. I'm also joined on this call by the heads of our businesses, specifically Jay Kaduson, CEO of Workplace Solutions, and Matt Toms, CEO of Investment Management. Turning to our earnings presentation materials that are available on our website.

On slide two, some of the comments during today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements and refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of federal securities law. GAAP reconciliations are available in our press release and financial supplement found on our Investor Relations website. Now I will turn the call over to Heather.

Thank you, Mei Ni. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Let's turn to slide four. In 2025, Voya delivered strong financial and commercial results that exceeded our targets and accelerated our growth strategy. We delivered over $1 billion of pre-tax adjusted operating earnings for the full year and significantly grew earnings across all segments. We generated $775 million of excess cash, well above our target. In 2025, combined retirement and investment management assets surpassed $1 trillion.

This achievement illustrates our scale and reinforces the value of our integrated business model. These financial results reflect our outperformance against the priorities we set at the start of the year: accelerating commercial momentum in retirement and investment management, successfully integrating OneAmerica, and improving margins in employee benefits. Voya's financial performance and strategic progress show the strength of our franchise and our team's consistent focus on execution.

Before Mike walks through the quarterly and full-year numbers, I'd like to touch on a few key highlights from 2025. In retirement, we delivered exceptional results across our business. Defined Contribution net flows surpassed $28 billion, the highest in Voya's history, and our participant base is fast approaching 10 million accounts, demonstrating our expanding reach.

The OneAmerica integration significantly exceeded our financial targets while expanding the capabilities we offer clients and broadening our reach with advisors. We also continued to expand Wealth Management as a high-margin growth engine.

The business generated over $200 million in net revenues in 2025, contributing to our exceptional financial results in retirement and helping us serve our customers to and through retirement. Across retirement, our strong margins reflect our scale, our focus on driving profitable growth, and our disciplined expense management as we invest in key growth initiatives.

In investment management, we delivered strong results reflecting the scale and breadth of our platform and the momentum we're seeing across the business. We delivered a record $1 billion in annual net revenue and 4.8% organic growth, well above our long-term target. Our platform is well-positioned in the areas where the industry is growing, including private assets, insurance asset management, and the continued expansion of our intermediary platform with actively managed ETFs.

We're an established leader in the third-party insurance channel built on our expertise in managing Voya's general account. This channel continues to build momentum heading into 2026 and is a clear competitive advantage. Our record net flows in 2025 drove AUM to $360 billion, highlighting both the competitiveness of our offering and the trust our clients place in our investment capabilities. In employee benefits, we made meaningful progress in improving margins and expect further improvement this year.

In Stop Loss, we've increased our rates, enhanced risk selection, and been disciplined with reserving. Our actions position us well for 2026. Across the enterprise, our results this year reflect the competitive strength of our franchise and the progress we're making against our strategic priorities.

Our strong performance drove significant cash generation and positions us well to further increase excess capital in 2026. Together, our growth in excess capital and strong balance sheet give us flexibility to deploy capital to the most value-accretive opportunities. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike to walk through the financials in more detail. Mike?

Thank you, Heather. 2025 marked a strong year of execution. We generated over $1+ billion of pre-tax adjusted operating earnings, $168 million higher than a year ago, and we increased earnings per share 22% to $8.85. This included EPS of $1.94 in the quarter, which was up 39% from last year. These results were driven by management action throughout the year as we delivered above-plan financial results across all our strategic priorities.

We continued our commercial momentum in both retirement and investment management. We significantly exceeded our financial targets integrating OneAmerica, and we achieved substantial margin increases in employee benefits. This led to approximately $775 million of excess capital generation in 2025, including approximately $175 million in the fourth quarter. Looking forward, we expect further excess capital improvement in 2026.

Turning to retirement, 2025 was an exceptional year marked by record commercial results, robust earnings growth, and higher value accretion from OneAmerica. We generated nearly $1 billion of adjusted operating earnings in retirement standalone, 17% higher than 2024. This included $255 million of earnings in the fourth quarter. Earnings growth was primarily driven by higher fee-based revenues, which now exceed $1.4 billion.

Commercial momentum and our integration of OneAmerica are driving a 21% increase in fee-based revenues year-over-year. Importantly, we finished the year with an adjusted operating margin of 40% as we both drove efficiency across the business while investing in key priorities that accelerate our strategy. We generated a record $28 billion of organic defined contribution net inflows in 2025, and we added $60 billion of assets from OneAmerica.

Together, this supported a 30% increase in total defined contribution assets to approximately $730 billion at year-end. We now have a base of approximately 10 million participant accounts for us to serve both to and through retirement. Looking ahead to 2026, we anticipate meaningful defined contribution net inflows underpinned by plans expected to fund in the back half of the year, and our scale and leadership position in retirement provide a strong foundation for durable fee-based revenue growth, increasing cash generation over the long term.

Turning to investment management, 2025 was a year of record commercial results and revenue. Net revenues exceeded $1 billion in 2025. Both institutional and retail revenues grew year-over-year, contributing to overall adjusted operating earnings of $226 million. This included another year of exceptional investment results as we realized $35 million of performance fees in the fourth quarter.

We generated flows of approximately $15 billion, well exceeding our long-term organic growth target of 2%, further scaling our franchise. Flows for the year were broad-based across channels and strategies. In institutional, insurance channel demand for investment-grade credit, commercial mortgage, and private credit strategies remained strong. In retail, international demand for income and growth remained robust, while fixed income and specialty equity strategies drove positive flows in the U.S. intermediary channel.

We enter 2026 with significant momentum and are on track to deliver another year of organic growth. Turning to employee benefits, adjusted operating earnings were $152 million in the full year, significantly improved from $40 million in the prior year. A key driver of this improvement included Stop Loss, which I will discuss in a moment. In group life, full-year loss ratios were at the low end of our target range of 77%-80%.

This included favorable loss ratios in the fourth quarter, driven by better-than-expected frequency and severity of claims. In voluntary, our full-year loss ratios were approximately 50%, consistent with our plan to drive enhanced value for our customers. Turning to Stop Loss, in 2025, we delivered meaningful improvement supported by higher rates, tighter risk selection, and disciplined reserving.

Full-year reported loss ratios improved by 10 percentage points from 94% to 84%. This reflects, in part, a reserve increase of $37 million in the fourth quarter. Claims experience on the 2025 book is developing modestly better than the prior year. However, ensuring we have a well-supported reserve level heading into first quarter is essential. As a reminder, claims experience for January cohorts will move from approximately 65%-90% credible on a paid basis through the first quarter.

Looking forward, we continue to embed recent experience into our pricing and risk selection. For the January 2026 business, we achieved an average net effective rate increase of 24%, above the 21% increase secured last year. Different than a year ago, we were able to maintain enforced premiums. We have more opportunities to select our risks with RFP volumes rising, driven by employers seeking greater certainty in their medical spend.

Collectively, these actions, reserving, pricing, and risk selection, have materially strengthened our positioning and support further margin expansion in 2026. Turning to slide 11, we generated approximately $775 million of excess capital in the full year, including approximately $175 million in the fourth quarter. This meaningfully exceeded our $700 million target in 2025. Exceptional earnings drove a more than 200 basis point expansion in our adjusted return on equity, which now stands at 18.6%.

We have been disciplined with our capital in 2025, including our acquisition of OneAmerica, which is generating earnings and returns well above our original targets. More broadly, our strong balance sheet, healthy excess capital, and highly cash-generative businesses provide us significant flexibility to deploy capital in the most value-accretive way.

In the near term, the best use of that capital is for share repurchases. We will repurchase $150 million of shares in the first quarter and expect to do the same in the second quarter, subject to macro conditions. Longer term, we will continue to be strategic, opportunistic, and disciplined with our deployment of capital as we accelerate our strategy.

We head into 2026 with clarity on our priorities and great momentum. We exceeded our financial targets in 2025 and expect to do the same in 2026. I'll now turn it back to Heather to share those priorities.

Thanks, Mike. Turning to slide 12, I want to thank the entire team here at Voya. Collectively, we delivered for our customers and positioned Voya for another strong year in 2026. Our priorities for 2026 are clear and compelling: growing excess cash generation, maintaining balance sheet strength and capital flexibility, driving continued commercial momentum in retirement and investment management, and further improving margins in employee benefits.

These priorities and our continued focus on execution accelerate our growth strategy and create meaningful value for our customers and shareholders. We are helping our customers build financial confidence and clearing a path for better outcomes today and in the years ahead. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator so we can take your questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star two. As a reminder, participants are limited to one question and one follow-up question. Our first question is from Bob Huang with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Good morning. My first question is on Stop Loss, especially regarding the reserve that you've added. Can you maybe give a little bit more details behind the reserve actions? Is it more of a you have the reserves mainly just to pad the reserves, to be conservative, or is it more you're actually seeing some losses developing that would cause you to take the actions you've taken?

Hey, Bob. Yeah. First, just let me start by saying and reiterating what I shared on the prepared remarks. When we talk about the January 2025 business relative to the January 2024 business, it's running modestly better than where we were at this point last year. That includes when we set the reserves coming out of December and, frankly, where we stand right now.

And then to your question, second, if we did increase reserves in the quarter, the importance of the claims experience in the first quarter can't be understated. As I mentioned, we moved from two-thirds complete to 90% complete in the first quarter. And the range of outcomes today is different than what I would say historically for Stop Loss. You hear us talk about 77%-80%, a three-point range. But with this healthcare backdrop, that range is wider, probably double the normal range.

So when we look at the reserving, we think about being on the higher end of that best estimate range. Now, when we look forward and we think about the margin expansion that we expect in 2026, we certainly see that coming from not only the perspective of where we priced the January 2026 business, 24% increase we got on that business.

And frankly, from a risk selection perspective, we've gotten more opportunities. RFPs are up. And as I just mentioned, we are seeing employers look for this type of coverage as they're really trying to get certainty with their medical spend. I think the big step back here right now is that when we look at Stop Loss, it did not take us off course for an incredible year in 2025. The actions we've taken across the pricing, the risk selection, and how we've reserved for this heading into 2026 positions us to say the same.

Got it. Really appreciate that. So it sounds like your path hasn't changed. So maybe a follow-up on that specifically is the 24% rate increase for the January 2026 cohort. As we go forward, obviously, that's a big rate increase. Do you feel that rate increase is enough or sufficient going forward as we think about just the broader Stop Loss environment, or do you feel like maybe going into the next few years there should be more pricing? Just curious any comments or dynamics on pricing?

Yeah, we do. We do, Bob. We feel when we think about where trend is, we've talked a lot about the fact that we expected higher trend in 2025 and 2026. And so we went out to get that rate. Certainly, it was easier for January 2026 than it was for January 2025 as we were ahead of many and going after that rate.

But when we look at this relative to that kind of high single-digit, maybe 10% first-dollar trend, you lever that up around, we think, in that 20% range. And so the other piece I'd mentioned, too, is that demand we're seeing from employers that are looking for certainty of spend. We feel like as we move forward on the progress of margin improvement at the cohort level, that we're going to have even more opportunity in 2026 because when you look at the demand, it's up.

Yeah. And Bob, it's Heather. Maybe one thing I would add just to kind of do the broader step back on Stop Loss is we've always talked about this being a two-year journey. And as Mike talked about, the $100 million improvement in earnings in 2025 is a significant step in the right direction. We aren't declaring victory. As Mike talked about, we're reserving for a wide range of outcomes. But we believe we only have upside from here, which is why we have reiterated our capital deployment plans for the first half of 2026.

Our next question is from Tom Gallagher with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

Good morning. Couple of Stop Loss follow-ups. Mike, when you said your actions support further margin expansion in 2026, is your baseline the 84% that you did for the full year, or is it the 91% your loss ratio for the January 2025 cohort? When you say improvement, from which number, the 84% or the 91%?

I think it's both, Tom. When you think about the 84%, I mean, certainly, that's the reported levels of loss ratios for the full year. And as Heather just mentioned, we took the EB business from $40 million-$152 million. That included progress with Stop Loss.

But also from the 91% perspective - and I think Bob was getting at this just a moment ago - when you think about reserve levels and frankly, fourth quarter is super critical when we make that assessment of where do we think the range of outcomes are. As I just mentioned, it's not a three-point type of wideness in the range. We think it's, frankly, closer to double that. And we want to be in a position here where we're at the higher end of that best estimate range.

Now, we certainly need to see where things play out in the first quarter and, frankly, some of the second quarter before we decide where this is ultimately going to land or where we see where this ultimately is going to land. But the one thing I would just kind of encourage folks to think about here is don't conflate where we're reserved at with where this ultimately lands.

Yeah. And Tom, I would just add to it, if you really compare where we were a year ago with our reserve levels, in about this time last year, we were close to 95%. And while we're not fully complete on the 2025 book of business, you see it coming in closer to that 90%-91% range, which is quite an improvement.

And so we do think it's prudent, given the backdrop, to do the reserve adjustments that Mike mentioned. But as you saw last year, things only went in a one-way direction, which was a positive direction. And so we see we like the progress we made, and we see further upside from here and improvement to build on what we delivered.

I appreciate the color from both of you. My follow-up is just if you look at, I guess, the loss ratio of 91%, it implies loss-cost trend was up 20-ish. Is that the right level you think is happening across the board for Stop Loss on a trend basis, or was there something about your risk selection? Did you get selected against so you think your loss experience was worse?

I just want to get a sense for what did you see in the quarter? Was it material worsening, or is this more conservatism? I just want to get a sense for what do you think actually happened and maybe why. I think people look at the 91% and they get scared because you went from 87%-91% and think you don't have your arms around the situation.

Maybe just to the extent that you can, tell us how confident you are that you have your arms around the situation and you're not seeing adverse selection?

So from a risk selection perspective, it's a battle well thought, never won. I think when we talked about the January 2024 business, that was risk selection not where we wanted to be in any way, shape, or form. We made improvements when we think about where we were in January 2025, and we expect to make even further improvements on risk selection.

So it's never perfect. Tom, I think to your question around the trend, as I mentioned earlier, we think it's in that, call it, 20% high teens level. And so it was more difficult to get rate in the January 2025 than it was for the January 2026 for the reasons that we were talking about around demand. So when you just kind of roll that all together, the heart of your question, do we feel like we have our arms around this? Absolutely, we do.

Our next question is from Mike Ward with UBS. Please proceed.

Thank you. Good morning. I was curious about maybe just utilizing the Stop Loss experience in terms of leverage in order to sort of cross-sell other products with specific employers. You know what I mean? How is that going? Is that becoming material? Is that contributing to your confidence in 2026 for the retirement side?

Yeah. Mike and Heather, I'll let Jay add. But I think what's important to think about is that we're often selling employee benefit products to the same brokers and consultants, both the Stop Loss and the voluntary. And it goes to the point of we see high demand for the products that we're offering. But maybe the last bit I'd mention before I toss it over to Jay is our teams have continued to be highly disciplined on margin overgrowth. So we're not leaning into anything to drive unnecessary growth just given the backdrop. But Jay?

Yeah. As we think through this heading into 2026, as Mike referenced, the supply, at best, is level. We think it's actually down, but the demand is significantly up. We're hearing that from our brokers and intermediaries. So what it does cause is it does cause this kind of capacity conversation of there is only so much capacity in the marketplace for coverage.

Getting a more fulsome book as we think through the areas of employee benefits and where we have and are in similar segments in retirement, we definitely are changing that conversation. It's happening in front of us. We're engaged in those conversations now. We expect those conversations to continue. We are also seeing more and more from a bundling perspective.

So as we get into different questions on different parts of the book, we're seeing a greater opportunity to bundle given what we've done in some of the product lines. And so I think we'll come back to you as this conversation progresses. But it's definitely a leverage point and a conversation point we're having actively with our partners.

Thanks. And then just for Heather and Mike, you both sounded confident on the idea of expanding your excess cash flow generation in 2026. Wondering if you could unpack that a little bit more?

Yeah. Look, it really boils down to what we've been talking about in 2025 and what we're signaling around 2026 from a priority perspective. Heather, finish with this. Really, there's really three elements. I think the first element is the commercial momentum that we've had in both retirement and investment management. Record years.

Earnings have been fantastic. And then what we just talked about from an employee benefit perspective, we made good progress in 2025, but we're not satisfied. And we see even more margin expansion in 2026. That's going to be a contributor as well. And then if you're looking at it from a per-share perspective, to Heather's point just a moment ago, we see share repurchases as a key element of the value proposition. And frankly, when you look at our return on equity, it's close to 19%. We're more than happy to buy shares at these valuations.

Yeah. And Mike, maybe to build, and certainly, it makes sense why there's a lot of questions on Stop Loss. But if you think about the broader and, frankly, larger portion of our business, we've had an absolutely amazing year in 2025.

If I think about record revenue and Investment Management, record flows driven by a diversified breadth of solutions with strong investment performance, we've talked about, and you heard Mike mention on the call, an absolute record year in Retirement that is setting us up well for continued growth at margins that, frankly, had been above our long-term targets. We're making progress on the build-out of Wealth Management, which further diversifies that business. And then the OneAmerica, where we've added additional capabilities for our clients. We've brought in additional distribution partners.

We've also demonstrated really good deployment of capital into an acquisition that generated over a 30% unlevered return. To your question, Mike, yes, we feel confident in our ability to continue to grow cash generation in 2026 and are committed to returning that back to shareholders.

Our next question is from Suneet Kamath with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to go back to Stop Loss. Mike, as you were talking about the 2025 block, I think you said it was modestly better than 2024. I had sort of expected it to be significantly better just given the pricing actions that you took. I guess the question is, is this two-step process that you talked about sort of extending to maybe it's going to take you another year to kind of get there in terms of the Loss Ratio?

Yeah. Look, I think it's a stay tuned, Suneep. We're pricing this business, and we did it in the fall. We'll do it in 2026 to get our target margins. And as we've been talking about, we made a lot of progress in 2025. We're not all the way there.

Our expectation is to continue to make progress in 2026. The exact amount of that, I think we'll have a better sense as we get to more of the middle-late part of 2026. But we'll update you along the way. Tom was asking earlier, do we have our arms around this? We do. And we're taking action across the three dimensions. And those three dimensions are the pricing, the risk selection, and the reserving.

And so we think we've taken the appropriate steps in the fourth quarter to make sure that we're in a good position in 2026 to continue that excess capital generation growth that Heather just talked about a moment ago.

Okay. And then I guess when you go from a 1/3 to 2/3, then to 90% of the experience, is there something in the latter part of how that experience earns in that gives you more information, or is this just, as you saw what happened in the fourth quarter, that's what caused you to take the reserve build?

Yeah. It's just timing, Suneep, right? Fourth quarter's really critical. First quarter's really critical. That's not new news. We've been trying to get that across for the reasons you just called out. And so even though the claims are happening in 2025, we may not be aware of them until 2026. There's just a lag between event and when it's reported. And so with that healthcare backdrop, I think it's just super prudent to be on the higher end of best estimate ranges for reserves. So that's what we did.

Our next question is from John Barnidge with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on Stop Loss. And Mike, you had some comments about range of outcomes is different today than historically and a lot wider. Is it one of these things with the Stop Loss business with the fourth quarter, there just probably is going to be more seasonality going forward in this business, in this backdrop, setting aside the rate need?

Look, I think when we look at 2024, we look at 2025. We're in kind of a once-in-a-generation type of situation as it relates to the healthcare backdrop. Where this lands as we get deeper into 2026, and is this going to be something that's happening every fourth quarter?

Yeah, I wouldn't want to signal that. What I would want to signal is that the analysis, the work that we do, and what we're putting on our book, and the analysis and the work that we're doing in assessing what the right amount of reserves are, that's going to continue. Does the range stay at a similar level in December of 2026 that it is December 2025? We would hope not. But if it is, that's the way we're going to assess it.

All the actions we've taken heading into this year, again, gives us a confidence level that we're going to continue to expand margins in EB. It's not just a Stop Loss story. It's, frankly, across the board in that particular business line.

Thank you for that. My follow-up question, can you talk about the strategic rationale of Stop Loss in the context of what it brings in synergies to the growth opportunity, Investment Management, and Retirement? Thank you for the answers.

Yeah, John. It's Heather, happy to do that. I think if you look broadly at Employee Benefits and Stop Loss, this is a very important product in our overall portfolio. If you think about within the Workplace Solutions business, Stop Loss is an incredibly high demand for employer clients to help them control really more volatile medical expenses when they choose to self-insure.

As you heard Jay mention, there is much greater demand and lower supply. So we think we're in a well-positioned spot, specifically demonstrated by the 24% rate increase we achieved on the book while maintaining the block size. But it also goes broadly. You think about the supplemental benefits we have. Those are really critical for families and employees to cover out-of-pocket expenses when they're in a high-deductible plan.

Voya Financial (VOYA) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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