CNO Financial Group, Inc. KBW Insurance Conference 2026

Okay. Ryan, thanks for having us and thanks for the question. When I look at the performance of the stock, and I look at the sales, and I look at the employee retention and customer satisfaction scores and so on, we feel really good about where we are at. But I am the CEO, and I am biased, and I still think we are underpriced, and I still think we have tons of potential. The lawyers get nervous when I say that, but it is the way I feel. We have benefited from a number of things, not the least of which is the demographic that we serve. There is a handful of things that make CNO really unique, and one of them is that we focus exclusively on the middle market. We define that as customers that have an average net worth of $100,000 or less.

We are focusing on middle America, and the reality is that that represents, depending on who you believe, somewhere around 60% or 70% of the population in the U.S. There is nobody else out there that has a full suite of products and does all the things that we do that is focused on that segment. Most of the people in our business, understandably, are focused on the affluent that have $1 million or $2 million or $5 million to spend or invest. That is just not where we are focused. That demographic continues to have significant needs. People should remember that there are 11,000 Americans retiring every day, and oftentimes that is when the relationships with our customers start. When they are getting ready for retirement or they have retired. They are turning 65, and they need to think about things like Medicare.

That is another thing that makes us unique is we are one of the few life insurers that also sells Medicare. We start the relationship oftentimes with something like a Medicare Supplement product, and then that goes on into other things. I should also mention there are some really specific rules about starting relationships with health related products and then moving into other things. We of course, follow all those rules. But the reality is that we have a significant opportunity because of that demographic, because of how many of them are turning 65 every day, and the fact that there are so few alternatives. We have a great team of people that have really been able to turn those opportunities into results.

Yeah. Just a couple of pieces of information to supplement what you said. You are correct that we have consumer and worksite. Our consumer business makes up about 80% of the company, and as the name implies, that is where we go out and talk to retail individuals. In our worksite business, that is about 20% of the company, and that is where we talk to employers and get access to employees that way. One of the biggest challenges in this business is the agents and how to manage them and grow them and so on. As a side note, I really think this is one of the things that the industry has gotten wrong over the years. I think as an industry, we have lost sight of the fact that when you control distribution, you have a much greater ability to control your future.

We have stayed very committed to having an agent force that is captive, that sells only our products, and the majority of our agents eat what they kill. Which is to say they are not W2 employees, they are independent contractors, and they make a living by selling products, and if they do not sell anything, they do not make a living. It is a very tough model to make sure you get right. We have shown consistent growth, and when you think about building an agent force, I think you have to break it down in a really simple way, or at least we do. First, you have to think about what it takes to attract those agents, how you bring them in, and then you need to think about what it takes to keep them. In terms of attracting them, we have been extremely fortunate.

We are different than many other companies in that our agents, when they join us, they join us as a full-time. It is not that they are a part-time teacher and a part-time selling our stuff. They are full-time with us. Half of our agents are millennials, and half are women. Those three things right there make us very different than the usual model. In terms of making sure we bring in the right folks, we have done a lot of things over the last several years to ensure that we are appealing to the types of people that are most likely to succeed. And we have found that one of our best sources are referrals. Now, I know that sounds really obvious, but the agents that have been with us for three to five years and are really successful, the candidates that they suggest join us are the ones where we have the best retention.

We've focused a lot on that. We've focused a lot on creating training and compensation and support structures that appeal to those folks. Once you get them in, you've got to give them a career path that appeals to them. A decade ago, we started our own broker-dealer, and we're really trying to position our agents. They come in by starting out and learning the business, selling basic protection products, whether that's Med Supp or life or what have you. Ultimately, the goal for the smarter ones, for the ones that want to stick around and make a career out of this is to be able to become financial advisors and create an annuity of income, if you will, a regular stream of income.

The combination of tweaking the types of folks we go after to join us, along with the enhancements we've made to make the career path compelling, has really worked nicely. The stats you've provided on both our work side and our consumer side, we've had really good luck. Also having a captive distribution force gives us much more control over our destiny. We feel very good about that. We're very pleased with the agents we've brought on. We think they've done a wonderful job and really delivered some very nice results.

Sure. First, a general comment. If you forced me to pick between growing agent count and growing productivity, I'd pick productivity. If I could only pick one, I'd pick that. That's way more important. Our sales and net income results have grown better than our agent count has, so by definition, our productivity has consistently gone up. That effort to focus on productivity has really yielded results, and I think will continue to do so. Now the magic happens, of course, when you do both, when you grow the absolute number of agents and the average productivity of each of those. If you can do both at the same time, that's really where you see the results kick in, and that's what we've been fortunate enough to do these last several quarters.

In terms of how you grow productivity, first of all, you have to make sure you are retaining them. Back to my earlier comments, if your agents are a revolving door, it is almost impossible to grow productivity. First you have to make sure you keep them. Then you have to give them more tools with technology. You have to give them a product pipeline that is diversified, so if they start out a relationship with a customer talking about product A, they need to be able to also have product B, C, and D that is viable, that is targeted for that consumer. So you have to give them that portfolio, you have to show them the career path where they can build an income.

You have also got to do other things that sound really simplistic, but instant underwriting, being able to give the agent tools so that when they are sitting in front of the customer, they can actually respond on the spot and say, "Yes, we can bind this policy," or do whatever it is, and really have the customer follow through while they are in the mental place to do so. So it has been a variety of different things. Like many of the other things that have yielded results for CNO, I cannot point to one or two things we have done. I can point to 100 little things we have done, each one of which has added on and helped us build this model. But those are the types of things we have worked on.