Unum Group (UNM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Let's get started. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. I'm Brian Meredith. I am the insurance analyst here for UBS. Thanks for joining us today. Great pleasure to have the senior management of the Unum with us for our next fireside chat. We've got with us Rick McKenney, President and CEO; Steven Zabel, Chief Financial Officer. I'm going to go through ask them a couple of questions here. I'll pause maybe halfway through. You can always ask questions on your -- from your table, there's that barcode, you can do it and type your question in, and I can ask that as well. And then a little bit later on the fireside chat. We've got a mic that can go around also if you want to ask any questions.

So let's start off, Rick, big picture. What are Unum's kind of key strategic priorities for 2024 and then over the next couple of years?

Yes. Great. Appreciate you having us here, Brian. Thanks to UBS for hosting us at the conference. I think that the company is actually in a very good spot. So coming out of 2023 with some of our best metrics that we've seen ever, the growth rates that we saw, the profitability, the capital generation really, really strong. And so I think your question about strategically where are we going is an important one. We also laid out at the end of January, kind of our outlook for this year, which is going to be continuing strong growth of premiums, strong growth in the earnings side, and so we'll look for a very good year this year. The things that will underpin that, first and foremost, we look at connecting with more customers, getting to more individuals at the workplace. And so that has actually been our hallmark to get there. Last year, we grew premiums above $500 million. And so you can think about that as 1 million individual cases of taking care of people. And that's the goal as we look to 2024. So getting to the employers being well connected to their needs. What we want to do is how the company has grown over the years. We certainly see that in 2024. And as we go out, it's going to be about those things, taking care of employers and their employees at time of need, comes in many different things that will help do that, such as digital connections that will have to those employers, helping their employees do well. And then what we've always done is take really good care of customers at time of need. And so that can be -- whether you're administering a very simple claim around something on a voluntary benefit. Someone going out on a leave or the more complex when you're dealing with somebody that's on long-term disability. We do that very, very well, and that's -- we'll continue to do that, and we think that will give us growth as we look out over the next several years.

Great. Great. And another area I was just hoping to touch a little bit here is maybe provide some insights into the voluntary benefits kind of market what's going on in that place right now. Are you seeing employers increasing the number of benefits they're offering? Is there growing demand for these benefits among employees talk a little bit about that and then maybe the pipeline of new products.

Yes. Voluntary benefits has been one that we've seen grow over the years, and it gets a lot less attention perhaps within the company because our hallmark, our history has been around the work that we do on the group space, long-term disability. But along the way, employers providing voluntary benefits to their employees equally is important. We saw that growing very quickly going up into the pandemic. So in the 2010s, the product line was growing in -- if you think about that, it's multiple forms of that product. So it's not any one protection. It's multiple protections, whether it be in accident policy, a hospital indemnity policy, critical illness policy, all of these things that are important to employees at time of need, a little bit smaller policy, a little bit simpler policy in terms of what that claim process looks like, but really, really important. And so that's a big part of our franchise distributed both on the Unum side as well as on the Colonial Life side. And so getting that reach to individuals has been good. The product, you've seen more and more products come to the employer that are being offered to their employees I think we've certainly had the core suite of what we've had. Those products have developed over time and adapted and we'll continue to do that. And then you also see some other things that come into the market around different types of needs that employees have. And that will be an ever-evolving portfolio given what that employee demand looks like. So voluntary benefit is a very important product for us across the board and we see that actually continuing to be a strong part of the portfolio. As part of that overall package, and I think that's the important thing. Voluntary benefits don't really get sold stand-alone, particularly on the Unum side of our business. It's all wrapped within that broader employee suite of products which can include the long-term disability, life insurance, dental and vision insurance and then the voluntary benefit products, which are very specific [ type of ] needs.

What about new products that we could be thinking about?

So we think about a lot of new products over time and how they evolve. Like I said, you got to think about the existing portfolio and how those -- that can be refreshed. I think that's, first and foremost, what that looks like. And then you'll see new products such as pet insurance coming into the marketplace today, you'll see other types of needs that you have. And those are ones we're going to look at. Once again, it will evolve and adapt based on what employees are ultimately wanting that employers want to pass along for those protections. So it's a dynamic market. Certainly, on a business-to-business, it's really important to employee ease. And so the employers providing that has been a good growth trajectory because oftentimes as well at the employer level, there's low to no cost for them to provide these because they are paid for by the employees themselves. So it's providing access.

Great. Thank you. And then maybe I'll pivot over to Steve. So thinking a little bit about the macro environment right now, higher interest rates, medical cost inflation, GDP growth, unemployment levels, all sorts of different things going on here. How does it impact demand as well as maybe expenses for your group business here? And then when you looked at your outlook, kind of what were you kind of contemplating in your outlook for '24?

Yes. Yes. Great. And thanks for having us here today, Brian. This is a great conference for -- really enjoying the day. So we think about kind of a couple of factors when we think about the economy. One is just GDP growth. And that really drives the economy and the number of people employed. And as you can imagine, offering group benefits into the workplace, it's really driven by the level of employment in the workplace as well as the level of salaries. A lot of our benefits are indexed to employees' actual salary. So we feel really good about the tailwinds that we've had around GDP over the last few years. That's really driven premium growth in a very positive way. As we look out over the year, we do anticipate a slowdown in the economy in GDP. We factored that into our plans, but still feel like we can grow top line premium at a pretty healthy clip of 5% to 7%. Interest rates for us, we love where interest rates are right now. We have obviously a pretty substantial investment portfolio, backing our closed block of business. And so where rates are right now is a really strong sustainable business model for us. We don't worry as much about inflation, frankly. We feel pretty good about our ability to manage costs within the organization. And then when we think more -- just more broadly about medical costs, we're not really indexed all that much to medical costs because when you think about our benefits, it's really salary replacement in a lot of instances or it's paying a life benefit or it's paying other types of kind of contractual benefits versus really being indexed to what medical costs may be doing or other things in an inflationary environment. So we feel good -- and I didn't mention employment. I mean that's kind of inherent in GDP growth, but employment is a really nice levels for us. We benefit from full employment within the economy, and we've seen that obviously over the last several years and expect that to really continue. There's a lot of discussion about recessionary impacts and it hasn't come yet. And I do think that when it does come, it's probably going to cycle through the economy more than being more -- than being in a cliff event. And so we really feel good about our ability to grow through those environments. And we've proven that in the past.

And I'd add also in that world where we have full employment is also to think about the employer-employee value proposition. So we certainly saw that coming out of the pandemic. As an employer is looking to attract and retain employees, they've got to think about that benefits package that they're providing. And so we saw a resurgence in that in terms of the demand that we have for our products to make sure employers actually have the best that they offer to employees. So a really strong economy, really strong employment picture also creates demand for our product set as well.

Absolutely. So another thing that I get a lot of questions about, disability has been seeing some incredibly favorable trends over kind of a long period of time. If we look at your guidance here for '24, you're still assuming some pretty good loss ratios so benefits ratio. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what is driving those favorable loss ratios? And is this something you think is going to persist here for a while?

Yes. Let me start and talk a little bit about the market, and then Steve can talk about some of the pricing dynamics. So when you think about the market today, I'd look at it more on a macro basis. So we compete with some very, very good competitors on that as we distribute the product and so as we look to the future, not everybody has seen the same level of benefit we have. And so we think our competitive stance that we've got around our product set is still very, very good. What you talked about is very true. We've seen some of the best results we've ever seen behind the product and what that has -- how that plays in the pricing dynamics are a little bit different in what that does over time from a competitive standpoint because it's not about the claims levels are getting better. It's ultimately going to be about what kind of prices we're charging. Maybe Steve, if you can talk a little bit about what the pricing dynamics look like in the market today?

Yes, yes. No, that's good. And just maybe I'll take a step back and just describe for those of you who don't track us maybe quite as closely why our performance has been so good within our group disability business. If you go back several years, we've always had fairly stable incidents in that block of business. We did see that elevate a little bit through the pandemic, but now is back to more historical levels of incidence rates. But then a big driver of profitability is just recoveries. And that's our ability to work with the employee and the employer and get people back to work, which is really a shared goal of those 3 parties. We did see that improve gradually over the last several years to -- we're in a point where our recovery rates are as good as they've ever been. And we do feel like that's sustainable over time in that -- incidents again is back to historical levels, but also we feel good about our operational protocols that we have in place to really maintain the level of recoveries that we've seen. So then it gets to the question of how much of that do you give back in pricing or not? And we feel very comfortable with the guidance that we gave as we were going into 2024 about maintaining the benefit ratios and the margins in that business throughout 2024. As Rick said, we do think that pricing is very rational right now. I'll also say that not everybody in the market is experiencing the favorability in their blocks that we have seen. It's a little bit mixed. And so we're going into really the selling season, specifically around the top end of the market in the coming months. And so we'll know more about the market, but feel pretty comfortable with the remainder of the year there. The other thing that I'll note just around the experience, we do have some confidence of the levels of incidents that we'll see in LTD for the remainder of the year because most of those leads come through our short-term disability business first. And so we feel very good about the trends we've seen so far this year and short-term disability and how that will then flow through to long-term disability.

One last thing I'd add to it, too, is that when you think about how we price, we got our customer by customer. We're very customer-centric in terms of how we look at it. And each case is different. So it doesn't necessarily depend on the industry or anything else. Every business will run a little bit differently. And so we have to be quite customized in our pricing for those individuals. So it's not blanket pricing across the board. It's going to be very specific to their circumstances, working with them, not just on the disability, but the other products and services we'll provide to that customer. And our team does a really good job of getting into the details with a customer. They've been there a long time. We have good tenure of our sales force to make sure we're serving the needs of that customer, of which price is a part, certainly, but there's many other things that go into that equation.

Great. Great. So despite these great loss rate, it sounds like the market is still pretty disciplined, which is good from a pricing perspective.

Yes.

Let's pivot over to the international side. Maybe we can talk a little bit about sales and premium growth, International, really robust kind of outlook for 2024 here. Maybe talk about what's driving the very strong growth rates and kind of the longer-term outlook for that business.

Yes. Just a little bit of history about our international business. And the majority of that business is our U.K. business. That was a very strong business historically. We went through the pandemic -- and they were challenged for a few years. But what we've seen over the last 18 to 24 months is really a full recovery. The economy is very strong over in the U.K. Inflation does help us a little bit over there as well and what that has done to wages, but feel good about how that business is performing. They had very strong growth in 2023, and we do expect that to continue with sales growth in the double digits, resulting very strong premium growth. And I'd say that the biggest factor there is, one, that we've been able to really probably strengthen our position with life business, group life business over there. That's something that we've really focused on. We've always been a leader in long-term disability, but we've also started to see some momentum in group life. But the other thing is in the U.K. market, the broker is very, very important. And it's not important just for the sales process, but it's very important for the ongoing administration of that business. And so that broker experience is very, very key. And we've invested a lot in that experience over the last several years, and that's really starting to pay off for us as far as retention of business and our ability to work through these brokers and ensure more people over there.

Helpful. And then maybe pivoting over to Colonial, big improvement in sales in the fourth quarter. And you're looking kind of for a normalized kind of sales growth more in 2024 after a couple of challenging years. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the dynamics in that business, virtual versus face-to-face meetings. What's driving kind of this strong recovery we're seeing in sales growth.

Yes. So Colonial, we love that business. Great margins. Historically, that business was able to grow in the high single digits. It was a business that was impacted through COVID in just our ability to get into smaller businesses and their focus on putting products into their book for their employees. That has slowly recovered. And a big part of that recovery, frankly, is the openness of employers to talk about those types of products. Our technology that's come online for us to enroll and communicate with employees either face-to-face or virtually, that's a capability that was really adopted quite a bit during the pandemic and has continued. But the key to that business is to get more agents out there calling on customers and being able to talk about the value of Colonial's products out in the marketplace. So they had premium growth last year that was in that kind of 1% to 2% range. We do think that, that will continue to improve over the next couple of years and be to the point where sales growth can get back to that high single digits for that business. But it's all about getting agents recruited, getting them online, getting them the right tools and getting them in front of small businesses in the United States.

That's helpful. And then I want to pivot to another topic I've been trying to ask most companies. It's a hot topic right now, Generative AI, right? [ Nvidia ]ishuge $2 trillion company. Maybe talk a little bit about what is kind of Generative AI kind of potential applications for you to -- is it an area that can improve underwriting, other areas of the business? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure, happy to. When you think about AI and when I talk about AI, Generative AI has been a good development, but we've been using AI actually in our processes for the last several years. And that's around decision-making processes that can take in the vast trove of data that we have, mix it with some external data and help us to make decisions. Now we've been doing that around some of our products. We're very careful about how we do that and use that and how that works for the customer. So we usually will use them for a faster approval as opposed to anything else. And we're actually seeing that technology applicable to other areas of our business. Generative AI actually adds a new layer to that in terms of the communications and what we're able to do and move faster around that. So it's kind of adding to something we've already done very well. And I think it's very helpful in the company that we've been at AI, machine learning for several years. So this does become just additive. It's not starting from ground zero. So Generative AI and how we do communications, AI, classic AI and how we make more decisions across the business is something that we'll do more and more. And we have a really good team that has been focused on this for the last several years. And our business is all about decision-making and speed and getting to our customers faster and Generative AI and classic AI help us get there a little bit faster. There are many, many use cases. I think ours is one of our prioritization to make sure that we're focused on the most impactful things across the company and doing that in a very rapid way.

Yes. And I'd just say another form of AI that we've been using for years is just risk selection and risk pricing. And we believe that, that's one of our value creators is being able to price and assess risk properly. And we've been using that kind of in that discipline for quite some time.

Great. Really, really helpful. Just a reminder, if you want to ask a question, go ahead and put it on to the table. But let's pivot to one of the hot topics, in fact, there was [indiscernible] dinner last night, and it came up that the all stock trades at around 6x earnings where peer companies trade at double-digit multiples, right? And you're kind of like, why is that, right? It's a topic of kind of long-term care, right? So big opportunity, I think, for the stock price here. So with the full funding of this long-term care premium deficiency reserve and yours commitment to no further, call it, capital needed behind that block. Maybe you can discuss kind of your ongoing kind of free cash flow model from a sources and uses perspective?

Yes. Maybe I'll talk about the model, and then I'm sure the next question is going to be capital deployment. And so maybe I can turn it over to Rick to talk a little bit about capital deployment. We feel good about our capital generation model. Our subsidiaries, U.S. subsidiaries are making about $1.3 billion a year, and you add to that some other sources of capital generation and our outlook for 2014 or 2024 is levels that are between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion of capital generation. At the holding company then, we have needs for cash. And the 2 that we think about our debt service and our dividend levels that have been very consistent and consistently growing over the decades, and that's about another half -- that's $0.5 billion of capital needs. And so we do view the remainder of that as cash available to deploy as we kind of think about our priorities of capital deployment and then maybe Rick talk a little bit about priorities and how we think...

Absolutely. And I think when you think about the generation, our generation of capital in the company has been strong, it's stronger now, but it's been pretty consistent over a period of time. And so if I look to deployment last year, 2023, the deployment, the majority of it went towards long-term care. You mentioned in terms of people's perception around that. So we put a significant amount of capital behind that. As we said, we don't expect to put any more capital behind that. And so now we have to think about what exactly are the places that we want to put our excess capital. First, I'd start out with putting it back in our core business. I talked about growth and the desire to grow premiums both here in the U.S. and around the world. That's first and foremost. That's where we're going to put our capital today. That includes both organic means of just pure growth, but it also includes inorganic or M&A that can help us grow faster. And it's important to note that on the M&A front, the growing faster is how we think about it. So it's -- we think our portfolio actually has what it needs to grow in the way that we want. So it will be about what are the capabilities and the enablement that we would have to grow the company faster. And so we have the capital to do that and certainly, a team's they're looking very closely at what are the opportunities that we have there. So then once we talked about growing the enterprise from the top line perspective, we do have a significant amount of excess capital to think about. And so this year, unlike 2023, where I said a significant amount of our capital went towards long-term care. This year, we've redeployed more of that towards share repurchase. So last year, we started the year at about $200 million of share repurchase, elevated at $250 million and then announced for 2024, we're going to buy back $500 million of our stock. And so -- as we look at that, we've also said that that's going to vary over time in terms of how much stock we buy back. And so we'll continue to look at that. But I'd go back to -- we're in a very good position. As Steve said, the model that we have, the cash generation model is very strong. The position to buying our company, both on the core operations as well as behind our closed block are in good positions. And so we'll have to look at the pace at which we return that capital to shareholders. I don't want to leave out the dividend either. So our dividend keep increasing that. We've done that over the last several years. We'll look to increasing the dividend here. The normal cycle will be in the next few months. We'll continue to look at that.

Got you. But as cheap as your stock is I think share buyback is probably a pretty good use of capital at this point. Good. Excellent. And then maybe we can pivot over to the elevated claims incidents we saw in LTC. Give us some kind of contextual around why you're confident it's going to be kind of normalizing towards the end of '24. What drove that kind of increased incidence level?

Yes. Yes. And just a little bit of history on our LTC block. Just our experience was fairly volatile through the pandemic period. We had very low claim incidence levels or new people going on claim during that period of time. We had higher-than-expected claimant mortality, so more people that were on claim passing away. And then what we saw was a normalization of those as we got in the last, say, 12 to 24 months, what we saw at the beginning of 2023, though was a level of incidence that was elevated from what we had historically seen as well as what our expectations would be. That really continued through the first part of 2023. And then as we got into the back half, it did start to abate a little bit and was not at levels like we had at the first half of the year. We do believe as we get into 2024 that those will probably continue for a portion of the year. We do think that as we get throughout the year, that will start to abate. And one of the internal indicators that we look at is just the volume of claim inventory that we have. And with this type of block, as you might imagine, that claim inventory is going to grow just as the block ages. And we're able to really trend line what we think that claim inventory will do over a longer period of time. During the pandemic, we were quite a bit below that line of just cumulative claim inventory because of the low incidents that we did see. As we got closer to the back half of this year and as we're going into next year, that claim inventory is getting back closer to that longer-term trend line and where we would expect that to level out a little bit. So we still need to see how the performance plays out as we get into 2024. But we do feel like there's the opportunity for that to level out a little bit and get back closer to what our expectations are. But again, we need to see how that plays out throughout the year of 2024. The other thing we get asked questions about a lot is, how does that make you think about your longer-term assumptions that underlie you're reserving? And we look at experience over a longer period of time. We've seen this elevation now for maybe a year, we have a lot of experience prior to that, that would give us some confidence of longer-term expectations for that block. And so we don't draw a direct connection between some of the periodic elevation that we see and what our long-term expectations are. The other thing that we've talked about a little bit, too, is how that comes through our current period earnings. And it's a little bit more complicated now under an LDTI world, where we have certain cohorts within that block that are capped, certain ones that are uncapped, and that just creates a little bit of distortion with our periodic interest-adjusted loss ratio, and that's something we've talked to the market a little bit. And in our Investor Day, I tried to give a little bit more guidance around, hey, there are some other indicators to look at, whether it's our net premium ratio or it's just the absolute amount of earnings in a quarter. And so we want to give the market a few more metrics to think about as we're thinking about the performance of the block. But it's something that we'll continue to monitor as we get into 2024 and obviously, very important for us and for the performance of that block.

Great. That's helpful. Any from the audience? No. All right. Next one. So maybe you can talk about your thoughts on derisking or reinsuring this long-term care block. Can you do a whole block? Is it more like you'll see portions of that block? What's demand like for those blocks. We saw a big transaction recently with Manulife. So kind of...

Yes. So maybe I could dimension that. We've been talking about derisking the block and actually using reinsurance to take out a piece of the block. And just to give a little bit of history around that. I think if you went back 7 or 8 years ago, we talked about what the actions we take to take out the whole block. I think we shifted over time, say, like, actually, there are ways to parse the block into different pieces that would be more attractive to individuals. We did not see a transaction in the market for quite a period of time. So I go back to CNO's transaction, which happened 7-ish years ago. And then seeing this on the -- from Manulife being able to do that, we think it's just great. We think it's good that it shows that buyers and sellers can come together under the right circumstances and looking at the right dynamics. And you do have to think about it in different ways, different buyers are going to like different pieces of the block. And I think that actually what Manulife was able to do was actually to find a buyer that looked at and like the assets that they have behind the block and the cash flows that come off with that business. And also to find a buyer and reinsure that looked at the liability side and was comfortable with those type of risks. And so I think it was a good transaction in the market. I think we think about capacity in the market, it's still being there and growing. And you can't minimize that having a transaction in the market after such a period of time says that there'll be more activity in the market around that. So we've been at it consistently. Our teams have done a very good job of looking at our -- down to a policy level, we can look at a different type of attributes, and we are looking very actively in terms of what we can do from an overall derisking. We've also said all along the way, it's hard to do. So these are complex transactions. We were able to do one in our individual disability block going back 3.5 years ago, but these transactions are difficult to do, bringing all of those pieces together in the right way, but we're going to stay active at it because we think it is really important, back to a point you made earlier in terms of what the impact is on our overall P/E ratio. And so being able to remove this block or pieces of this block, we think will really help to remove some of that discount that we see. And so the team is active on it, and we'll look forward to seeing something, but I would just say that I think it's good to see activity in the market as well.

Got you. And do you think that's just because buyers are getting more comfortable with the long-term care kind of liability credit and stuff like that?

I think it's going to be dependent on the buyer. And so it's -- like I said, it's good that they saw a section of that business that they wanted to transact on and we're going to have to continue to just be actively out there talking to buyers and finding the right interest level.

Any thoughts about how much of the excess capital you'd be willing to use to get a transaction done.

I think what we've said is actually we don't think that we need to use our excess capital to do a transaction. We think that we have firepower in many forms. One is just cash that we have at the holding company. We've talked a little bit about the reserves backing our long-term care. So you have to think about that in the excess. And when we talked about this year in terms of the excess of our statutory reserves over GAAP reserves, there's some excess in there that may be part of a transaction. And then certainly leverage capacity and other things. So we don't think that -- we're not warehousing capital to do a transaction. We think we'll have plenty of opportunity to have the firepower to do something when that time comes.

Great. Any other from the audience? I've got another one. I just want to chime in to here. So we talked a little bit about the U.K. business, right? Just curious, you've got some other international businesses, pretty high growth. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. Are there any other geographies or other areas geographically you can kind of move into?

Yes. So we actually -- Steve mentioned that we absolutely love our U.K. business. That was an acquisition that was done back around 1990, has grown very well over time. Our Polish operations, we just celebrated our fifth year anniversary of the acquisition that we did there. And one of the -- the 2 things that people that wouldn't know those markets as well, they're very similar businesses to what we do today. So the U.K. is actually -- we are at the workplace, taking care of the benefits of the individuals that are there today. And even in Poland, which has a very strong individual business, it also has a group business. And so we like both of those businesses in Poland, and that's why we're there. It's not to actually pursue a geography so much as to pursue an opportunity to do what we do really well. So there are other geographies, which have that opportunity where people derive their benefits and their protections at the workplace. And so those would be the kind of countries that we look at. We would say though that it's not -- we'd rather fortify those things that we already have as opposed to go into new areas. So although that's interesting longer term and something we'd look at -- right now, it's about fortifying the positions that we have today.

Great. That's helpful. We got a little bit of time left. The other question I've been trying to throw out to some people on these fireside chats is sitting in an elevator, I ask you why do I buy Unum stock today? What would your kind of quick elevator pitch be for owning Unum stock today?

Yes. Certainly, I think I'd go -- I got to get my elevator speech down to -- how many floors do we have. The -- I actually talk about, first of all, what we do, so providing protections at the workplace, taking care of people at time of need. It's got a very noble purpose in what we do today. So the fundamentals of the company are excellent. I think our positioning in the markets, if you are interested in life insurance and other types of insurance, we're in the best part of the market today and getting it out at scale. And then I think I'd look at the compelling value that there is in the stock today because of some of the overhangs that we've addressed, but just need to work their way into the market. So I wouldn't minimize that with a very strong capital position to have the firepower to really dictate what we want to do in the future.

Terrific. So question came in. In management's view, what part of the business do you think is not fully appreciated by the market right now?

Yes. Well, I can say that given where the value is versus where we think the value should be is that, that might be more of a blanket answer. But I think individual parts of the business that we don't get asked about enough would be our individual disability income business. That is a very, very strong business. And that's selling individual disability into the workplace on kind of a carve-out basis. That has been a very stable business, a very nice growing business, and it generates a lot of cash to the organization. So I think it's good we don't get asked about it a lot because it's been very stable and very predictable, but that's a great source of capital for the company and a great source of earnings for the company. So we do like to talk about the strength of that business.

Great. Another one just came in here too. So thinking about this risk transfer, going back to that question. Do you think that the market would be more focused on the price ceding commission or the type of liabilities in the block i.e., is it better to sell some of the best stuff or a broad spectrum that mirrors the overall block.

Yes, it's a good question. I think that it's going to be what -- and like I say, we're trying to meet the buyers where they are today. And so it's going to be what their demand is and what they're willing to price different things at. So I don't know if it's going to be a representative part of the block that's probably a little bit more different. I think it's probably more isolated in terms of there's a risk that they like. They see the aging of a piece of the business or they look at the assumptions that we have around a certain pieces. So it's a hard question to answer because each buyer, and we've talked to multiple folks, they're focused on different things. And so ultimately, it's having a buyer meet a seller around a certain set of assumptions. And is there a price there that makes sense for both parties.

Makes sense. Good. Anything else from the audience. Great. I thought that was really helpful. I really appreciate with your time.

Brian, we appreciate you having and appreciate UBS for having us in here today. It's good to see everybody and get to meet with the teams.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Great. Thanks.