“Lastly, we expect group benefits adjusted earnings to benefit from factors outside of underwriting, largely from continued change in our product mix, greater operating efficiencies, and higher investment income, which will add an incremental 5% to 10% to adjusted earnings in 2025.”

In context

“tgage loans in VII. Now I will discuss our near-term outlook for our business segments. Let's start with the US on page thirteen. For group benefits, we are increasing our adjusted PFO growth target to 4% to 7% annually over the near term. We are maintaining our near-term underwriting guidance ranges: group life mortality ratio of 84% to 89%, and group nonmedical health interest adjusted benefit ratio of 69% to 74%. Please keep in mind, these are annual ratios and both typically skew to the higher end of the ranges in the first quarter given the seasonality of the business. However, for group life, if the positive trend we have seen in the last couple of quarters persists into the first half of the year, we expect the full-year ratio to be in the bottom half of the guidance range in 2025. Lastly, we expect group benefits adjusted earnings to benefit from factors outside of underwriting, largely from continued change in our product mix, greater operating efficiencies, and higher investment income, which will add an incremental 5% to 10% to adjusted earnings in 2025. For RIS, we've talked about the business being comprised primarily of spread and fee earnings. To that end, we provide a long-term balance growth range for total liabilities, which can be used to project our future spread and fee balances. In light of the opportunity we see under New Frontier, we are now increasing our total liability annual growth guidance to 3% to 5%. The total spread guidance range for the upcoming year can be applied to our projected general account balances to get a good proxy for our pretax spread income before expenses. We expect 2025 total general account investment spread to be 110 to 135 basis points, assuming the forward curve holds and based on our VII estimate for 2025. We anticipate our core spread to stabilize from 2025 forward now that all remaining intere”