“So if you put all of these pieces together, from an aggregate perspective, back to your question, we would expect this ratio to moderate, but look for that moderation in the second half of the year, if you think that coming through our numbers.”

In context

“ind of consistent with historical trends. For disability, we did experience higher disability claims. Those were coming from the impact of new state-mandated paid family leave programs. These new programs have a claim pattern with higher upfront claims that tend to normalize. So here again, we would expect that impact to also moderate in the second half of the year. And then the third factor, which John referenced in his prepared remarks, we did see slightly elevated severity in LTD. And it's important to note that while this was elevated on a year-to-year basis, when we look at it sequentially, it was actually flat over the last 3 quarters. So we don't really see any evidence of a trend here in terms of severity and very much in line with kind of quarterly fluctuations that we would see. So if you put all of these pieces together, from an aggregate perspective, back to your question, we would expect this ratio to moderate, but look for that moderation in the second half of the year, if you think that coming through our numbers. Operator: Our next question comes from Wes Carmichael with Wells Fargo. Wesley Carmichael: First question was on RIS spread. I think the core spread declined a little bit sequentially. But you've also brought on a lot of new business from PRT and other products over the past couple of quarters. So any help on how you're thinking about core yield or spread? And how that should trend if there's any uplift from deploying some of that cash or reallocating some assets going forward? John McCallion: Yes. Thanks for the question. Wes, it's John. So as you mentioned, RIS spreads for the quarter were 119 basis points and down about 5 basis points in total sequentially, but honestly, at the top end of our 100 to 120 basis point guidance range, VII contributed about 24 basis points. So that was esse”