MetLife, Inc. KBW Insurance Conference 2026

Sure. First of all, it's great to be back with you, Ryan, this year. When we launched New Frontier, our goal was to accelerate growth, deliver strong returns, and do so across cycles, positioning MetLife as a quality compounder over time. I think two years into the strategy, or nearly two years into the strategy, really pleased with the progress that we're making. Our approach is simple. We want to deploy capital and resources to market-leading businesses where we have structural advantages. Think about size, scale, distribution, and product and origination capabilities. The four priorities that we set at Investor Day, I believe we're making good progress across the board. The first one was expanding and accelerating growth in our Group Benefits business, where we are the largest player, three times the size of our nearest competitor.

Capitalizing on our unique origination Retirement and Liability origination capabilities in the U.S. and Japan and in the U.K. Accelerating growth in our asset management business. We want Met to become a greater contributor to our overall earnings over time. Last but not least, accelerating growth in international markets. We feel that we're really well-positioned. We're in markets that have strong tailwinds when it comes to trends that we're seeing in those markets, and we feel good about our opportunity to capitalize on those. Those are our main strategic priorities. We set, I think, an ambitious set of commitments and goals to support those. I would say we're tracking ahead of schedule in terms of delivering on those. We delivered a 10% EPS growth in 2025. We're exceeding that this year. A 16% adjusted ROE in 2025.

We're at 17% this year, which is at the top of our 15%-17% range. Our direct expense ratio came in below target in 2025. We're absorbing PineBridge this year, and we're still committed to achieving our five-year target when it comes to the direct expense ratio. Where the rubber meets the road on free cash flow, we delivered nearly $5 billion in 2025, and the pace is continuing strong this year. All in all, I think we feel good about the momentum we're seeing across our businesses. One point I would make here is that our model is repeatable. It's based on recurring revenues and the flexibility to invest where we see the most compelling risk-adjusted opportunities.

And if you consider that technology and AI are force multipliers, that further supports our ability not only to deliver on our five-year commitments, but hopefully to exceed those.

Sure. I've described diversification as MetLife's superpower. We really believe that, and it extends to every facet of our business, be it the geographies and markets that we operate in, our products and distribution channels, the various risks that we take, our investment portfolio, and it also extends to this balance between capital-light and capital-driven businesses. That balance is roughly 50/50 today. We think of them as two engines that power the company. One point I'd make is that those two engines have been constructed deliberately over time. We've made significant progress in achieving this balance, this 50/50 balance. On the capital-light front, you have Group Benefits, Asset Management, LATAM, EMEA, businesses that are not very capital-intensive, that deliver high ROEs. Then from a capital-driven perspective, you have our Retirement and Spread businesses. Here we deploy our balance sheet to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns.

One point I would make here also is that one engine feeds the other, because our capital-driven businesses originate assets for MetLife Investment Management to manage, which fuels our fee-based capital-light engine. So those businesses are highly complementary.

Yeah, sure. Let me just echo Michel's comments. Great to be here, so thanks for having us back. Maybe just two things, and I might just tie in ROE to that as well because they are connected, and also just coming off of Michel's comments on the mix of business. I think a couple of things I would point out. The unit cost initiative is really a cultural thing for us, and it is really not about cost reduction. We are really trying to drive a sustainable operating leverage within the firm where revenues outpace expenses. We want to be able to invest in the business for growth. We have been doing that, and at the same time, we are seeing a reduction in our unit cost occur. We had that occur under Next Horizon.

We are already off to a great start under New Frontier, and I think as Michel pointed out, I would highlight again just the point, we acquired PineBridge, which is an asset management business, which is a high expense ratio business, right? That probably put about a 50-basis-point headwind on our expense ratio, yet it has not taken us off track. So we have absorbed all 50 basis points this year. If we had not had PineBridge, we would probably have a target of like 11.6 instead of the 12.1 we have for this year. So I think all in all, there is a real cultural inertia that is going on around our focus on driving operating leverage across the firm, and I wanted to bring ROE into that. That is also helping with ROE. If you tie together the points Michel made around our mix of business.

Our pace of capital-light businesses is outpacing capital-driven, and it will likely continue. So that in and of itself will drive up ROEs. Unit costs will drive up ROEs. We have been delivering high unlevered IRRs on new business, high teens call it, right? So if you take all of those things, couple that with the fact that we have a runoff block that is more capital-intensive. That is also one reason why you are starting to see the ROEs push up to the upper end of the range. We have been at 17% for the first half of this year relative to our 15%-17%, and we see good momentum going forward. I would say the other thing, I think you referenced a little bit around just what is driving these things.

We've been on a journey around delivering a foundational tech stack, a journey around a data strategy, and now you embed AI. Going back to how are you absorbing the 50? These things are real. We're really seeing the productivity gains come through the firm, and we see that continuing throughout. Workflows are changing, how we process claims are changing, how we underwrite is changing. There's opportunities for AI to drive growth. That really continues to drive down that unit cost over time.