“I think our guidance that we gave last quarter is we continued to believe another 8 to 10 would occur during the course of the Q3 on ex-VII as most of the of the remaining interest rate caps mature over the course next few months.”

In context

“be thinking about the progress of that spread as we kind of transition to 3Q and then ultimately 4Q? John McCallion: Yes. Thanks, Suneet. It's John. Good morning. So as you mentioned, so in the quarter, we came in at 121 basis points, that was within the 115 to 140 guidance. And then if you exclude VII, it was 119. And so a couple of things, right? We saw continued improvement in VII in the quarter. As you mentioned, we expected a decline from first quarter as a result of lower recurring interest margins due to the roll off of the interest rate caps. And we did anticipate it to be 8 to 10. It came in less, and it's primarily due higher-than-expected interest rates which we took advantage of during the course of the quarter. And so it was a little better than we thought. Having said that, I think our guidance that we gave last quarter is we continued to believe another 8 to 10 would occur during the course of the Q3 on ex-VII as most of the of the remaining interest rate caps mature over the course next few months. And then we should see spreads stabilize in most of the in-the-money interest rate caps purchased primarily during kind of pre- and even in the COVID era matures by then. So that's kind of how I would kind of play out the rest of this year. And I think if you go back to what we said at the outlook call, which was, we thought, all in, 2024 would show an all-in spread similar to 2023. And that's generally where we're trending towards. Suneet Kamath: Okay. Thanks, John. Operator: Next, we'll move to Ryan Krueger at KBW. Ryan Krueger: Hey, thanks. Good morning. I guess on Japan, could you give some perspective on the sales environment there? I think you had -- it was a tougher year ago comparison, but you had some declines in sales. So just hoping to get a little more color on the different p”