“Given the continued difficulty in forecasting VII, we plan to once again disclose preliminary information regarding our Q3 expectations for VII toward the end of September.”

In context

“offset by favorable expense margins year-over-year. The company's effective tax rate on adjusted earnings in the quarter was approximately 24%, which is at the bottom end of our 2025 guidance range of 24% to 26%. On Page 5, this chart reflects our pretax variable investment income for the past 5 quarters, including the second quarter of 2025, which was $195 million. Private equity returns were 0.9% and our real estate and other funds yielded an average return of roughly 1% in the quarter. As a reminder, PE and real estate and other funds are reported on a 1 quarter lag and accounted for on a mark-to-market basis. While VII and 2Q '25 was below its quarterly guidance of $425 million, it was within the range of $175 million to $225 million that we disclosed in a Form 8-K at the end of June. Given the continued difficulty in forecasting VII, we plan to once again disclose preliminary information regarding our Q3 expectations for VII toward the end of September. On Page 6, we provide VII post-tax by segment and Corporate and Other for the past 5 quarters. As a reminder, each business has its own discrete portfolio aligned and matched with its liabilities. Asia, RIS and MetLife Holdings continue to hold the larger proportion of VII assets, given their long-dated liability profiles. Of the total VII asset balances of nearly $19 billion as of June 30, 2025. Asia accounted for more than 40% of the total. While RIS and MetLife Holdings accounted for roughly 30% and 20%, respectively. Moving to expenses on Page 7. This chart shows a comparison of our direct expense ratio for the full year '24 of 12.1%, Q2 of '24 of 11.9% and Q2 of '25 of 11.7%. As we have highlighted previously, we believe our full year direct expense ratio is the best way to measure p”