“It should be playing to see that we anticipate the underlying momentum building across our businesses to continue.”

In context

“plined approach we apply to evaluating our portfolio of businesses. We ended the year with $5.2 billion of cash and liquid assets on our balance sheet, which is comfortably above our target cash buffer of $3 billion to $4 billion. We have consistently said that when responsible growth is attractive and available, we will deploy capital organically or inorganically. If not, we will return capital to our shareholders. I am pleased our Next Horizon strategy continues to prove its metal amid uncertainty. Looking ahead, whether driven by Fed policy and changes to the yield curve, geopolitical events, or the unfolding U.S. election cycle, it is prudent to anticipate more uncertainty in 2024. The supplemental slides we published last night include some near-term targets and elements of guidance. It should be playing to see that we anticipate the underlying momentum building across our businesses to continue. This is evident in our flagship Group Benefits business, where off a large embedded base we've established a strong growth outlook for premiums, fees and other revenues. And of further note, we've also increased our expectations for both group life and non-medical health margins. Importantly, the outlook that we've provided reflects the world as we see it, not as we wish it to be. In that context, we assume a more modest private equity return of high-single digits in the near term, down from the 12% assumption we have used in prior years. Private equity remains an important contributor to our well-tested asset-liability matching program. It is an asset class well suited to defeat long-term liabilities, and our historical track record has been very strong. In closing, when we launched our”