Aon Aktie

We are going to move ahead so that we stay on schedule. And also, I imagine that this session is going to be incredibly informative. I want to welcome Greg Case, CEO at AON.

To kick off, I guess, the most obvious and immediate question, I just say, USI. But obviously, this was big news. And I was hoping you could talk through the thinking and the expectations of the deal.

Terrific. I'm happy to do it, Meyer. First, I want to say to you and to KBW, thank you very much for hosting Aon. We are very much appreciate it and very much look forward to the discussion today. USI. When you think about USI, you have to start first and foremost with Aon and the foundation of Aon over the last number of years, in particular, what we've done over the last 3 years. So you start with a foundational approach and understand this thing we call the 3x3 plan, which were some massive big bets on structural change in our firm, risk capital and human capital to you understand what that means and Aon matters to you, dig in and understand it.

That is a structural change to the organizational change, which means commercial risk and reinsurance are in the same conversation, not combined, but in the same conversation. Talent, health and wealth are also part of the same conversation. This sounds trivial. It's not trivial. When you show up with a client and you understand sort of integrated risk, you may have different solutions and you get different outcomes and clients know it. So it's something we looked at in 2002 and 2003 and felt like we had to do to structurally strengthen and align our firm so we could deliver.

One of the other pillars of the 3x 3, 3 initiatives over 3 years, and that's data analytics and what we do in Aon Business Services. And the engine around the analytics, our analyzers, our capabilities all around Aon Business Services, connected data in ways no one in our industry has ever connected it before through our team, risk capital and human capital to our clients. And that's enabled us to win and be very, very fortunate across a number of different fronts.

Data centers as being one of the great examples and what we've been able to do there. When you show up with a client and you actually have that integrated view, they get different answers. Trillion-dll market cap companies get different answers on how they build them, how they manage risk and the stakes are massive. And we'll come back and hopefully talk about that a little bit. That's the strength of Aon. That's the foundation.

In our view, if you think about the last 4 quarters, 2 of the last 4 quarters, we've applied this mostly in commercial risk, U.S. commercial risk, 2 of the last 4 quarters, U.S. commercial risk and Aon is greater than 10% organic, greater than 10% organic in a market that was challenged supposedly. So from our standpoint, we are making massive progress. That's the strength of our firm. That's a number that we believe is multiples of our current share price in terms of what the possibilities might be.

There were 2 opportunities for us that mattered, 2 big opportunities that mattered. And one is U.S. middle market and the second was the E&S marketplace. And so our view was if we can continue to make progress on the platform and address those 2 areas of potential opportunity, this is even a stronger platform. So this is about strength on strength, and that was the goal. U.S. middle market. We spent 20 years watching U.S. middle market Meyer, as you know, and others sort of accumulated EBITDA. They had EBITDA multiple arbitrage or zero cost of debt. That's a good gig if you can get it. And in the end, that persisted for a while.

We did not enter the space with a vengeance because our view was we couldn't create better. All we can do is get bigger. And better came along with Aon Business Services. And Aon Business Services, again, 16,000 of the 60,000 Aon colleagues, we can now invest into the middle market and create better, not just bigger, NFP. So NFP was the first major step to do that with our current Aon middle market assets, we made great progress. That's been 2 years, Meyer and 4 months, give or take, been phenomenal.

What does that mean? Well, top 400 producers are up 22% new business. So literally, top 400 producers up 22% new business. Client retention. We think there's a 500 basis point opportunity. We've captured 200 basis points in the first 2 years.

Producer retention. Producer retention is higher now than it was pre-deal. Why? Not because we're a bunch of nice guys, but essentially, they're getting more content and capability to do with clients more than they ever have before. And that was the thesis. If we can bring the enterprise insight, large commercial insight into the middle market, that's better, then we could be bigger. And so that platform with NFP has worked exceptionally well, but we still weren't as relevant as we needed to be.

My counterparts would tell me time and time again, great work, Greg, that's fantastic. It's not really relevant for us in the U.S. middle market. And so that's why we took the step with USI. And USI gets us to a place where we have a platform. Do not think about this as USI. That's not the bet we're making. The bet is USI plus NFP plus the Aon assets. It's a $6.5 billion platform. revenue, that's relevant. That's relevant, relevant and also better because we're going to bring the content in that we prove with NFP into USI. Our view is that is a great, strong platform. Again, not the integrated strategy of Aon. That's what I described at the beginning, but it's a pillar that we think has real vibrancy.

And USI was picked for a very specific reason. Because USI spent the last 15 years like we did trying to connect their firm. They're going to run to that mission, not run away from it. They believe in content following relationship. Relationship first with content. That's exactly where we are. Complementary to what we've done with NFP.

And Mike Sicard is going to run the integrated program, the platform. And Mike Sicard, if you know him, has done a phenomenal job in USI. He's excited about taking that mission to now a bigger platform and bringing better to the middle market, better to the middle market than what we have now. That's why we loved USI and the opportunity with USI and Mike Sicard. We could stop there, and we'd be good Meyer.

Good. But they also invested in the other area as it turns out. And they have 300 appointments into the E&S world. And so for us, that was a real unique benefit. And if you think about it, pick an example. When we complete a major data center and the opportunity, it's often the top 10%, 15% of that gets done into the wholesale market and the E&S market because the admitted market just can't not enough capacity. We'll come to that at some point.

And if we actually had access -- direct access to the E&S market, we would finish the placement. That opportunity is very real. And there are many, many other opportunities we can get into on the E&S side. So USI brings an integrated view. They bring the platform to complete the platform. They bring the ability to actually access the E&S market directly. And oh, yes, one other thing. That machine we described, Aon Business Services, 16,000 colleagues, the content behind that is literally our secret sauce.

Our AI understanding and drive, which we've been doing for 10 years, is really around -- first starts with content. And the content we now have in the U.S. middle market is substantially greater with the $11 billion of premium flow that comes with USI on top of what we have. So the platform, check, E&S, check, data, content, check, Mike the card can run and they're excited to do it. We felt really good about sort of USI overall.

And then finally, you get the price. And you need to understand price for us is very different than what we typically have done with the U.S. middle market. That's a thesis we all know well. I'm sorry for the long-winded answer, but just to get it on the table and you can hit it from that point. It's a tried and true opportunity. You decide you're going to sell a year from now, you work your EBITDA for a year and you massage it, however you're going to massage it in beautiful ways.

And then you suggest to the seller that they have 20% or 30% or 40% of add-ons they should make. Everybody agrees to that. They all think the price to that looks good, and everybody walks away and says it's good. We didn't do that. Sorry, didn't do that. USI really wasn't looking to sell. They're part of KKR, the balance sheet opportunity, fantastic. A lot of time with Scott Nuttall on this, absolutely.

By the way, in the end, there wasn't a data room. There was no pristine opportunity. We essentially stripped this back and said, "Tell us what you think. They did. " You see it in the exhibits, the number, $990 and change, therefore, or thereabouts. And we basically accepted nothing on the add-backs. Basically 10% maybe, fraction. And then we built up a set of synergies.

And if you get in the side meetings, our interim CFO, Nadin Virani, who's here, has done a brilliant job. He's run this for months and months and months, ran the entire architecture on that synergy piece. And for us, the $395 million, by the way, it's EBITDA synergy. We're not talking about revenue and cost, straight EBITDA we're tracking. We'll talk about the split. We feel very, very good about. This is a set of operators around the table with Nadin in the budget, locking down the synergies.

So for us, this is a 14.5x multiple gig to get the benefits I just described. We love this platform as a value creation opportunity, which is also why we did this on the balance sheet. we wanted our current shareholders to benefit from what we're up to. So that's a long-winded answer, Meyer, but it really was an attempt to say, what were we thinking about? And we know everybody in this space. We know every opportunity.

For us, personally, I've been doing this for a little while. I think this may be one of the highest value creation opportunities we have seen at Aon over the next few years that I've seen maybe in my tenure. So that was -- that's the background.

Okay. And in no way do I want to minimize that. We have another 30 minutes going...

I heard every question. Go for it. Anything you want to go?

All right. Okay. So let's talk about integration. Integration was highlighted as one of the focal points, obviously. What does that actually mean? What are the challenges and opportunities? I want to jump off maybe a point you made about juicing up new business production at NFP by 22%. Can you talk about how integration -- the integration plan will replicate that?

So integration for us is paramount. You will eventually see an already integrated integration plan fully developed. Ready to go. Again, the synergies were done in a very unique way. We've never seen them done the way we did them very operationally. We probably have of the $395 million we described, 23 specific revenue initiatives, 10 specific cost initiatives, all of which are sort of track the revenue initiatives are on traditional, but we also have those associated with E&S and all the opportunities around wholesale.

So for us, it is very much around that integrated view. Again, with our overall team kind of at the helm, the steering committee, Sicard's day-to-day, all the content going up through to our Board. So we actually are all tracking exactly what we're doing and mostly understand this is an integrated team. This is an Aon United team. Sicard, but also you watch. The CEO, Doug Hammond, I think, talked about this very positively. This is something Doug and I have had a great deal of conversation around, around how do you complete the platform.

One other thing I should probably say, when we brought NFP into Aon, we were asked a couple of times, maybe a couple of times a day. Are you buying another platform? And we never answered that. We just said we want to have relevance and we want to have meaning for our clients. And make no mistake about it. If you miss everything else, don't miss that emission. We are flat out going to have better content for our clients. And the analyzers, better content, cyber analyzers, better content, service, better content. We've proven we can do it with NFP. Now we're going to scale it with this platform. It's a platform. I just want to be clear, platform is done.

So I want to say now, no new platform acquisitions in the middle market in the U.S. We're done. So $6.5 billion, a good platform. We don't need to be the biggest. We need to be the best, and we have a good platform. We're relevant, and we are going to run that play. So I just want to be clear from that standpoint. But the integration is going to be USI, NFP, colleagues from NFP, Mike Schneider, sort of, Ethan Foxman. These guys have really been part of NFP and now have been elevated, will be part of Mike's team.

Doug Hammond is still playing a role as Executive Chairman. All this is good, very, very focused. And if you know one thing about Sicard, this is an operator. So we've got the best operator in the world on a mission that he's incredibly excited about with an integrated team with a set of synergies we know, and we're going to actually begin enacting the day after we close.

Fantastic. I'm going to jump on the point you made in terms of synergies. A couple of points. You had a lot of precision in terms of the revenue, EBITDA and -- or revenue expense and EBITDA synergies that you're expecting. What are the key challenges? Where do you see the opportunity for upside?

All of the challenges are real. We accept them. We know what they are. We've been through the movie multiple times before. And the same -- watch the history, every time we bring someone in, there's always a concern and a reaction and then there's our reaction. And our view is, Meyer, we've got to work the expense opportunities, and we are doing that, 10 initiatives laid out very specifically. This is Mindy Simon, our COO, and our teams and then soon to be our efforts across USI, NFP and Aon assets as well.

The ones we're most excited about are the revenue opportunities, and they're meaningful. Again, I would just tell you, we are committed to the $395 million. Those who know Aon know what that means in our world. That also means the opportunity is great. It is great. I mean just a few examples.

So USI, essentially $11 billion is sort of a premium in the market. Like many, many middle market companies, they utilize wholesalers on 30%, 35% to sort of do those placements. By the way, just for reference, we put $26 billion and we maybe do $1 billion, a little over $1 billion. And ours are maybe some of the most complex placements. So the capability we have now even before the wholesale comes on board, might be able to address the $3 billion that go to wholesale.

And if you one could think about that, that's a real opportunity to serve clients better, that's the mission, but also that comes with a lot of other pieces, too. So there are multiple angles here that are, from our view, are very clear and very apparent when you get a bunch of operators around the table, risk capital, human capital and you talk about what they are. There's a tremendous amount that goes into London. Our capability in London is second to none.

Aon Client Treaty, very unique, nonduplicated in most fronts. So for us, Meyer, those are very specific synergies that aren't 2 years away or 1 year away. They're 1 week away after close. So for us, a whole series of synergies from that standpoint. The other place you're going to see us spend a huge amount of time is with our producers. And no doubt, as you all heard, everyone will hear, oh my God, everybody is going to do this and that and the other.

Look, all I can tell you is this, we'll do our level best on retention, just like we did with NFP. Again, remind you, higher retention now than pre-deal. That's unheard of. And it isn't because we're a bunch of nice guys. It's because they get more stuff. Sorry, and we're not changing comp grid. Therefore, they might accidentally more stuff, same comp grid, they might get paid more. They get to wow their clients. So for us, we're going to do our level best to sort of make sure that's right, and that's also a big part of the synergies, too.

And our view is the new business impact we had at NFP, why can't we have that at a minimum at USI. And by the way, even with Aon because remember, at Aon, the assets inside of Aon were kind of embedded inside of Aon. They weren't called out as a platform, and they were phenomenal, but they can be better and better as part of an integrated platform in terms of what we're trying to accomplish. So for us, this -- the idea of the retention synergies, all that go with it, revenue, cost side, we think there's lots of upside. But what we are clear is the absolute primacy of delivering $395 million.

Okay. Fantastic. I will be surveying the room to see if there are questions there. I want to make sure that everyone is getting their questions answered. One important topic that I want to focus on though is the E&S marketplace or reentering E&S, reentering wholesale. For those of us that were around in 2004 and 2005, this is not a small issue. Clearly not a legal problem, but it was a big deal once upon a time. I was hoping you could talk through how you're viewing that marketplace and maybe a little bit more color on the opportunities.

Well, listen, we've been so fortunate at Aon. Our team has been really wonderful in all the effort I described at the beginning. We have the platform, and that platform has been curated and worked damn hard. Risk capital, human capital, Aon business services, this is a fundamental machine, and it actually should get better and better and better on behalf of clients. Huge. Right? It served us reasonably well. And by the way, we see massive opportunity ahead.

And the AI piece, I know you had the session on yesterday. We've been doing machine learning and AI for a number of years. I have said on a few calls, we put an early generation NVIDIA chip into an Aon solution called PathWise in 2009. That was before it was cool to be doing this stuff, okay? And so for us, we love it. AI is not a strategy, but it is an accelerant to a strategy, and it's helped us accelerate massively sort of around that. And you watch the middle market and now what we're doing in the middle market. You watch E&S.

E&S is now 26% of the flow in the U.S., 26%. And by the way, we have great access, but it's indirect access. And it's through a great group of wholesalers. And this is not about going after our wholesale partners at all. I've had conversations with CEOs of all of them. I mean this is -- we're -- this is a massive area. And now we have direct access to it. We also have direct access to our MGUs and MGAs. You saw us also announce the Tuesday before USI, Totalis Specialty. That is not Aon brand, but Totalis. This is where all this is going to come from and drive, awesome.

A guy named Kip Kelley, who run our Affinity business and Tom Gillingham, who ran the business at NFP have come together to sort of form Totalis Specialty, beautiful. So E&S for us is a real opportunity to access market. Again, think about it. You finish a -- what is a $5 billion, $10 billion, $15 billion opportunity in data centers. And again, I hope we get a chance to talk a little bit about those.

And in doing so, you have to top it off because you admitted market is tapped out. And you hand it to the E&S market. You hand it to a wholesaler. There's no more content than Aon. You don't have that right now. But we need the capacity and we need to sort of get it filled. That's all going to go away, Meyer, at the high end. And then think about the opportunities.

Totalis Specialty, by the way, now serves -- and this is an $800 million or $900 million revenue business. Just for reference, this is not a start-up. We have 21,000 independent agents that access through Totalis Specialty, our programs in MGUs and MGAs, 21,000. We probably have 40% of their submissions each year, 40% that don't apply to those programs directly. We dump them. How do you guys feel about that? Feeling good about the fact that literally, we got 40%. This is a circa called 16,000 applications, which we say, [ no ], I want you today. That's what we do. That's stopped. That's now going to be addressed.

So for us, this isn't a one-off thing. It's a very, very specific. And by the way, we have it all laid out in the first year, in the first 24 months and what we're doing. But our view is there are very specific things we can do right now, and then there are a whole series of things over time. Again, benefit the client to get a better solution, better coverage, better analytics, and we're going to be able to do it, and we couldn't have done it before.

And so we literally took the 16,000 and gave them back to the market. We gave the wholesalers. We're not going to do that. So these are, again, very explicit pieces and places that we know we can apply, and then we'll see what happens. But again, it's a massive market. So please don't walk out the room and think this is not about Amwins or Ryan or CRC. It's not at all. It's -- these are great partners, and they'll be great partners for a long time, hopefully, even better.

But we are going to access the E&S market. It's 26% of the flow. Our clients need it, and we're doing it. So the fact that we had 300 appointments as part of USI was a big wow. And Mike's worked that for 3 years, and they were just beginning to think about how they were going to apply them. By the way, the revenue is de minimis. So don't go look for the revenue of E&S at USI because it's just starting.

The 300 appointments is what we heard. That's what got us excited, and that gave us the access. If you think about it, for us to get that kind of access and buying somebody, the breakage is high because we have a whole series of competitors who are placing into those groups, too. You really can't buy one. So you have to do it organically. This was the most elegant opportunity around organic we've ever seen.

Okay. I'm going to follow up on the organic side because I think a question I've gotten a lot, and that is with all of the tools you've provided Aon producers, you've had really, really strong organic growth. That's outpaced what USI has been doing. What's the pathway and time line not for generating organic growth through the wholesale side that benefits Aon, but for individual producers at USI to match Aon?

So one -- excellent question. Thank you. You should do all the analysis you need to do in any way you want to do it. The analysis focused on USI and USI growth, I would say, is an interesting one that has modest relevance. Why? It isn't USI. It's USI and NFP and Aon together as that platform. By the way, if Nadin were up here, he would commit to mid-single-digit or greater organic growth over time, just as we have been forever.

By the way, we believe this platform is going to reinforce the time for or greater. Mid-single digits, nice or greater is better. So we're going to -- we're really -- our view is we know the -- listen, we know the formula now. So the CEO going on is really slow. It's taken a long time. We did unit productivity forever. And by the way, we got pretty good at it. We didn't actually hire that many people over a long period of time.

Better than unit productivity is unit productivity and more units. Someone told us that, and we're right. And so if we do all those things, that's part of what we have in the context of it. By the way, USI, like NFP, is going to benefit hugely. That's going to be good. Also, Mike Sicard has done fewer and fewer acquisitions over the last 3 years. He has instead diverted to a fewer hiring engine. And by the way, he probably have -- one of our addbacks could have been, let's take the X percent, high percent of producers who you brought in over the last year, produce nothing, have 0 revenue. we have that.

We say we won't accept that. But by the way, is that of opportunity? Yes. In fact, the hiring engine that USI has, we love. I can see us putting that across the platform in terms of where we are. Point being, literally, in the end, you should expect from us mid-single digit or greater, period. Soft market, whatever that means, hard market, whatever that means, weird I don't really -- it doesn't really matter. And we're going to literally have to deliver that. That's going to be -- we -- that is our focal point.

Our view is, over time, this helps us do that more effectively. So be clear, we're not going backward in mid-single digit or greater, period. And by the way did we [ agree ] with NFP. And NFP was supposedly lower, too. We got the exact same questions. We just went to work. And in the end, during the time we owned NFP, the last 24 months, 10% -- greater than 10% organic in 2 of the 4 quarters in U.S. commercial risk. Like I'm not seeing -- I know you guys are thinking about going -- you're probably asking what I asked, which is why not 4 quarters out of the 4 quarters. But 2 out of the 4 quarters is unique. And that's part of why this formula, in our view, is a good add to what that chassis was that I started with.

I was going to ask why not 15%, but different question.

I might have asked that, too, but anyway, but greater than 10%, greater than 10%.

Okay. This will be my last question on USI, but again, I welcome questions from the audience. Talk a little bit about funding. You mentioned a little bit about how you wanted your current investor base to reap the benefits of this. But it's a large dollar amount. So how did you -- what was the decision-making process to do it on the basis of all cash and no equity?

It was simple. First of all, we can, and we want to make sure you're comfortable we can. I heard a lot of different stir around why and how and what do you think? And in the end, we feel highly confident in our $395 million start there.

Second, watch what we did with NFP. We went up and then we came down faster than everybody thought, started buying back stock faster than everybody thought. But remember, we did something unheard of at NFP. We sold a piece of the business in the 24 months we were integrating them. Who does that? Did you guys hear about that? Not really because you never heard about it. We just did it, and it was multiple billions. We sold the wealth business. I know you knew about it, but it missed me in. It wasn't a big deal from the standpoint of like there wasn't no sum consternation. Who does that? You're sitting in an office with 10 people and 2 of them are leaving and everybody is good with it.

So seriously, we sold a business. That's not CEO 101 stuff. We're not supposed to do that. We've done 150, give or take, sales in the last decade, circa $8 billion in cash. So if one wants to understand how important return on invested capital to us is, understand the pain of selling business, $150 billion, $8 billion, including one we did within the construct of the 2-year period we were integrating them on the wealth side to both, by the way, drive return on invested capital, protect the balance sheet, do what we're doing.

So from our standpoint, straight up cash and all we have is the $17 billion, we pay it down. We're committed to investment-grade rating. By the way, you've seen it. We did the RRAS. There is no change in rating, done. So Moody's, S&P, good, understand what we're trying to do. And then on top of it, understand we also have other means we've got everything stacked and racked and we understand where our businesses are and what they look like. So our view is we have a commitment to pay down, and we will do that, and we will very quickly get to our undervalued stock as well as we think about that as a priority.

In the meantime, if something doesn't quite work, our ability to actually be quite nimble is high. And even if it does work really well, we still may be nimble in terms of sort of what we're doing. But our view is we can pay down the $17 billion very, very quickly, certainly in the time frame we've laid out. And we want the benefit to accrue to our current shareholders. Frankly, given our current valuation, it kills us to think about sort of spreading that out. So we can and we did.

Moving along to other news, I guess. So Greg and I, I don't think we ran into each other. We're both in Monte Carlo this week. And one of the first pieces of news was Aon and Blackstone. I was hoping you could touch on that a little bit.

Does anybody know that in New York? Probably not, right? Okay. All right.

It was a big deal in Monte Carlo.

It was a big deal in Monte Carlo. That's true. It was leaked in Monte Carlo. So I guess, just seriously, does anybody know what we're talking about here or not at this point? Probably not. Okay. A couple of people do. If you're in Monte Carlo, if you know what Monte Carlo is, that's kind of the good and the great. And unfortunately, that's all -- they were talking about the first question and the second question. Those are the 2 questions that were being addressed.

So what came across was a leak story that said Aon and Blackstone are doing something and Blackstone is going to take a piece of the Aon flow, some version of that, okay? All right. So let's start -- let's step back. Remember that platform I described at the beginning, risk capital, human capital, the machine around analytics, it's real. And if you want proof points of real, you don't listen to somebody like me, who cares what I say.

What you watch is the feed of the capital. And if you can draw capital in, you're having an impact. You draw capital in Jamaica cap on and cover for Category 5 Hurricane, that's called content because capital doesn't pay attention to people like me. They pay attention to content. If they think get a return, they'll come. So just start with that premise, understand that. Our analytics are unique. Here's a proof point. If you believe we need to do more and get more capital in our industry, so we can actually address the risks of our clients.

If you believe risks are going up, severity going up, all these things are happening, complexity is going up and you need to bring more capital in. We got a $5 trillion industry, guys. All the balance sheets in our industry, $5 trillion, give or take, and it's -- there's more we can do. And if it was -- if you think about even the data centers, the greatest example. If the data centers happen in the way we think they're going to happen and they are, we're way outstripping the industry. So how do you do this? And in the end, our view is our ability to be relevant from a content standpoint in a data center, for example, is huge.

I mean we just finished a piece with a client, which we did a $20 billion placement. Now that would have been impossible had they not listened to us, and they did what they were going to do, which is build their $20 billion facility in one spot, get to all the lights, camera, greatest thing ever, you're amazing. And it's like the problem is, our industry has a magic, massive, allergic reaction to concentration risk. So we convinced them to build the modules. They did, and we did a series of $5 billion placements that got their full coverage. That's real relevance. And then by the way, if they get coverage, they change their financing structure and they change their operating volatility. So we've got insurance.

We are changing the financing structure of this company for their data centers. If you say, what's short of this over time, it's the capital in our industry. $5 trillion is not big enough. By the way, the access points are all over the place, pension, sovereign, PE. That adds up to $250 trillion. So we don't need all that, right? It's not coming anyway, but a tiny fraction of that increases the $5 trillion could even double it. That means if we can actually help clients understand the value and they pay for it.

We're not talking about unit price reduction. We're talking about when they pay for it, how cool would that be? Our industry has a lot more relevance, and it's a massive, massive boost for our clients. And by the way, everybody gets paid a lot more. Everybody does great. Our clients do great. All right. So we've done a number of things. One thing you might have heard about these things, reshare opportunities.

Reshare opportunities are when you work with an insurer and you take all their treaties and you amalgamate them together, you create a bit of a mini index, if you will, and we worked with some of the PE firms to do a sliver of that. While that's beneficial for the insurance company, that's beneficial for clients, brings more capacity. It's called reshare. And we were the pioneers of that. We did the first of those. And we did one with the counterparty named with Blackstone. This is different.

Imagine if you wanted to actually participate in our industry, you can buy a company, hire a team, hope they're good, have them develop over the next 5 years and create a diversified portfolio. Hopefully, that all works well for you. Or Aon might have the analytic horsepower to take our entire flow on the reinsurance side, the whole thing. This is tens and tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars. It is the most diversified portfolio in the world in reinsurance, period.

And if we could actually create the means for you to understand it as capital, and we gave you the opportunity to take a piece of that, what would that be worth to you? And how would you think about it? I can tell you what would be worth for our clients. It would be very, very powerful, especially if that counterparty was someone of the oak of Blackstone. And especially if they also created preferred outcomes for clients as they came in. Think about duration, think about dividend, think about a whole series of other things. Imagine they did that. And imagine what that would mean for clients.

So the reason this was a big deal at Monte Carlo is every reinsurer in the world is there, wondering what that means. And the answer is it doesn't mean anything for you. You're one of the best in the world. Your underwriting muscle is what produced that massive, massive portfolio we have. That's going to be relied on your golden. And we, in essence, have Blackstone coming in to actually take a piece of that overall portfolio conceptually, it all comes together in a way in which our clients benefit, the market is bigger. We're going to do it through Lloyd's. So it's on a syndicate. We have someone doing it, not us. We're not going to on the syndicate. And want to do that. We want to have others get that benefit.

All this is clean, tight, new capital. By the way, not just new capital, some of the most substantial capital in the world and permanent. And you can say, well, that's the other thing. No, no. Let's have the conversation if you want to, permanent. So literally, what we're talking about is us with Aon analytic capability, creating that transparency such that Blackstone would come in and say, we'll take that piece. We'll give preferred outcomes for clients for a multiyear period, and it's a great, great thing all through Lloyd's.

So yes, that was -- it wasn't announced that way. You just got more content than anybody got probably in it. What you heard was something going on with Aon and Blackstone. That's what was leaked, and this is what we're talking about. And it could not happen, it's possible, but we're this close to being able to pull that off. And that's net new raw permanent capital that is going to be, we think, innovative and meaningful against an index we've created because of the content we've got. So in any event, it was kind of a -- we're kind of -- it's kind of a thing. It's kind of a big deal, frankly. It might be bigger than the first topic that we wanted.

Okay. The first topic was a big deal, too. I want to talk about AI. There was one day in February, we wake up and apparently, insurance brokers are no longer necessary because we have ChatGPT. Personally, I never bought into that thesis. I didn't think that I thought very, very few small entities that can go without insurance and rely on their own skill set. What worries me is that you get to the larger end of things where you've got very sophisticated insurance buyers that are large corporate risk managers, they might be less dependent on some of the ancillary services, consulting that goes along with their brokerage. Is that a realistic concern? why we're not?

So I have a hard time with this because every time you try to justify what you're doing, it sounds so defensive, right? So it's like -- and it's like the only answer is you're just an idiot and don't understand AI grade. So what are you talking about? So anyway, I'll take that risk today. So forgive me, I'll take the risk.

Look, I'm sorry, I see more opportunity now than I've ever seen in my 20 years in this -- in my role, and I can be myopic, but more. Why? Not because anything is special because demand is going up. We don't always recognize demand and we can't respond to demand, but it's going up. I mean, quite literally, the data center example, demand going up.

Cyber, we have a $15 billion nothing. It's not big enough. It needs to be bigger. By the way, clients have to pay for it. So understand clients have to recognize the value of buying down volatility in a way that drives their market to book up. If they get that right, they'll pay for it. We need to use our analytics to convince them of that, and that will bring more capital in. So we're not talking about capital just coming in to sort of do nice things and be good.

So all these things to us, Meyer, are opportunity. And if we can't respond to it, shame on us. But if we do, we're not worried about how we get compensated for it and recognize for it. But remember, this is what I think is completely missed. This is not a pure linear optimization game. I know all the markets, they're in my ChatGPT. I know all the programs that have ever been written in the history of the world. And I know everybody I need to talk to, [ Vam ], here's your story.

Sorry, they don't understand what we do. This is a set of distributions talking to distributions, and they're all changing all the time. And then somebody's job is dependent on actually that answer. This is a mess. What is your exposure? No, no, I'm asking you, tell me what your exposure is on this peril. I want to know what is your exposure. That actually is the distribution. It depends on where the company is, what's going on in the world, that changes.

Okay. I know my exposure all of a sudden. Great. Did all those analytics or I didn't, I got it. What are you going to do about it? How much are you going to keep? How much are you going to try to transact, put in the marketplace? I haven't said insurance yet. They have to have -- that's a real decision. Again, it depends on what your business is. If you're doing great or not doing great, I'm all -- I've decided I'm going to keep this much and eat it and this much I'm going to transact. Who are you going to transact it with? Now we go to the insurers. Now we're into the optimization game, right? Okay. Really, all the insurers act exactly the same. No, no, we have their records good. Do they change their mind ever? Do they?

I don't know. We have $1 billion of declined claims every year. $1 billion that we get paid, the last part that we get paid. I'm sure the algorithm will work too, but when you get the declination, it's like, no, you're declined. We get them paid. So you basically have what's my exposure? What do I keep? What do I transact? What's my service? Oh, yes. I just described the optimization program. Forget that.

Blackstone, we just talked about is not just market taking. Why might put the client in a position where all they do is take the market every day. Forget it, market making. We just made it -- we just changed the market structure. We just opened up an opportunity and an avenue for financial sponsors. That's 10x the industry opportunity in terms of what we can do. And it's not about lower cost. It's about more opportunity. So I look at it, Meyer and go, hey, with that kind of mess out there in the world going on and all this stuff happening, if we can't find a way to help clients understand volatility and do something about it, shame on us. I think I like our chances.

And by the way, it's not just with big companies. It's with the middle-sized companies, what we found with NFP. If you get it clean and right, you're talking to a CFO and a Head of HR who are literally fighting for their company's life. They blow a $50 million claim, they're done maybe. So for us, I would -- again, I come back and go, AI should help accelerate that. And by the way, it is.

And last thing I'll say on this is the AI applications we have now aren't just cost. They're the analyzers. I mean the reason we end up talking with Anthropic and Google and Microsoft and others, it's not because we're cool. I can promise you that. It's because we have AI use cases -- I'm sorry, revenue use cases out of AI that are working. And that's cool. And so for us, we think it's both sides of the equation. We see the opportunity, we embrace it. We want to accelerate it. And look, it's definitely got its risk, I guess, but we see more opportunities than risk.

Okay. And we have time for one final question, and I apologize, it sounds almost [indiscernible] to ask it, but I have to. How should we think about the next phase of the P&C cycle or the market impact in the context of Aon or Aon USI?

Got it. One last thing I have to add on the last question. And we bet $1.3 billion on it. So we already took the rap of God from our investors, all of you guys, when we said, "Hey, we're going to spend $1 billion. " We're like, by the way we're spending a lot more than that, but in that $1.3 billion. So -- that was a big goal.

The P&C cycle. So I won't have anything of nourishment for you, I'm sure. But at a macro level, you asked the question on demand supply. And you basically -- if you believe the thesis I just described, over time, the unit prices, we're going to see movement up over time.

Right now, we're in a moment, we're in a cycle. We haven't had any major events, et cetera. By the way, it's not one piece. The markets are very, very different. I had the conversations during Monte Carlo, this happened 100 times. So I listened to our experts. So Joe Peiser, Annie Marcel and others. They would say it's going to be flat. It's going to flatten by June, probably you going to start to see it flatten a little bit, their view, absent massive -- anything massive happen in terms of where we are.

But over time, again, as it relates to Aon, we can't be about cycle. So we're having conversations with our clients around literally how do you double down on specific areas? How do you buy more? What do you do? How do you project for the future? So for us, our mid-single digit or greater holds no matter what the cycle is. But in our view, it's more in pockets, and it's more short term, and we'll see flattening by June, midyear of this year, '27.

Okay. I know people have stuff to do. I would go on for a couple of hours otherwise. But Greg, thank you. This was tremendous. We cover a lot of time. Thank you.

Always helpful, Meyers. Thanks.

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon plc's conference call.

[Operator Instructions]

I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time. It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995.

Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. For information concerning these risk factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and our most recent quarterly or annual SEC filings, all of which are available on our website. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon plc. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Donna. Good morning, everyone, and I appreciate you joining us today. I'm here with Nadin Virani, Interim CFO; Andy Marcell, Deputy CEO and responsibility for Risk Capital and Human Capital; and Michael Sicard, Chairman and CEO of USI. For reference, we published slides on our website that supplement our discussion.

Today marks an important milestone for Aon and for the standard of client value and client service available to U.S. middle market companies. As risk and complexity continues to rise, middle market companies are not always offered the breadth and depth of solutions available to the large and enterprise market. Nor do they have access to a full range of capital sources to find world-class solutions.

This is why we are very excited to announce that we've entered a definitive agreement to acquire USI, a leading U.S. middle market broker with deep expertise in specialized solutions for property and casualty, employee benefits, personal risk and retirement. The addition of USI builds on our successful acquisition of NFP. Together, USI, NFP and Aon established the premier U.S. middle market platform. The combined platform extends the reach of Aon's differentiated capabilities across the middle market, which has already proven highly impactful to the client leadership of NFP.

USI also substantially expands our direct access to E&S and specialty segments and deepens our capability advantage by meaningfully expanding U.S. middle market flow insight in our ABS analytics engine. Post close, we're very excited to bring a new standard of capability and service to the middle market through our exceptional client leaders.

The purchase price of $17 billion and (sic) [ or ] $16.7 billion net of tax attributes represents a 14.5x synergized EBITDA multiple, and we expect the transaction to be EPS accretive beginning in 2028. Nadin will provide more financial details on the transaction in a few minutes, but I want to emphasize that USI enables us to create significant value across our entire middle market platform that we could not otherwise capture.

This is a truly unique asset that strengthens our capabilities in areas we've historically been underrepresented and accelerates growth across Aon. But before we discuss the strategic rationale in more detail, it's my privilege to introduce Mike Sicard. We long admired the exceptional business Mike and the USI team have built. And in every conversation we've had with Mike, our teams walk away more energized about what we will accomplish together.

I'm also pleased to note that following the transaction close, Mike will be appointed President of Aon and Global CEO of Middle Market, leading Aon's combined platform with a team of leaders from USI, NFP and Aon. Welcome, Mike.

Thank you so much, Greg. I am thrilled to be here today. This combination represents the natural next step for USI to capture the significant and growing opportunity in the U.S. middle market, positioning us to accelerate our momentum as part of the Aon United platform.

We already share a common culture, a client-first mindset and a belief that the best results come from operating as one team. Aon means one in Gaelic and similarly, USI emphasizes the USI ONE Advantage. These similarities are a strong foundation, but what excites me most is what Aon enables us to do next.

Together, we will accelerate growth, broaden our capabilities and harness the combined strengths of an integrated platform. I'm excited to lead what will be the premier U.S. middle market platform, delivering greater value for our clients by setting a new standard of content, capabilities and service.

Thank you, Mike. We'll start with a little background. For Aon overall, it's important to understand that this combination builds on our already strong momentum across global Aon, grounded in the strategy we've executed for nearly 2 decades. We have taken deliberate steps to build what we believe is the industry's most differentiated model. Our context advantage is underpinned by 3 foundational pillars. First, our cultural advantage. Aon United is the product of more than 15 years building a truly connected global firm that enables colleagues to bring the full breadth of Aon to every client relationship.

Second, our organizational advantage. We fundamentally reshaped Aon, putting clients in the center of everything we do. We integrated our risk capital and human capital capabilities across the firm, powered by our Aon Business Services operating and technology engine.

This structure allows our colleagues to serve clients with greater connectivity, consistency and impact. And third, our data and analytics advantage provides us with a platform uniquely capable of applying AI at scale. Proprietary data and AI-enabled analytics equip our colleagues with greater tools and capabilities, converting insight into actionable solutions to help clients make better decisions.

Importantly, these 3 advantages reinforce one another, enabling Aon to create innovative solutions, access new sources of capital and expand the universe of insurable risk for our clients.

That is the power of our connected and context advantage, increasing what we can do for clients, expanding our relevance, reducing the protection gap and growing the overall placement opportunity. The strength of this model is demonstrated in our performance through the 3x3 plan. We're winning and retaining more clients, innovating faster and operating more efficiently.

Together, these outcomes are driving sustained through-the-cycle performance, and we are just getting started. Looking ahead, we see two significant opportunities to reinforce our context advantage, and USI uniquely unlocks both. The first is to advance our leading platform in the large and growing U.S. middle market. And the second is to expand direct access to the fast-growing E&S segment, where Aon today has a limited footprint.

Consider that the middle market opportunity represents approximately 1/3 of the U.S. commercial P&C market with more than 200,000 companies in the U.S., employing roughly 48 million people. The addressable market is over $40 billion. These companies are a critical engine of the economy, and there is greater opportunity to meet their increasingly complex needs.

The same interconnected forces of trade, technology, weather and workforce that are reshaping the risk and people environment for our largest clients are creating even greater volatility in the middle market. But when compared to our large organizations, middle market companies have less access to the analytics, insights and capital solutions required to address these challenges and build resilience. That creates a meaningful protection gap between the complexity of the decisions these clients must make, the risks they're exposed to and the solutions available to address their needs. Aon is changing that.

Our investments in technology and talent, enhanced by our proprietary data and analytics enable our firm to bring capabilities traditionally available at the largest end of the market to middle market clients in a way that's tailored, timely and relevant. And over the last 2 years with NFP, we have seen tangible results of applying our context advantage in the middle market, which reinforces our conviction that we are well positioned to accelerate our momentum with the addition of USI.

I would add the opportunity is equally compelling in the excess and surplus segment, which represents 26% of U.S. commercial P&C premiums and is growing at an 18% compound annual rate, fueled by the need for increasingly specialized risk solutions. Today, we're only able to provide clients with limited direct access to E&S and wholesale distribution, largely through our Totalis Specialty business.

Turning to USI. This addition advances our platform and brings a unified culture and track record of growth, highly developed producer organization and demonstrated leadership. With approximately $11 billion of P&C premium placement and 2,800 producers, USI builds on the middle market foundation we strengthened through NFP.

Together, Aon, NFP and USI will establish the premier $6.5 billion U.S. middle market platform. With USI, we'll have deeper direct access to the E&S segment and wholesale distribution. Both the middle market and wholesale channels are increasingly sources of new client relationships, emerging risk and additional data and insights. In recent years, USI has invested significantly in its people, platform and technology, which positions the business for accelerated growth going forward.

Building on the success of NFP, USI allows us to apply our institutional knowledge across a larger platform, bringing the best of Aon to more clients and more producers, while extending USI's differentiated capabilities into a broader Aon platform. And importantly, we have a clear line of sight and a proven action plan to deliver significant revenue and cost synergies that we believe will drive long-term value creation across our combined Aon, NFP and USI platform. We've been rigorous in identifying where we can accelerate growth through greater producer productivity and retention, broader cross-selling across risk capital and human capital and expanded access to the E&S segment.

We also see meaningful opportunities to improve efficiency by extending ABS across the combined platform, simplifying technology and operations and leveraging our shared services infrastructure. These are tangible identified opportunities grounded in the capabilities we have today and key learnings from the successful integration of NFP and enabled by this transaction. They give us confidence in the growth outlook and long-term value creation potential of the combined platform, and we look forward to providing updates on our progress and performance against the commitments we've outlined today. With that overview, let me turn the call over to Nadin to discuss the transaction terms and financials. Nadin, over to you.

Thank you, Greg. I'm truly honored to be here for this landmark moment, discussing a transaction that says so much about the strength of Aon's strategy and the opportunity ahead. I've been leading Aon's corporate planning and solution line finance team for almost 2 years now, and I'm looking forward to playing a key role in helping bring this transaction to life and delivering its full potential. This is a transaction that accelerates our U.S. middle market strategy and unlocks the full capabilities of our platform for our clients, colleagues and our shareholders.

Over the next few minutes, I'm going to share some key details on the transaction structure and the significant value creation opportunity this represents. There are three points I would like you to take away from this discussion. First, USI is a unique asset that establishes the premier U.S. middle market platform and materially expands Aon's direct access to the E&S segment, 2 of the most attractive and fast-growing areas in U.S. commercial insurance.

Second, we are strongly positioned to capture significant value through this transaction. We've done extensive work and identified $395 million in net EBITDA synergies with defined work streams that we are ready to execute upon from day 1. Third, as a result of the expansion in our total addressable market and the meaningful synergies we have identified, we have high conviction that this is an acquisition that will generate compelling long-term shareholder value.

So let me begin with an overview of the terms of the agreement. Aon will acquire USI in an all-cash transaction for approximately $17 billion or $16.7 billion net of certain tax attributes. We have a high degree of confidence in our ability to deliver both revenue and cost synergies, and we believe the synergized EBITDA multiple of 14.5x is an attractive valuation for this unique asset.

We plan to fund the acquisition with new debt raised across a range of maturities and expect the transaction to close in Q4 '26, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Our confidence in execution is grounded in the context advantage, along with the strong middle market foundation that we have built through our successful acquisition of NFP. This has led to stronger new business generation, higher win rates and sustained margin expansion.

Let me now take you through the value creation opportunity in more detail. Overall, we have identified $395 million in adjusted EBITDA impact from revenue and cost synergies that we expect to realize across the full middle market platform. Starting with the revenue synergies, we've identified 23 individual work streams that we believe will generate $321 million in net revenue synergies. This translates to $115 million EBITDA contribution or 29% of our EBITDA synergy target.

Specifically, we see a meaningful opportunity across 3 primary areas. First, through our producers and client leaders. As Greg noted, we expect to unlock greater producer productivity, including embedding Aon's tools and capabilities across the expanded platform. We expect to drive accelerated cross-sell across risk capital and human capital products and solutions. At the same time, we will implement best practices to increase producer retention, building on our proven playbook from the NFP integration. The second area of opportunity is through client retention and growth.

Through Aon, NFP and USI's capabilities, the client base will have access to a broader set of solutions and channels. For example, we will optimize premium placement by leveraging Aon's existing retail network along USI's own wholesale capability. This allows us to optimize across the expanded platform and capture more opportunities we could not fully address previously. Finally, increased distribution opportunities.

Last week, we reaffirmed our commitment to Totalis Specialty by bringing together the capabilities of NFP and Aon. Using this platform, we will further extend the availability of relevant USI solutions. We also expect to optimize wholesale distribution to market partners and expand access into specialty risk markets through our London and Bermuda market relationships. Now let me move to the cost side. We expect to capture $280 million in synergies or 71% of our EBITDA synergy target through 10 identified work streams.

You've heard us talk about the proven capabilities of ABS, and we will leverage these to enhance service levels while reducing cost to serve and the administrative load on our producers. We expect to also capture efficiencies and the benefits of integrating technology systems, simplifying and modernizing the technology stack and leveraging our AI capabilities to drive productivity across the platform.

Importantly, these initiatives will do more than lower the cost base. Underpinned by the scale of ABS and our disciplined expense management, we will improve the client experience and create additional investment capacity for growth. As I mentioned, we have a high degree of confidence in our ability to achieve these synergy targets. As the integration proceeds, we will provide regular updates on our progress against the annual and total EBITDA contribution we have identified.

To enable deal success, we anticipate transaction and integration costs of $160 million and $550 million, respectively, most of which will be completed by the end of '28. In addition, we expect retention cost of up to $400 million spread over 3 years. In total, USI will add $3.3 billion in revenue and $1.2 billion in adjusted EBITDA on a fully synergized trailing 12-month basis.

We expect the transaction to be dilutive to EPS in '27 and accretive in '28 and thereafter. Importantly, Aon's business performance remains on track. Regarding implications for financial guidance on the acquisition, we will provide further updates at close.

We are pursuing this opportunity while maintaining our financial strength and disciplined capital allocation. We expect to maintain our current credit ratings and to return to our leverage objective of 2.8 to 3x approximately 24 months after close. The principles of our balanced capital allocation model remain the same: deleveraging our balance sheet, funding a stable and growing dividend, investing in attractive growth opportunities and returning excess capital to shareholders.

Consistent with this strategy, we do not expect to repurchase shares in the near term as we prioritize debt repayment. Overall, this transaction is a significant strategic step forward for Aon. USI is one of the market's premier assets and adding it to Aon enhances our reach, our data platform and our addressable market, deepening the context advantage we deliver to our clients.

The rationale is clear and compelling, allowing us to expand future growth, margin potential, EPS accretion and free cash flow generation over time. Most importantly, we believe this transaction is a unique opportunity that will allow us to deliver more for our clients, colleagues and shareholders. I'll now pass you back to Greg for a few closing thoughts before we take your questions.

Thank you, Nadin. This is a landmark moment for Aon, establishing the premier U.S. middle market platform, enabling us to deliver better choice, superior solutions and greater value for our clients. Importantly, we believe the advantages of our platform will expand over time as we bring more innovative capabilities to clients, create greater opportunities for colleagues and generate long-term value for our shareholders. Now Mike, Nadin, Andy and I will be happy to take your questions. Back to you, Donna.

[Operator Instructions]

Today's first question is coming from David Motemaden of Evercore ISI.

Greg, a few times you had mentioned that the deal is expected to accelerate the organic growth of Aon. Maybe you could just elaborate on how much? Is that something that can break you guys out of the mid-single-digit or greater organic growth range? And where do you see that coming from mostly? Because it looks like USI actually grew 4% in 2025, which was below Aon.

David, I love the question. It's exactly the perfect one to start with because fundamentally, this is about serving clients more effectively and serving more of them. This is about organic growth. And look for our opportunities and organic growth to continue to increase over time. Again, step back and think about Aon before we get to the premier middle market platform we're talking about.

We have with the 3x3 and all the capability we built, just continue to double down on our ability to bring better solutions, help clients make better decisions. You've seen it show up in our growth rates. By the way, we had 2 of the last 4 quarters, we had 10% organic growth in the U.S. here in commercial risk, for example. This -- the 3x3, the capability behind it is working unbelievably well.

It creates great, great opportunity and leverage for us, which we're now bringing with the premier platform to the middle market. So step back, with USI, with NFP, with the capability we've got in Aon, when we talk about mid-single digit or greater, or greater. This is the opportunity for greater, right?

In the end, we're going to continue to sort of build and create here and that combination is giving us great expectations around overall organic growth. So not about NFP by itself or USI by itself or Aon by itself with that platform, and that will be accretive to what will be a more accretive overall Aon. And that's -- we've proven it, David. We've seen it inside of NFP, bringing that advantage in a very specific way. Now we're scaling it to more clients in a way that we have high confidence will be compelling. But listen, hearing from me is interesting.

If you don't mind, I think Mike just talked about this. We talked about this at length in terms of sort of what this might mean and the opportunity in the middle market. And then we get Andy to chime in on the E&S opportunity because that's a net new piece right? That's something that hasn't been in the game before. Now we're talking about it in the game. And it really does provide clarity as well on the overall synergy capture. But Mike, your thoughts on organic growth?

Yes, Greg, I appreciate that and a few thoughts and comments. I've spent my career in this industry and understand and appreciate the true power of the relationships our producers and client team members have with clients and prospective clients.

Relationships powerfully and importantly matter. Historically, in the middle market, in particular, relationship has been always important, and it's been relationship-driven. But relationship alone, relationship stop is just not enough.

It's got to be relationship plus. And the plus here is the combination of our firms, and it's truly extraordinary. Our combined context advantage, as Greg described, starts with that shared one culture, a similar integrated organizational structure of risk capital and human capital, property and casualty and employee benefits and leveraging the power of data analytics brings an enterprise-grade insight into the middle market.

I see an exciting opportunity to leverage the data analytics AI and a prime example of this as I've seen and you may have as well, the Aon Risk Analyzers. And just couldn't be more excited about the organic growth potential that's going to come as part of this platform that our producers, our client team members can now leverage and deliver to clients and prospective clients.

So think about it, David, that's literally the ABS analytics and that platform package tailored for the middle market sort of in the main. So that's classic middle market opportunity that Mike talking about a game-changing opportunity for us. And we have a net new area that we haven't been playing in, and that's the E&S opportunity.

Andy, can you talk about that, too, and kind of an additional piece on the organic growth profile?

Sure. Thanks, Greg. USI gives us 2 things. One is the direct access to the E&S market, and I'll come to that. And also Aon to USI gives the USI clients and brokers access to a global retail network, and that's important, and I'll come to that second.

Firstly, on the E&S business, which is a growing segment of the market, having direct access for our clients fulfills the risk capital promise of agnostic access to capital, which we've been focused on for the last 3 years. And if you think about -- Greg mentioned Totalis Specialty, which is our program MGU business that has $5.5 billion of premium flow through it, we trade in that platform with 21,000 independent agents.

When those policies get rejected by the program, it goes back to those independent agents and is then distributed through wholesale channels. So we have that business, and we actually want to serve it fully and serve all those independent clients in the best ways that we can and give better choice.

So having this direct access will fulfill that. And there'll be other specialty ways in which we can do that. And then the other point, for USI, our learnings with NFP in enabling a mid-market broker to have full access to a global retail network, Bermuda, London, helps give clients choice, and there are some direct revenue benefits for Aon, which are managed and articulated within.

And literally, if you think about it, David, we now got the core business. We've got E&S, but I hope you take away from this, and we won't spin around all 4 of us on every question. But on this one, it is about organic growth.

Organic growth unlocks the value of our clients. And just to be clear, it's the shareholder value key. We grow organically, it unlocks everything. And what I hope you pick up here is very specific understanding of what it's going to take. We know the answer, now scaling. Andy just described the opportunity. It doesn't require new clients. It requires us doing more with existing clients.

That's a beautiful thing. By the way, we'll get new clients as well. We're going to get both. But it really is -- it opens the door to kind of the synergy idea that all hinges back on the synergies and the opportunity to capture the revenue and cost synergies. And just a comment from the Nadin on literally how we have line of sight into the synergies which drive exactly what Mike and Andy have just talked about.

Yes. Let me get back to those comments. So if I echo what we're really excited about, this deal increases our presence in the middle market and access to E&S, which are 2 of the fastest-growing segments in U.S. commercial insurance. And as you mentioned, Greg, when we think about this specific transaction, this allows us to offer more products and services to a larger base of clients, which will support the organic growth. And as I mentioned earlier, the synergies that we have calculated as part of this transaction amount to $321 million of additional revenue growth opportunities.

And so ultimately, if we think about this, expanding our addressable market, strengthening our ability to achieve organic revenue growth of mid-single digits or greater part of this deal and importantly, through the cycle.

Our next question is coming from Elyse Greenspan of Wells Fargo.

My first question, I guess, is on the financing on the transaction. I recognize that you guys have a plan to take up the leverage, right, and then bring it back down over the next couple of years. Is there any way once we see how this plays out as we get closer to close that you guys would consider an equity component to this transaction? Or are you fully committed to funding this all via debt?

Elyse, I'll start an overview and then when you talk specifically about some of the mechanics, it's more helpful for you. Listen, we are very pleased to sort of take this on the balance sheet and literally preserve the shareholder value creation, which we believe is going to be quite substantial for our existing shareholders.

Very much pleased to be able to do that and fully ready to attack this opportunity in that way. You saw us do it exactly the same way with NFP where we moved up and we moved down in a very short period of time faster than we even thought we would. Look for us to sort of push that in any way we possibly can as we drive this, but we're very comfortable with the structure that's going to drive a greater shareholder value creation for our shareholders. Nadin?

Yes. I'll add that we're pursuing this opportunity from a position of strength. And we will maintain our disciplined capital allocation approach, which we've talked about before. And as part of this transaction, we'll maintain our current credit rating, and we expect to return to our leverage objective of 2.8 to 3x in approximately 24 months of close.

So I just want to reiterate that our principles around balanced capital allocation model remain unchanged, deleveraging our balance sheet, funding a stable and growing dividend, investing in attractive growth opportunities and returning excess capital to shareholders. And again, as we talked about, we did this with NFP. We had a higher leverage ratio and we were able to bring it down. And so we have a track record of demonstrating that.

And then my follow-up question, there is some adjustments to revenue. I think it's around $60 million, which I'm assuming is revenue dis-synergies here. How did you guys come up with that as being the right figure when bringing together right two sizable organizations?

Again, Elyse, we took a very conservative view going back to the baseline core on literally what we're going to build off of as we thought about the synergies. And so these adjustments reflect really making sure we're all counting revenue in exactly the same way. So we're being very careful about that, and we're very stringent on how we develop that baseline. And then in addition to making sure we build in what is always natural leakage that occurs.

But I would say, if you think about this in the NFP case, our NFP colleagues working together were tremendous. We had incredible experience, producer retention exceptionally strong, stronger post-deal than pre-deal that's unheard of.

The overall leadership Doug Hammond and Mike Goldman, all these guys are phenomenal in terms of what we were trying to do with our team. Now we've got a next generation of leaders stepping up in the NFP world to work with Mike. We're incredibly excited about that's going to look like. So we've seen this movie multiple times and certainly saw it in NFP, learned a lot and feel very, very good about our ability to sort of maintain the platform as we then strengthen the platform.

The next question is coming from Pablo Singzon of JPMorgan.

So one element of your disclosure today was retention costs. And I don't think you disclosed that when you announced NFP. I guess the question is, can you talk about your -- and Greg, I think you touched this already a bit, but your retention experience at NFP and your expectation for USI, the department producers is always a key risk for [indiscernible]. And I was wondering how you're thinking about managing that risk?

Pablo, if organic growth was a perfect kickoff question, our retention about our people and our colleagues is right there with it. This is really the driver. It really is all about our colleagues. And I think I'd start drive, but then I think, again, you're getting some comments from my colleagues here will be quite helpful. Look, principle #1, that guides the work across Global Aon, guides the work at NFP is now guiding the work with USI and the platform, this middle market platform we're creating is a set of principles around this is our talent first, investing in, reinforcing, developing our talent. And then as Mike described, this isn't talent, which is primary -- absolutely primary.

It isn't talent stop. It's talent with greater content capability to sit across the table and wow a client. We put that package together, that's really what matters more than anything else. And that's why we've invested so heavily to enrich our ability to help clients make better decisions through our colleagues. And again, talk is cheap. You've seen this. Our retention, all-time high.

Recent retention, as I described before, in NFP, if you want a specific example, exceptionally strong. I can go on and on sentiment. If you think about where it is at Aon, even more so at USI, but Aon and NFP, exceptionally strong.

So what I'm trying to highlight here before we get to the investment in the particular situation here, which Nadin can talk about, I want you to get a sense for how high a priority this is for us as we think about our ability to serve clients more effectively. And then also be clear -- we've done this. We're doing this. This is again about the concept here is scaling proven concepts in a way that benefit clients more effectively. That's the whole program.

And we have it on the organic growth plan, and we absolutely have it on the retention plan. Obviously, we're going to invest resources directly behind that and overall retention. And maybe Nadin offer some thoughts here in terms of a broad view on what we've got going on.

Yes. In addition to what Case said, I would say that we've shared that we've contemplated up to $400 million specifically in retention costs. And we have devised a series of programs and structures that we put in place to ensure that we have strong outcomes here.

This includes success and learnings from our experience in working with NFP, and we're really encouraged by the strong cultural fit between the 2 companies, coupled with best-in-class tools and capabilities in the industry, we believe that Aon will increasingly be the destination of choice for top talent.

And just one quick comment, maybe, Mike, from you around this whole talent piece because this is a place you and I spend a huge amount of time talking about as we thought about this middle market platform and what it might mean for our clients.

Yes. Thanks, Greg. I mean this is a net plus for our people unquestionably, and I believe as well for the NFP colleagues as well. It's same plus more, right? On the same basis, they continue to be the relationship lead with their clients and prospective clients.

And now the more is the already existing powerful solution tool and support platform they have today has now further expanded exponentially, domestic and international, both on the risk capital and the human capital side, access to even more expanded proprietary tool solutions and programs, technology support solutions, account management, account executive and vertical expertise support.

It's an exponentially greater capability than they had yesterday or will have upon close of the transaction. This is clearly a net plus for our people.

The next question is coming from Meyer Shields of KBW.

I'm just going back to E&S because I'm trying to understand it. Is the plan for the increased utilization of E&S on Aon retail brokerage? Or is Aon sort of entering the -- or reentering the third-party wholesale world again?

So, let's take a step back, Meyer, you're asking about this piece, which is straight net new. We have access now to this overall market.

We're talking about expanding the access. Again, primary here is matching capital with client needs, reduce volatility. That's really what's going on, greater access to do that. But Andy, how would you describe sort of the steps we're taking to make that happen?

I think in the first case, I used the example earlier about specialty. So the ability to serve our clients in a complete way, accessing the E&S market on a direct basis is going to help our retention and wins and relevance in that space.

Additionally, when we think about our specialty business and our global access with NFP, with USI, how we access directly, which is new for us, the E&S markets using our analytics and our insights and going direct to wholesale to the E&S market is going to be better for us and better for our clients because they have more immediate choice. And the point that I think should not be missed is that how the USI broker network can utilize a global retail broking network produces the greatest yield and the greatest choice.

So yes, E&S is super important for us. We actually having a connected placement strategy with USI, with NFP, with Aon as one is the most important step.

The next question is coming from Bob Huang of Morgan Stanley.

Maybe I'd like to kind of hear your thoughts a little bit on the technology integration. Is that something you can unpack a little bit more? If we think about USI, right, like the USI ONE system, it essentially is, from our perspective, a very integrated analytics tool that brings essentially like a proprietary platform and brings everything together.

It also does feel like Aon has something similar along that line as well. As we see the 2 companies come together, can you maybe just unpack the technology strategy in terms of direction of travel where integrated platform works? Or is USI going to be kept on a separate system? Just curious how you think about everything in between.

Love it, Bob. Absolutely fantastic. By the way, we probably won't be able to get into the entire technology strategy and unpack it with a few minutes here on the call, but it's incredibly fundamental. Again, this is the premier middle market platform.

We mean platform. This is a connected platform. This is Aon assets, USI assets, NFP assets operating in this middle market platform in the context of what we do across the North American theater. So this is connected on areas like analytics and capability.

Think about the ABS platform and what we have and how it's been built and evolved over time. Now we're connected even more effectively. So look -- that's going to come together. I do want to call on Mike again. He and Mindy Simon have spent real time on this in terms of thinking about the opportunities here.

I think Mike came away with a lot of excitement about how we can take principles that are very aligned, objectives very aligned and do something pretty special to accelerate the ABS capability we've got and in doing so, accelerate the ability to serve across this platform.

Greg, when you and I first started talking and then when I further got the chance to spend time with Mindy, it's amazing how similar the proprietary platforms and technologies are that we've built over time at USI and you built with the team at Aon. It's a very similar concept. How do you use data to turn that into insight and analytics?

How do you provide a full breadth and depth of solutions that are customized to each and every client? So how does one individual relationship person not just deliver their solo expertise? Of course, they do. They bring their experience, their knowledge, their relationship.

But how do they make sure that they're simultaneously the concierge and conduit, the entire platform of solutions and ideas customized and applied to that individual client and prospect? And so what we're going to be able to do now is I think a very complementary combination of our technologies.

Our USI proprietary technology is heavily, heavily focused on the U.S. middle market. And Aon also has a tremendous strength in the large risk management segment. I think it's a great complementary tool set that we'll be bringing together.

And I just want to remind one more thing here, Bob, it's so important. You say, well, that sounds like it could be difficult. Do you worry about -- listen, what's just been accomplished by Mindy, our COO and all the infrastructure on the 3x3 plan is massively complex. You didn't hear a word about it. That's because it was handled flawlessly.

We have a connected global platform across 60,000 -- the middle market platform is a subset of that. It's within the construct of that. We know that play exceedingly well. It's been proven across global Aon. Now we're going to apply it in the middle market platform. So again, back to the idea of the synergies, the capture, the understanding that Nadin talked about, we have very specific line of sight led by Mindy across global Aon, now across the North American theater, now in the U.S. middle market premier platform. So this is all connected.

This is all turbocharged to win both individually in a local market area, powered by what we have globally. So we're incredibly excited about the momentum. The other piece that this gives us is think about it, this is innovation at scale. When we get it right in one part of the world, it's now around the world immediately. That's unheard of in our industry. That's what this gives us. And then finally, if I could, this is about back to AI.

We've said it many, many times, AI is not a strategy. The strategy is client leadership, client value. AI reinforces that, accelerates that. And we've been doing this since 2009 in terms of sort of back to what we've done. And so now we are accelerating in the 3x3 plan accelerated. And so AI actually helps accelerate what we're doing here as part of the middle market platform. So great question and a fundamental part of not just our ability to deliver on the strategy, but also capture the synergies that come with it.

The next question is coming from Andrew Kligerman of TD Cowen.

Congrats on the transaction. Question around USI and NFP. How do those 2 operations initially look from the get-go -- are they separate entities? Do you not combine them? Where is the brand going to go with those 2 companies?

Just kind of curious when those 2 organizations come together and what the name is going to be? Is it going to be Aon over time? And then quickly also excess and surplus, I looked at Slide 8, and I see that 23% in specialty, a piece of that specialty is wholesale. So I'm going to guesstimate maybe $100 million, $200 million of revenue maybe comes from wholesale. I mean is that something that could massively grow at Aon from a very small base? And I'll stop there.

Well, Andrew, first of all, thanks for the questions. Really appreciate you chiming in this morning. Listen, you come back, and we're going to lay this out more and more as we unfold not just the synergies, but sort of the overall approach. Understand this is an absolute integrated, connected premier middle market platform. And under Mike's leadership, when you think about it, Mike Schneider in the role, he now plays, Ethan Foxman in the role he plays at NFP.

This is the team coming together with support from Doug Hammond in an Executive Chairman role. This is an integrated team coming together under Mike's leadership to really address the questions you're raising in a way that's connected, driven and all there to deliver better client outcomes, full stop. And in doing so, win more clients, do more with them, keep them longer, organic growth. That machine, we know how it works. We've proven it. Now we're scaling it.

So that's how it's going to all come together. That's -- the leadership team, as you will see, will be cutting across all 3 of those groups. One single leadership team. Again, that's why the technology and the business services platform fits within that as well.

So this is a very clear guided plan with a real simple message, the most premier opportunity in middle market for our clients and for our producers, for our client leaders that, by the way, is going to just keep innovating. So where we stop now is just an interesting placeholder. What we want to do is keep innovating around that more and more and more.

So that's the thought on the middle market side. And then Andy, as you think about, sort of, the E&S side, reactions overall?

Yes, Andrew, we -- when you think about the E&S possibilities for us, you think of it in the context of Totalis Specialty, which has the MGA and MGU programs. USI has a complementary element to that, but most important, have the direct access to the E&S market with the wholesaler. MGA and MGU historically has been growing at a 15% CAGR.

So we're committed to that space. That additional capability enables us to serve our specialty business in the NFP and Aon network with our -- what we think are market-leading analytics and will enable us to win and expand our footprint there. And sure, the footprint in wholesale and USI is quite small, but by combining it with Totalis Specialty and taking this broader view, we're very confident we can accelerate growth.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have today for questions. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Case for closing comments.

Thank you, Donna. And we just want to, again, appreciate you all joining on this special call. Obviously, a unique opportunity and moment in our history, as we said at the beginning, less about our history and more about what we can do on behalf of middle market clients with this combined U.S. premier platform, which we're very excited to sort of embark on post close. So again, thanks for the time today and look forward to updating you on our progress as we move forward. Thanks so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines or log off the webcast at this time, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Good day. Thank you for joining us for the Q3 Insurance Labor Market Study results. We appreciate your time today. I do want to have a couple of moments and let you know of a couple of things in case we run into any issues. We would simply ask that you please just log in or try to relog back in using the link that was shared with you. If you do have any phone issues, you are able to dial in as well. That information should also be included with the webinar information that was sent to you. As well we do want to let you know that we will be distributing the results of the presentation today, along with the recording within the next two business days. If you should need access to that sooner, the individual documents, please feel free to reach out to us directly, and we'll be happy to share those to you.

Otherwise, at this point, I would like to present Jeff Rieder, Partner and Head of the Benchmarking of Aon Strategy and Technology Group to get things going. Jeff?

Good afternoon, and good morning to everybody today. So we're really happy to be here. And I know many of you have participated in this webinar and our study for the last going on now about 17 years or so. And within Aon and our Strategy Technology Group, I lead our benchmarking operations, which help companies evaluate their expense staffing, organizational and compensation practices. And we'll touch on a lot of things that are happening, both from the staffing models as well as the impact it has on compensation. And if you'd like more information, feel free to visit our website.

And I'll turn it over to Jeff Blair.

Thanks. Welcome back, everybody. I haven't been doing it for 17 years, but I'm starting to become an old hand at this. First, I'd like to thank all our clients and companies that participated. Your delivery of the data is what makes this possible. As I said, I'm part of the Jacobson Group. I lead our Executive Search practice. For over 50 years, we've been supplying insurance capacity from a staffing standpoint, from temp to professional to executive. And we're excited to share some interesting information and get some questions.

So today, we're going to analyze the current labor trends and future staffing expectations, provide an overview of some of the staffing challenges by discipline and provide some commentary on the industry's labor market. We had very strong participation for this survey, a nice mix between carrier size and line of business. Based on the companies that have participated represent almost 10% of the insurance industry.

One thing I do want to point out, we do not have a rich sample of the mega very large, both personal lines and commercial insurance companies. And quite candidly, some of the job actions that might have been taken at the very large carriers, we will see those numbers more prominently in the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers than you will see here. And that will explain some of the difference. I think we have a mix difference.

Okay. Sorry. So as we look at unemployment rates, you see that as of this month, the national average is at 4.1% and the insurance sector is at 3.3%. And while 3.3% is the highest since December of 2026, the year-to-date average is 2.1%, and that compares to 2.3% from last year. So there is a little bit of bump, and Jeff and I were talking earlier, there always tends to be a bit of a bump this time of year in the unemployment rate over the summer. With that said, this is two months in a row as it's been ticking up. So it is something that we want to continue to keep an eye on.

So when we look at overall carrier employment, you sort of see this trend, and we've talked about it before. We had this high watermark for the industry and then COVID came, there was obviously a drop. Then like many industries, there was rapid hiring back up. And now the industry is sort of finding its new normal. There was -- if we look at it from a peak to now, there's approximately 50,000 less jobs. And part of that, as seen across industries, there's a bit of COVID overhiring. As we came back, we overhired. Other things that we're seeing is more and more carriers, and we're going to talk more about this later are managing their open headcount, maintaining current levels. And when you're doing that and at the same time, there are some staff reductions, that is going to have an impact to the number. We're going to talk a little bit about technology and automation and the impact there. I think AI is the hot term, but I think our view is it's much broader than that from a technology standpoint.

And also just a quirk of the insurance industry, combined ratio caused by cat is down year-over-year through Q1. And that cat staffing can have an impact year-over-year. So these are some of the factors that could be impacting this. But at the same time, there is a move to some constriction in the market.

Yes. I think, too, as you reflect on some of the changes there, obviously, your comment on the rebounding from or overhiring during the COVID, but there were also some market impacts that have also been somewhat of a dynamic in terms of impacting insurance carriers. So during that, let's say, really starting in the 2014, '15 time frame, we've seen a dramatic increase in terms of the E&S and specialty space, in particular, that now that represents -- E&S represents about 20% of the overall commercial lines market. And that has also begun to expand into the personal lines market in some states where carrier coverage has been difficult to obtain at the admitted level.

Also, there has been that growth in the MGA distribution model that both MGA, MGU has significantly expanded over the same time period. So one of the things as you think about as we recovered from the COVID environment, the commercial lines market was certainly significantly harder in the 2021 through '23 time frame, whereas the personal lines market was stronger in the '23 through early '25 time frame. And so companies were hiring because they had a lot of the premium growth to support that. But now as we're entering a softening market cycle, companies are essentially preparing for that. And we can kind of see some similar trends as you look back on some of the historical data, where companies were rebounding from the recession in 2008, '09 and '10. We saw a similar pattern there. So there could be some optimism that while we're perhaps resetting right now, there is some future optimism that as the economy continues to grow, there will likely be new jobs, whether that's in the -- obviously, the AI sector, but data centers, other growth sectors that will require carrier employment. And then the other piece, as we talk about the growth in the MGA and MGU on the carrier employment, there's a lot of roles that have now shifted from the carrier on the P&C side, but also on the life side for those roles that are being now done at that MGU carrier.

The other thing that we are starting to see is because of the growth in the cloud-based systems, that is also having a lot of roles that would have historically been the information technology, but certainly, you have the programmers that are doing both the application development and maintenance, but then there's roles around QA and testing that are also being outsourced or offshored. And then that expands into the infrastructure and networking costs within the carriers where they don't have the same need for roles that might have been there for disaster recovery, for example, or networking engineers, things of that nature. So some of this may also represent a shift in the model in terms of where work is being done in some cases as well. And we'll see that come through a little bit later, particularly as we look at some of the hiring trends, particularly around information technology that has decreased quite a bit.

So as we look at the revenue and staffing expectations, yes, this is very interesting that in the past, particularly when we started doing this in 2009, we saw a very high correlation in terms of companies that were expecting to grow revenue and grow staff. Whereas now we see that in this response, surprisingly, not a single company expected to decrease revenue over the next 12-month period. And either we got a bunch of people that are very, very optimistic or very, very unrealistic in terms of what's going to happen. Without a doubt, there will be companies that are going to see decreases in revenue over the next 12-month period just due to the many companies that are contracting their business in terms of re-underwriting books of business. there is a soft market cycle in certain areas and certain lines that I think that we'll see more companies either being a decreased revenue or certainly being not hitting their growth expectations, which is what we're starting to see already midyear from our anecdotal work with clients. And then as we look at those that are expecting to increase staff, only 49% of companies. So now for the first time in a long time, it's fewer than half of companies are expecting to increase staff over the next 12-month period.

And the next chart here will give us a kind of a view in a lens in terms of how that has compared over the last 17 years or so. But we're now other than the -- that valley during the pandemic in 2020, we've not seen this level of low number of companies expecting to increase staff since back in 2012. And obviously, in 2012, we were really emerging from the recession, but we're at those types of levels in terms of kind of, I'd say, companies being cautious with their hiring expectations. And with that bump in the July '26 to 11% of companies expecting to reduce headcount in the next 12-month period. I think, again, that's reflecting the realistic expectations around revenue growth. into the remainder of this year. So it is a more challenging environment and particularly what we're seeing in the commercial line sector that companies are being more aggressive around expense management.

And again, that was because of the -- as Jeff alluded to, the hiring that emerged post pandemic and seeing some market opportunities that now are not quite as strong as what they were. And then to some extent, as the automation improvements continue to come through, we're not seeing those jobs being replaced as quickly. And so -- and Jeff will be able to talk about that a little bit later.

And the view here is also kind of giving that view. And Jeff, I'll let you take on this one here.

Sure. To follow up on what Jeff said, I think it is interesting that about half the firms that we surveyed, 49%, plan to add headcount while only under 30% expect greater than 10% revenue growth. So this feels more like backfilling for key positions rather than hiring strictly for growth. Now we do -- there is a view of hiring for growth, but the reality is this sort of spread, it makes more sense that we're backfilling open positions. And one of the challenges is we'll go a little bit more later on, but these positions are staying open longer and are, in some cases, not being filled, which continues this sort of trend.

So I think, as Jeff said, I think there's an expense management piece that is tied into this. I think that there's automation impacts of automation and sort of the impact of process change may require less people and through nonfilling of open recs, you start to get there through your staffing plans.

Yes. I think what might also happen with those open recs being not filled, there could be companies that are going to evaluate that if we've been operating with this open rec now for 9, 12 months without a deterioration in the performance of the business, now they're questioning whether or not that needs to be replaced at all. In fact, I had a conversation last -- yesterday with the carrier CEO, about $1 billion company with -- I think, at the time, about 55 open positions. And as we are going through their planning cycle for 2027, that's the specific question that he's asking his leadership team is we need to identify which of these roles truly do need to be replaced. And I think that's an important question to have and why we need to replace the position if we're not having any adverse results as a result of it.

So when we look at the 12-month staffing plan versus actual, we over forecasted. We overforecasted on what we thought the plan would be compared to actual. This was across -- and we'll break it out by segments. But both -- we had significantly less growth than expected. And I think coming off of 2025, which was overall a solid year, the second half is not as good as the first half. I think we started with these plans, but the reality on the ground, all these different factors led to this gap.

Also, I think one of the things is downsizing happened more than expected. So that also -- it wasn't just the growth side. We also ended up having more downsizing than was planned for originally.

Yes. I think some of that might be expected because of the -- we really saw the market turn in the second half of 2025 that by the end of the year, the quarter-over-quarter change in premium in terms of comparing the fourth quarter '25 to the fourth quarter '24 had gone down to only about a 3% to 3.5% growth in both personal and commercial lines. So I think companies were reacting more quickly, essentially not filling open positions as much because they saw that coming as well.

Yes. And Jeff, something else that I've seen too is Q1, Q2 planned hires were pushed back. So like that -- from a plan standpoint, they're still in the plan, but they haven't been happening. And I think that is a little bit of what we're seeing.

Do you -- I know you're closer to it than we are, obviously, but when those positions are being filled, are you seeing that it's taking longer? Is it two, three, four weeks? Or is it two, three, four, five months longer to fill many positions now?

Well, it depends -- it's a good question. It depends on the position. I think overall, the great resignation is over, and we're going to talk a little bit about voluntary and where it is. It is taking longer to fill these positions. One, employees are less willing to move at the moment. I mean, quite candidly, many of them had very good years last year, and there's a lot of incentive to stay and the nature of the industry.

I think the other thing that we're seeing is the carriers are not as -- we're seeing instances where they're not as aggressive in bringing in new talent. So taking longer, maybe less aggressive offers. And so we're seeing the process take longer because we have a potential candidate population which has had good compensation, working for companies that are performing well.

The likelihood of moving is already lower, especially if the companies are having good results this year-to-date, that also plays into it. And carriers at the same time, as we discussed earlier, are taking more of a slow approach to filling. And so as we say in the staffing world, we're seeing a lot more offers kicked and really trying to work with carriers on sort of is there a sense of urgency on this or not. But without the sense of urgency, it's very -- it's becoming more and more difficult to fill these positions.

Do you -- kind of a follow-up on that. We talked about AI, but when it comes to the recruiting and sifting through all the various resumes. I hear anecdotal stories that when positions are posted, now it's often that you'll get 500-plus applications within a day that are coming through from various AI tools, whether it's on LinkedIn or what have you. How does that impact some of the recruiting from your perspective?

Yes. No, I think -- I mean, one, that is definitely something that would be hammering the talent acquisition departments at the carriers when they post jobs. It is one of the great things and one of the challenges of technology in the Internet is how easy it is to apply for jobs. So they get a flood. I think from a staffing industry standpoint, there are challenges, but we're finding more because we're working in our networks, and we're working with the people that we know, we can cut through some of that.

But yes, when I talk to companies, they'll say, we post a director level job, and we could have 2,000 applicants. And it's like how do you even work your way through that?

Yes. Well, I think moving on to our next slide then. This gives a comparison between the life health and P&C side. So as we kind of saw earlier, the difference between the increase, maintain and decrease was just vastly different on both sectors. The P&C side, while 54% of companies were anticipating an increase at this point last year, only 35% did. And I think this was probably the largest gap. I'd have to go back. I can't recall in the -- all the years of doing this that we've seen just a difference in terms of the expectations of where companies were between a year and the actual staffing gap. And to some extent, it's -- you could say, potentially disheartening a bit in terms of the percentage of companies that decreased employees over that time period. But whether it's due to the economic, technological or broader, you could even say, potentially geopolitical concerns that were impacting where we were last year. For example, we had the tariffs that were a major concern, obviously, now since then of the war in Iran and just broader political and, I'd say, economic concerns that may be impacting behavior from a hiring standpoint.

Then as we look at the openings in finance and insurance positions, so here, the average -- this is just the average of the 2026. It looks like it bumped up quite a bit from the average of 2025. So it's tough to kind of see the difference in the stories. As many of you that may have followed us through the January, at the end of 2025 in December, the job openings in insurance and finance were, I think, right around 130,000 openings. So it was at a -- over about a 12-year low at that point. So some of this has rebounded, which is a little bit -- I was kind of surprised. It's kind of counterintuitive to what we're seeing in some of the data, but we'll keep an eye on this through the second half of the year. Obviously, this finance and insurance incorporates all financial sectors, whether it's health insurance, banking, wealth, et cetera. But we are certainly quite a bit lower than we were back in 2022.

And then for that forward-looking staffing plan, so the dark gray here or dark blue, I should say, is the July '26 plan compared to the light blue of 2025. So perhaps the biggest difference that we're seeing here is shifting again more towards that companies maintaining size going forward. And in particular, only about 57% of P&C companies or I should say commercial lines focused are expected to hire. And that was kind of surprising because that was 15 and 21 points higher than the balanced and personal lines P&C companies, respectively. So still more optimistic, I think we can say in that commercial line sector. Historically, the commercial lines industry other than 2025 had been notably more profitable than the broader personal lines segment. Personal Lines had a near record year, if not record year for most organizations due to the lack of catastrophe activity, no hurricanes made landfall last year. And despite the fact that we had the wildfires in January and February of 2025, it was a really strong year in general.

And then one thing to note, you'll see on that third bullet point of the companies who are planning to add staff in the next 12 months, large correlation with 81% of those expecting to increase in revenue with many expecting to increase their overall market share, while the ones that we're expecting to decrease staff we're expecting none -- surprisingly, none expected a decrease in revenue. So it's perhaps not that they're worried about declining in revenue, but they -- it may point to that they're worried that they're not going to be able to grow or hit those growth expectations.

And then as we do the comparison here for this forward-looking view by industry, so you can see, again, for both P&C and life aspects, more companies anticipating to maintain size in general. And surprising here, none of our life companies were expecting to decrease staff but holding flat in general in the 2026 view.

And then last is our view here on company size and how that is impacting. And we typically do see that the smaller companies here, we're defining those as under 300 employees and medium at 300 to 1,000 employees historically have been more aggressive in their expectations to increase staff. whereas with the larger companies, those by over 1,000 employees, it was a very stark difference this time around with only 28% of the large companies anticipating to increase staff over the next 12-month period. And to some extent, oftentimes, those larger companies just due to their either geographic breadth, may have more opportunity to, let's say, rightsize the organization. In some cases, as I alluded to earlier, on the outsourcing and offshoring, those are also companies that often can benefit more quickly in terms of adopting those programs.

And then lastly, as we talked about with the MGU space, we'll typically often find that those larger commercial companies like that are also more likely to participate in those types of programs where they can have some of that labor being done externally. So -- but it was a very stark difference here when we look at the company size and the impact that it has on their staffing expectations.

Okay. And if we're looking at the usage of temporary employees, as I said, 90% of companies are planning to increase or maintain temporary staffing levels for the next 12 months. We're seeing a slight increase in the number of companies that are maintaining current levels with a reduction seen in the increased bucket. It's also worth noting that the use of temporary services across all industries per the SIA Bullhorn Staffing Indicator, staffing hours are up 10% year-over-year. So I think -- and I don't -- there's nothing that jumps out to me that makes me think insurance is materially different. than the broader market. So I think the use of temporary employees is still very vibrant in the industry.

I think one of the things that from our perspective at Jacobson, where we're really feeling the client needs out there is on the temporary side, where in the past, we would fill quite a few positions at the most junior levels, data entry, those sort of positions. We're seeing less and less of that, which makes sense with automation. But where we're seeing some real challenge is sort of the next layer or two up. So you're more senior underwriter, you're more senior claims person, the type of people that bring the industry expertise to oversee the more junior people that aren't there anymore because many have been replaced through automation. So we're seeing more of a shift in there, and we're seeing quite a bit of competition for these resources.

Additionally, we are seeing increased usage of subject matter experts at the executive level and using temporary solutions to bridge gaps might be from a retirement and getting the next, but the successor isn't ready or there's been a shakeup. And we are finding that more and more insurance companies are open to the idea of bringing in an executive to assess the current situation, make sure the trains run on time. and help prepare the organization for the next person in that role.

Jeff, on that, you made me think of something. It was interesting. This past week, it was an odd coincidence, I would say, but I had three different companies reach out to me asking about -- in this case, they were talking about compensation strategies for -- they were all trying to name an internal candidate as a, we'll say, essentially a President or an elevated role that would identify the person as like the CEO successor and the programs around that. And I'd say more the process and organizational strategy around that.

How often are you seeing companies employing that where they're thinking about for -- particularly at this case is the CEO executive leadership transition. Is that a common practice that you're seeing companies adopt more often now?

Yes, yes. I think sort of the person hasn't been annoyed the job, but this is their opportunity to grow into it. And a matter of fact, we're recruiting more people under that idea where it's like, look, this is an opportunity to become a Chief Distribution Officer or a CFO, but this is we're looking for somebody who could be a CEO successor. And it is -- it sort of changes the type of people we're looking for, but we're seeing companies want to get ahead and don't -- if there's an opening on the senior team, it's -- we're seeing more and more companies thinking about this as, well, this isn't just an opportunity to fill this role, bring in some new talent, new ideas, but it's a great opportunity to shore up our succession planning, and we are definitely seeing more of that.

Is there a time frame that you think is optimal in terms of, we'll say, that dual role, if you will? Is it 6 months, 12 months, 15? I don't know if you have a perspective on what you think works best?

Yes. I mean if the person is being hired clearly as the successor, my view is six months is starting to get to the point because after not too long, it starts becoming bumping into each other. Now if it's somebody that's developing into the role, and this is where it can be particularly tricky is you need to make sure that both the incumbent and the Board are on the same page as the potential candidate -- because if you say to a candidate, I see this as three to five years, they heard three years at the most. And that's human nature. I'm not -- and so I think you have to be very transparent because what you don't want to do is just create a second problem down the road.

Yes.

Okay. This is -- I thought very interesting as we're comparing voluntary and involuntary turnover in the last 12 and 6 months. I mean voluntary turnover has continued to cool since 2022. In the prior 12 months, voluntary declined from 11.1% down to 7.6%. And again, this is coming off of the great resignation. So we're seeing voluntary coming down. Involuntary did spike up a bit in 2025. But the prior six months, involuntary moved from 2.8% in January of '23, we're up to 3.4% in July '26. So a slight increase in involuntary. And with these numbers, these are suggesting more performance related and maybe some restructuring exits than wholesale layoffs and taking out x percentage. The mix of turnover is shifting back towards voluntary being the dominant driver. And this is something that we should continue to watch going forward.

Yes. I was surprised on that involuntary number in particular. Well, two things. I think the 7.6% there for voluntary, that's the first time it's dipped below 8% since we started tracking this. And -- because I think we really -- we added this to our survey. I think it was right around 2021, if I remember correctly.

I think so.

And then the involuntary number, I believe this is also the first time in maybe four or five iterations of the survey that on the year-over-year comparison, it has dipped lower as well. So it's just really interesting with low turnover. The balance of power has really clearly shifted back to the employer combined with the broader trends that we're seeing.

So July 2025 to July 2026, based on our survey, the total industry headcount grew 0.21% versus an anticipated growth rate of 1.03%. P&C industry headcount grew by 0.02% versus 1.08% and Life, Health 0.72% versus an anticipated rate of 9.7%. And as we said, both voluntary and involuntary has lowered compared to 2025. And as I said, while there are -- our survey is a snapshot of the market. It is not going to capture any large-scale reductions if we don't have those carriers in our numbers. And so I think that is partial explanation of the gap.

All right. So then when we look at recruiting difficulty, some pretty interesting trends, I think, looking through these, too. And Jeff, I was kind of curious with your perspective, seeing the executive recruiting coming down there. I was surprised that there was what appears on paper, a larger drop in the difficulty to recruit in 2026 compared to last year. Do you have any feedback or observations from your executive recruiting lens?

Well, I'd like to say it's because all our clients responded and we make it easier. And I will say some of that. I'll take a little -- my team will take a little bit of credit. I think it is a little bit -- there are some things that are making it a little bit easier than it was a year ago. I mean I think there's -- people are not as worried as they might have been a year ago in switching roles.

But I do find that one of the challenges that we are seeing is around compensation. And one of the challenges has been around compensation and creating offers that entice people to switch companies. I mean, Jeff, is there anything you're seeing in the executive compensation space that could be more challenging as you're looking at it more broadly?

Yes. Actually, I hadn't thought about that and the impact it has on executive, but a lot of -- a big portion of the companies that responded are mutual insurance companies. And we have seen that now just under 80% of mutual insurance companies are providing a long-term incentive program to their executives. So they're able to compete more easily across the broader market and also retain talent while still linking the compensation to the long-term performance of the company.

We've also seen that last year, because of the record levels of profitability, most companies were paying at or near the maximum of their incentive targets. So -- and even with the targets to companies have begun to increase those where oftentimes, the maximum amount was 150% of target paid in some of those incentive plans for short term for both the frontline and nonexecutive executive employees. Others are increasing those maximum amounts to 200% of target.

So just in general, there's been a shift in terms of how companies are trying to put more at-risk pay that's linked to the performance of the organization in those incentive programs. And obviously, that's to drive behavior. And also, even with the underwriting function there, companies have been adopting more incentive-based programs for their underwriters because those, as we mentioned with the MGA and the E&S space, that typically, those parts of the industry have greater compensation opportunities and incentive targets.

So essentially, companies are all trying to respond to those shifts. On the back end of it, though, we are seeing that merit increases are beginning to come back to historical norms. So merit increases post the recession in 2008, before that, it was 4%, pretty much clockwork, then companies were at between 2.5% to 3% through the kind of pandemic. And then as we emerge, companies were increasing merit by 4% to 4.5%, but also making market adjustments that, in some cases, was increasing year-over-year compensation by 6% to 8% that has all really come down quite a bit. We're projecting for this year, the market merit increases were generally about 3.4% to 3.5%.

And I won't be surprised that we'll see those come down to another 0.1 to 0.3 point as companies are going to be responding to the profitability challenges into next year and then reflecting that with voluntary turnover being so low now that they don't have to chase the market competition quite as much now that the competitive field has been, I'd say, more established.

Yes. No, that makes sense. It's interesting. I was digging into this data looking at it from a historical perspective. And one, actuarials are hard to recruit regardless of what's going on in the market. They are market up, market down doesn't matter. That is very consistent over the years. One of the things that was interesting to me is both analytics and technology, while they're still high relative to the other roles, they've actually cooled down a bit compared to a few years ago.

And it does follow, I mean, partially in some of what Jeff was saying earlier and quite a bit of technology supported applications and processes are moved to the cloud, moved to a partner. And so maybe it's -- there is also a need for less headcount, but still difficult. And then in a very unscientific way, I would tell you that sort of the core functions go from hot to cold at different times and become more difficult. And they -- those tend to seem to follow what's going on in the market a little more consistently.

Yes. I actually had a question come through. Any new hire results and analysis for class of 2026 graduates? And what recommendations would you give to the class of 2027 candidates?

And I have some anecdotal. Historically, we saw very high turnover in that 1- to 3-year new hire. Anecdotally, I've seen those numbers come down a little bit. But the one thing that I'd say is important for new hires as they come through is be very open to thinking about how whether it's AI is going to impact your career and be very receptive to learning those new tools and volunteering wherever possible.

But Jeff, I don't know if you have some feedback in terms of how you would approach new candidates coming into the role. I think maybe we can touch a little bit on that when we get into the hiring in terms of recent higher grads, not recent, but entry level versus experience levels. I might touch on that a little bit more here.

Yes. No, I mean it's an interesting point. I think what we've been talking with clients about and the industry events and what I'm hearing is entering the insurance industry out of college, I would say, historically wasn't the top of the list of what I'm excited to go work in the insurance industry. And I think one of the things that is changing, and we have to do a better job of promoting as an industry is it is a segment that provides stable employment opportunity, different challenges and you can make a career out of it. I mean even going back to decades ago when I was in -- directly in the insurance industry, we felt like if we got you to stay three or four years, you were a lifer.

And creating that sort of path that Jeff described of, well, some of the entry-level roles aren't there anymore, but there are others and how do we develop people and sort of create this industry role rather than this is just my first job, and then I'm going to go try to do something else because I've spoken about before, we have a gray hair problem in the insurance industry, and we definitely need to be bringing in more people. And I think we have a unique selling proposition about the stability, the growth that this industry can provide.

Okay. All right. And then on the next slide, this just gives a view in terms of the ability to hire talent, perhaps no surprise that only 18% of companies feel that it's moderately only 1% or significantly worse. And really what a flip of what this was when we were looking at this three 3 years ago. So again, all of this is really supporting the -- we'll say that shift of power back to the employer. And I think, one, it's nice, but also when you're reflecting the stability that we're seeing in the turnover levels, that means that companies aren't constantly trying to fill positions either. So really positive trend there.

So when we start looking at likelihood of increasing staff, Life, health is most likely to add staff in technology. And we are seeing quite a bit of technological impact, particularly in the life side, where technology is really taking over a significant part of the operations. Property and casualty is showing its strongest intent to add core functions like underwriting and claims. A lot of this is filling open positions. There is some need for new positions at more senior levels to fill in for retirements or increased responsibility overseeing the technology-based solutions.

So when we look at these trends over time, clearly, there's sort of a broad-based cooling since 2022 because that was the big ramp-up. And the biggest drops, if we look at '22 to '26 are in technology, claims, underwriting and analytics. And I think part of that is the high peaks that they were starting at and as we're sort of rightsizing all our organizations. Technology and analytics shifted from top priorities to much more moderate over time. And operational and corporate functions are now the least likely areas to add and the trend has been down for several years. So I mean that is sort of the direction that we're seeing from an increasing staff. And I think it ties into the other pieces that we've been sharing up until now.

Yes, pretty staggering really across the board. Although I'd say across the board, but actuarial was the #1 function most challenging to recruit for. You see that's the only area that really has remained more stable over that entire five-year time frame.

Yes. So I think this one here touches on that slide that we were asked earlier on the new hires. The fortunate thing that I think as we look at the kind of fundamental value proposition of the insurance industry is settling claims being there for the policy obligation and then underwriting that policy. And those are the two areas that other than operations, which is more of your call center front-level entry type positions, the claims and underwriting areas still are showing a high likelihood for companies to hire that new entrant into the workforce with 28% and 23%, respectively.

So I think for -- one of the observations or recommendations you can make to those incoming classes is while somebody might be having a degree in accounting or a technical area, their opportunity to come into the insurance market still is a lot of opportunity in those, we'll say, functions where you can cut your teeth and learn about the business and really have the chance to interact with the frontline policyholder or agent customer.

So it's just really interesting to see that those roles are focused on entry level, whereas if we're talking about analytics, compliance, accounting, actuarial, again, harder to fill in an actuarial position, but that's also where companies are looking to bring in more experienced staff as well. So I think on the compliance aspect, too, that may be more of a reflection just of the more complex environment that we're working in, whether it's information security, enterprise risk management, thinking through how a pandemic can impact the organization, but also responding to the regulatory bodies that are also providing greater oversight that might be impacting why we're seeing more experienced hires there.

One question came through too is how are companies dealing with the expected waves of retirements and if hiring is slowing.

It is a question that boggles me sometimes as well that I think that where companies -- we've seen in some of our other surveys that Aon does, that the ability to hire and attract, retain talent was the #4 risk for insurance organizations in 2023. In our 2025 survey, that had fallen to #8 in the overall risk to the organization. I believe that there -- while we're talking about all these positive trends from turnover, kind of balance of power to the employer, I think that companies are shortsighted to some extent by trying to be, in some cases, too lean in not building the labor first going forward that is going to attract -- I'd say, replace these positions that are retiring.

But in some cases, too, I feel that companies also believe that because of AI and these tools that they can get that, say, in some cases, that know-how or the experience to those individuals more quickly that in the past, where it may have taken somebody 15 to 20 years to become fully mature or experience in their role, there's the expectation that in some cases, they can do that more quickly with these tools that are out there as well. And I don't know if you would share that sentiment at all, Jeff.

Yes. I mean I think that I deal specifically in the executive space. And the -- we're feeling the wave of retirements -- and that is definitely impacting finding people that have the skill sets, have the runway and want to make a change. Anecdotally, I have heard more about retirements in the lower levels of the organization as some of these are being used as not replacing. And we talked a little bit earlier about that where open recs that are not getting replaced or roles that are not getting replaced.

And part of it is, well, we can backfill with the technology or we're going to try to bring somebody in at a slightly lower level. So I think those are some of the ways. I think historically, someone leaves, someone retires, you get a rec, you replace the person. And I think there are a few more conversations that happen at more and more companies about that.

All right. And then on our next slide here, this just gives a quick summary of why companies are expecting to increase staff. And as we mentioned, increase in business volume or expansion in new markets was the #1 and 2 with 20% also saying certain areas are understaffed. On the flip side, as we look at reasons to decrease staff, automation is the #1 function cited, and that probably plays in tie with areas being currently overstaffed. To some extent, they go hand in glove if they're seeing those efficiency gains requiring fewer staff.

So -- and then on the flexible workplace, we are also seeing here that most companies, as we've kind of adopted the hybrid working model, 86% are also offering flexible work hours. and that has maintained pretty consistent over the last few cycles as well. And then in terms of the expectations to be in office on the next slide here, we can kind of see that this is really maintained about where we were. This hasn't shifted a whole lot over the last three years now, but only 7% to 8% of companies have been expecting a full everyday in-office work experience. That is up just slightly in the earlier revisions or additions of this, we were at about 4% or 5%.

So while it has increased, we're talking very small percentages there. So in most cases, when companies are in, they're expecting two or three days in the office. And then going forward, there's not much change expected. So only 4% are expecting companies to be in the office more, but 94% responding, no change at all. So I feel like it may be time for us to retire these questions because I feel like where we are as an operating model is the anticipated going forward.

Okay. Some quick closing thoughts and highlight some of the things we shared, 49% of the companies plan to increase staff in the next 12 months, and we see that driven by Life Health. 11% of the companies are planning to decrease their employees, and this is down from 14% reported last year. Small companies, 62% plan to add staff. And this is 3% and 34% higher than medium and large companies. 78% expect to grow revenue and Commercial Lines P&C is the most optimistic. Overall, 59% of the companies stated that change in market share will drive their expected revenue. And the main reasons for increasing staff are business volume and expansion into new markets. Automation is the most common reason and plan to reduce headcount in the next 12 months.

And then technology, underwriting and claims rules are still expected to have the greatest growth during the next 12 months. And where analytics, compliance and accounting are areas where companies are most likely to add experienced staff, those operations, claims and underwriting roles that we mentioned are entering the entry level. Audit actuary technology executives in that order were the most difficult to fill. And 18% of companies feel their ability to hire has become more difficult compared to the prior year. So it is up a little bit from 12% in the July 2025 survey. And then at 5.3%, the 6-month voluntary turnover is now 2.3 points lower than the 12-month average of 7.8 -- or I'm sorry, 7.6% and average 6-month involuntary is 3.4% as well. So during the next 6 months, 74% of companies expect to expect most of their employees to be on that hybrid schedule. and only 4% expected to change that approach to require employees to be more in office. And then the last 7% of companies in the office every day, which is down from 8% last year.

So, in closing, as we look at our projection, if companies do fall through with their projected hiring expectations, we'll see that overall about 0.78% growth in total headcount with life and health being about 0.62% and P&C at about 0.84, but definitely a significant shift between the personal lines and commercial lines focused companies with about a 1.7 differential in expected headcount.

So overall, as we get ready for our survey next year, we'll be doing this again in January with it to be released in February. We really appreciate everybody participating, submitting your information. We hope you find this information is useful and helps you prepare for -- as you're thinking about your staffing and compensation programs for next year and how this might impact that. If you'd like more information on how to participate, you can contact Vince at [email protected].

And on behalf of Aon, we hope that you all have a very successful second half to your 2026. And Jeff, I'll let you close.

Yes. I also would like to thank everybody for joining us. Today. Thank you for the questions. Feel free to reach out to either myself or Jeff. If there are any follow-up questions, we'd love to talk with you. And we're looking forward to getting back together in six months and seeing where this market has taken us. Have a great rest of the day, everybody.

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon plc's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at any time.

It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. For information concerning these risk factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent quarterly or annual SEC filings, all of which are available on our website.

Now it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon plc.

Thanks, Dylan, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter earnings call. I'm here today with Edmund Reese, our CFO. And as always, the financial presentation, which Edmund will reference, is available on our website. Consistent execution, the strength of our Aon United strategy accelerated through the 3x3 plan and the resilience of our business model produced second quarter and first half results in line with objectives. In addition, our investments in talent, technology and innovative capital solutions continue to strengthen the value we deliver, expand our addressable market and drive sustainable growth.

As we enter the second half of 2026, we're well positioned to deliver on our strategic and financial commitments and continue generating long-term shareholder value. My remarks today focus on 3 areas: First, our client demand continues to grow as organizations navigate increasingly interconnected risk and workforce challenges. Second, our organizational structure, which brings together risk capital and human capital and is supported by Aon Business Services and our substantial investments drive our ability to meet client demand and differentiate Aon in the marketplace. And third, how our investments are translating into strong client impact, durable growth and confidence in our ability to deliver through-the-cycle performance.

Let's start with the external landscape. The environment facing our clients continues to evolve rapidly. Geopolitical uncertainty remains elevated, economic growth remains uneven, cyber threats continue to increase in frequency and sophistication, climate-related risks continue to challenge traditional underwriting and capital allocation models. At the same time, organizations are adapting to profound workforce changes. The common thread across these developments is increasing complexity. As complexity rises, decision-making becomes more difficult and the cost of being wrong is more consequential.

Clients are seeking greater clarity around risk exposure, capital allocation and workforce strategy. They need integrated solutions and trusted partners who can help them navigate uncertainty rather than simply react to it. This is creating growing demand for the capabilities that distinguish Aon in the marketplace. Our expansion of Aon Claims Copilot during the quarter is one example. Building on our successful launch in November, our expansion across North America, Asia Pacific and EMEA brings a substantial portion of our global claims management information onto a single technology platform. Claims Copilot, recently recognized by Business Insurance as the Innovation of the Year, enables delivery of a globally consistent claims experience for clients while strengthening our ability to generate insights that inform placement, negotiation and broader risk strategies. This expansion underscores our continued investment in AI-enabled technology and innovation to help clients navigate the current environment.

Importantly, Claims Copilot enhances our strong track record of claims performance. Over the past decade, we've helped clients recover more than $10 billion in financial value from overturned declinations through our advocacy. By combining that expertise with Claims Copilot, we're helping clients achieve better outcomes. The same dynamics that increase demand for our capabilities are also driving demand both within the segments where Aon is historically strong and in areas where we see opportunities to expand our addressable market. Our enterprise, large and middle market clients have complex needs. They're seeking insight, advice and execution, not just transactions. And their decisions depend on combining data, analytics, expertise and judgment. Organizations are increasingly seeking access to new sources of capital to fund growth and managing volatility.

Aon is creating opportunities to engage with private equity firms and other capital providers, helping clients access the risk-bearing capacity necessary to support their strategic objectives. The opportunities we see today are the result of deliberate decisions we've made over the years. Aon United remains at the center of our strategy and underpins our competitive advantage. The concept is simple, yet powerful. By bringing together expertise across risk capital and human capital, we create more value for clients, expand access to capital and drive growth. Aon Business Services is foundational to this strategy. And over the last several years, we've accelerated investment to improve our ability to diagnose risk, access capital and deliver better outcomes for clients.

Our advantage has never been rooted in technology alone. It always comes from combining deep expertise, trusted relationships and proprietary insights to help clients navigate important decisions. And that is particularly evident in areas where we've developed substantial proprietary data and expertise. Within Talent Solutions, for example, we're helping clients understand how AI will reshape workforce strategies. Our ongoing investments in capabilities such as the Radford McLagan Compensation Database and our proprietary AI sensitivity tool are enhancing insight we bring to clients as they assess the impact of AI on their organizations and make informed talent decisions. And as clients reskill and redeploy talent, we're helping them strengthen the employee experience. For example, through Aon Activate, our data-led AI-powered total rewards and benefits platform, organizations can deliver a more connected, personalized experience across benefits, well-being, pensions and rewards.

These capabilities are helping clients address both sides of the workforce transformation, enabling employees to adapt to the changing nature of work while enhancing the experience that supports them. Across the firm, we see growing evidence that our technology investments are enabling our strategy and enhancing value for clients. Organizations increasingly turn to us to help them navigate some of their most important strategic decisions around digital infrastructure and data centers. A recent engagement with one of the world's largest technology companies demonstrates the value of our integrated approach. As the client accelerated its investment in large-scale digital infrastructure, traditional risk solutions were no longer sufficient. We brought together expertise across commercial risk and reinsurance to help redesign the client's risk financing strategy, expand available capacity and improve operational efficiency.

Importantly, the client was looking for a strategic partner that could help reimagine the process using technology, integrate more effectively with its own sophisticated systems and create a more data-driven approach to managing risk and capital. And this is not a one-off example, but reflects a broader opportunity as companies across the tech industry are turning to Aon to help address their complex risk, resilience and capital challenges through coordinated solutions. The scale of this opportunity and the value we bring to clients is further reflected in the continued expansion of our data center life cycle insurance program. Last week, we announced an increase in program capacity to $5 billion, while broadening the integrated risk solutions we provide to support digital infrastructure assets throughout their life cycle.

We're also seeing increasing demand from private equity and other capital providers as they seek differentiated insights and capability to deploy capital more effectively. As we deepen our relationships with these firms, we're creating and helping connect institutional funds with opportunity while creating new sources of capital for clients and providing investors with access to uncorrelated risk and return streams. In doing so, we're expanding the addressable market, strengthening resilience and reducing the protection gap for clients. Demand for our integrated capabilities is proving equally powerful in the middle market, where we continue to see increased adoption of data-driven analytics and greater collaboration across solution lines.

We're expanding our middle market platform through our programmatic tuck-in strategy and have deployed more than $350 million in capital year-to-date, including opportunities that enhance our MGU and MGA capabilities. At the same time, we continue to draw on our ABS platform to accelerate NFP's growth. The success we're seeing today reinforces our confidence in continuing to invest behind these opportunities to further expand and strengthen our middle market platform over time. Taken together, these examples demonstrate how we connect risk, capital and people solutions to drive stronger client outcomes and expand the opportunities. The continued demand for our capabilities reinforces the power of what we've created by integrating risk capital and human capital and is translating into strong financial performance and momentum.

Turning briefly to our second quarter results. We delivered 5% organic revenue growth, achieving mid-single-digit or greater organic growth across all solution lines, 70 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, 9% adjusted EPS growth and $483 million of free cash flow. Edmund will discuss our financial performance and capital allocation strategy in greater detail, but I'll note that our balance sheet remains strong and flexible, supporting our disciplined approach to capital allocation. Looking ahead, we're confident in the trajectory of the business. The environment will continue to evolve. Pricing conditions will change. New technologies will emerge. Capital and client needs will continue to become more complex and interconnected.

However, these dynamics increase the relevance of Aon's capabilities. Organizations increasingly need insight, expertise and execution that span risk, capital and workforce decisions. They need partners capable of helping them operate confidently amid uncertainty. Now more than ever, we're exceptionally well positioned to meet that need. Our organizational alignment around risk capital and human capital supported by Aon Business Services further strengthens our ability to bring together distinctive capabilities on behalf of clients. As our capabilities expand and client relationships deepen, we continue to see growing opportunities to create value. And for our 3x3 plan, we're focused on continuing to execute with discipline and build on capabilities that support growth well beyond the plan. Finally, to our more than 60,000 colleagues around the world. Thank you. Thank you for your commitment to our clients, each other and our Aon United strategy. Your dedication continues to drive our success and position us for long-term growth.

Now let me turn the call over to Edmund. Edmund?

Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. Before turning to the details of our second quarter results, I want to frame today's discussion on the continuation of a consistent theme, through-the-cycle performance. Over the past several quarters, disciplined execution across our business and financial model has translated in a consistently strong performance, in line with or above industry across the key financial metrics, including organic revenue growth. As we move into the second half of 2026, our underlying business and financial model, the foundation of that performance remains unchanged. What has evolved is the environment in which we are executing.

We are operating in a period characterized by both the transitioning pricing cycle and an accelerated pace of technological change. Periods like this increase the dispersion across outcomes and bring into sharper focus to business models that are structurally advantaged and built to perform through the cycle. Against that backdrop, our results continue to reflect differentiated performance. We are delivering top line growth, expanding margins and generating strong free cash flow. Our consistency, particularly in a changing environment is an important signal. It reflects not just execution in a single period or given quarter, but the durability and persistence we expect from our underlying model. That durability is grounded in structural decisions we've made over time.

Our client-centric organizational model, Aon United, now established over more than 15 years, aligns how we deliver solutions, invest in talent and allocate capital. Combined with our early and continued investment in data and increasingly AI-enabled analytical capabilities, we are enhancing the quality, speed and relevance of the insights we deliver to clients. As value continues to shift toward insight-led decision-making that drives client outcomes, that advantage becomes even more pronounced. We also recognize that the current pace of technological change broadens the range of potential long-term outcomes. Importantly, our disciplined approach remains consistent. We continue to make deliberate high conviction investments, many of which generate value today and build strategic advantage over time.

Regardless of how the technology landscape evolves, these investments act as catalysts to strengthen our competitive advantage and support sustained growth that compounds. Periods like this tend to further differentiate strong businesses. And as we look at our performance and our positioning, we believe that is exactly what is occurring. In a changing environment, consistent performance is the clearest signal, and that is what our results continue to demonstrate. So with that framing, let's turn to our second quarter results.

On Slide 5, you see the second quarter results. Organic revenue growth was 5% and total revenue increased 2% year-over-year to $4.2 billion. Adjusted operating margin expanded by 70 basis points for the quarter and reached 28.9%. Adjusted EPS was $3.81, up 9% year-over-year. And finally, we generated $483 million in free cash flow.

Let's get into the details of these results, starting with organic revenue growth on Slide 6. Organic revenue growth was 5% in the quarter, in line with our mid-single-digit or better guidance. Growth was broad-based with all 4 solution lines delivering 5% organic revenue growth, reflecting the strength of our diversified business mix and the consistency of the growth drivers underpinning our performance. That consistency is most evident in new business, which has contributed 9 to 11 points for 9 consecutive quarters, providing a durable foundation for sustainable growth through varying market conditions.

In Commercial Risk, organic revenue growth was 5%, reflecting continued strength in our core P&C business, where new business generation and higher retention drove meaningful contribution from EMEA and North America. Construction delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth as we continue to convert our record data center pipeline. Additionally, our MGA and MGU platforms benefited from ongoing client demand for specialized underwriting solutions. M&A services were lower year-over-year against the Q2 '25 comparison that benefited from elevated closed deal activity. While this tempered overall commercial risk growth in the quarter, announced transaction volumes are up over 60%, which is reflected in a stronger second half pipeline.

Reinsurance delivered 5% organic revenue growth despite meaningful rate pressure in the market. Treaty growth reflected continued strong new business activity, including the addition of new logos, which more than offset 15% to 20% lower rates, while facultative placements continued to perform well globally. Growth was further supported by double-digit performance in our Strategy and Technology Group, underscoring the increasing value clients place on analytics and access to alternative capital solutions. Finally, as part of our risk capital structure, reinsurance performance reflects continued contribution from our data center development efforts.

Given that we typically deliver approximately 3 quarters of annual treaty revenue during the first half of the year, we have strong visibility into our full year outlook. The strength of our results through 6 months, combined with the continued momentum in international facultative placements and strong demand for our Strategy and Technology Group solutions reinforces our confidence in delivering full year organic revenue growth consistent with our mid-single-digit or greater objective. Health Solutions grew 5% in the quarter, driven by continued strength in our core health and benefits business, particularly in EMEA, where demand for global benefits remains strong. Growth also benefited from improved performance in Talent Solutions as we converted a strong pipeline, along with contribution from NFP, particularly in Executive Benefits.

Employers continue to face rising health care costs, evolving workforce needs and increasing benefits complexity, all of which drive demand for our health analytics. Finally, wealth generated 5% organic revenue growth, reflecting sustained demand for regulatory and valuation work across the U.K. and EMEA. In addition, the demand for increased pension risk transfer solutions in the U.S. as plan sponsors resume evaluating derisking opportunities and seek to improve balance sheet efficiency.

Turning to the key components of our Q2 organic revenue growth on Slide 7. A key driver of predictability in our revenue profile is the consistency of our new business performance. In Q2, new business contributed 10 points to organic revenue growth, supported by a balanced mix of new client wins and expanding our share of wallet with existing clients. Our sustained investment in revenue-generating talent is a meaningful driver of the consistent new business contribution. The 2024 and 2025 cohorts contributed approximately 100 basis points to organic revenue growth in the quarter with their impact increasing as productivity ramps.

Revenue-generating headcount is up 3% year-to-date. And given the opportunities we continue to see across priority growth areas, including construction, energy and health, we remain on track to expand this population by 4% to 8% despite the competitive talent market. Retention remains strong at a mid-90s level. Continued improvement in commercial risk, up 40 basis points and reinsurance, up 20 basis points reflect increased engagement through our enterprise client group, enhanced service delivery from ABS and our ability to provide differentiated access to both traditional and alternative forms of capital.

Net new business contributed 5 points to organic revenue growth in the quarter. Net market impact, which captures the impact of rate and exposure was modestly positive and within our expected 0 to 2-point range despite a softer pricing environment in P&C and reinsurance. Importantly, these results reflect the durability of our business model across market cycles with growth driven by business investment and client demand rather than pricing cycles. And one final point on revenue. Second quarter fiduciary investment income was $58 million, down 12% from the prior year as higher average balances were more than offset by lower interest rates.

On Slide 8, Q2 adjusted operating income was up 5% to $1.2 billion and adjusted operating margin expanded 70 basis points to 28.9%. This margin expansion reflects the impact of lower rates on investment income from fiduciary balances, benefit from the AAU restructuring program and most importantly, continued operating leverage enabled by our scalable ABS platform, all of which were in line with our expectations. The scale advantages created through ABS, including AI-enabled productivity improvements and disciplined expense management continue to lower unit costs across our operations while increasing our capacity to invest.

This is the power of the ABS growth engine, generating operating leverage that funds growth investments, enabling us to broaden the addressable market and deliver sustainable top line growth while continuing to expand margins. Restructuring savings were $25 million in the quarter, contributing approximately 60 basis points to our adjusted operating margin. We remain on track to deliver $100 million of savings in 2026, advancing toward our goal of $450 million in total savings by 2027 with 2026 marking the final year of our restructuring investment.

Moving to interest, other income and taxes on Slide 9. Interest income was $5 million in the second quarter, driven by interest earned on proceeds from the sale of NFP Wealth. Interest expense came in at $179 million, $33 million lower than last year, primarily due to lower average debt balances. We expect Q3 '26 interest expense to be approximately $185 million. Other expense was $15 million lower than last year, driven by remeasurements of balance sheet currency exposures and lower noncash pension expense. We estimate Q3 '26 other expense to range between $15 million and $20 million. Finally, the Q2 effective tax rate was 20.1%, up 360 basis points over Q2 '25, which benefited from a favorable discrete tax item. We continue to expect a full year tax rate of 19.5% to 20.5%.

Turning now to free cash flow and capital allocation on Slide 10. We generated $483 million of free cash flow in the second quarter. As expected, Q2 '26 free cash flow included $267 million of tax impact from the NFP Wealth sale proceeds. Importantly, strong operating income growth offset that headwind, highlighting the strength of our cash generation. Through the first 6 months of the year, free cash flow is up 4%, and we remain confident in our ability to deliver double-digit free cash flow growth in 2026.

Turning to capital on the right-hand side of the page. Our strong free cash flow generation enables us to continue to execute our disciplined capital allocation model, balancing investment for growth with capital return to shareholders. We remained active on M&A and allocated $29 million to targeted tuck-in acquisitions in middle market that align with our strategic priorities and return thresholds. Consistent with last quarter, shareholder return represented the largest use of capital in Q2. In total, we returned $775 million to shareholders, including $600 million in share repurchases. Given the dislocation in the market, we opportunistically accelerated repurchases during the first half of the year, reflecting our conviction that Aon's share price remains well below the firm's intrinsic value.

As always, our objective is disciplined capital allocation that maximizes long-term shareholder value. We have exceeded our objective of at least $1 billion in share repurchases for the year, and we have continued strategic flexibility. We remain well positioned to allocate capital towards the highest return opportunities available, whether through high-return accretive M&A or incremental shareholder return.

I'll conclude my prepared remarks on Slide 11 with a few thoughts on our financial objectives and 2026 guidance. Our second quarter results and our results through the first half of 2026 reflect the strength of our business and financial model, the disciplined execution of the 3x3 plan and the durability of our through-the-cycle performance. The underlying drivers of growth remain firmly in place. We are generating sustainable organic revenue growth through consistent new business generation and high retention, translating that growth into strong earnings through operating leverage and converting those earnings into double-digit free cash flow growth.

As a result, we are reaffirming our 2026 full year guidance, including mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth, 70 to 80 basis points of margin expansion, strong adjusted earnings growth and double-digit free cash flow growth. Before we move to Q&A, I want to leave you with one final thought. The structural advantage we have built through our Aon United strategy operationalized through risk capital, human capital and ABS and our investment in AI embedded technology within ABS are increasingly differentiating our performance and serving as a catalyst for durable growth. We enter the second half of the year with greater visibility, significant financial flexibility and confidence in our ability to continue creating value for clients that fuels sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value creation.

So with that, let's open the line for questions. Dylan, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from David Motemaden with Evercore.

Just had a question on commercial risk. Edmund, you had called out M&A services as something that tempered the growth this quarter. I'm just wondering if you could maybe size that. And you also mentioned a stronger second half pipeline, how we should think about that contributing to the rest of the year?

David, thanks for the questions. I was on mute there for a moment. The momentum -- I think the first thing I'd say about commercial risk is that the momentum continues to build here. Remember, we're in a lower rate environment and commercial risk was 5% in the quarter, 6% through the first 6 months, well within our mid-single-digit or greater results. You are right that I highlighted M&A services muted the growth for the quarter. And remember, it was growing over an elevated Q2. But the important point is that announced transactions are up over 60%. That's reflected in our pipeline. We recognize the revenue on M&A as the deals close. And I will say that M&A becomes a tailwind for the rest of the year given our leadership role within P&E.

But the important thing here is that every other significant component of revenue within commercial risk was mid-single digit or greater. The growth was broad-based across the regions. I talked about strength in EMEA, talked about strength in North America in our core P&C business. I also emphasized the growth in the priority areas. You saw a fifth consecutive double-digit quarter in construction, that's data center, but I'd also highlight defense builds and pharmaceutical builds as well. And we're progressing in the specialty business, especially as we combine NFP with our legacy platforms and integrate some of the companies that we just acquired.

For us, the key is the consistency of the growth drivers here. New business was up over 10-point contribution. That's the thing to focus on. That's very much supported by the priority hires that we have. Retention was up another quarter, 40 basis points that our analyzers helping us win RFPs, and we're rolling that out across our different geographies and the net market contribution was still positive. So M&A will be a tailwind as we move forward. We'll continue to focus on our investments, the drivers of growth, talent and technology. That's what gives us confidence in the guidance moving forward. But Greg, anything you want to add on this?

Edmund, that was a terrific summary. I'll just say, David, look, step back for a second. Edmund talked about 5% with a little bit of headwind from one of our strongest businesses on M&A services with a strong second half. But what I would just add is just a reflection on the observation on risk capital. You see it in commercial risk. We may talk about it in reinsurance as well. Risk capital, this construct where you're bringing an integrated view to a client in a very unique way, bringing content, capability and expertise, our colleagues showing up together in the most important environments. This is a source of great strength. And it really is cutting across the entire business, as Edmund described.

And I think about some of the work we've done on the data center front, some of the biggest balance sheets in the world and our ability to bring new insight around how they understand exposure, how they transact risk, how they execute it, how they access capital well beyond traditional -- including traditional but well beyond is just really a proof point around the strength of risk capital. And you saw that show up in quarter as well, along with all the details that Edmund described.

Great. Maybe just following up just on the pricing environment within commercial risk as well. So noted the modestly positive market impact, what's your outlook on that as we go forward throughout the rest of the year? The pricing environment is obviously changing. It sounds like casualty pricing is moderating around the edges. Do you guys think that you can continue to offset some of the moderating pricing and market impact with net new business?

Well, let me start and then, Edmund, feel free to add as well here. But listen, we start -- I'll start, you'll probably finish as well. We're absolutely committed to mid-single digit or greater under any pricing cycle. This is not about pricing cycle for us. This is about client need and client response. And for us, we are going to drive mid-single digit or greater irrespective. For the commentary, though, if you step back, think about it from a macro view versus quarter-to-quarter, demand continues to outpace supply as you think about the complexity of risks. We're talking about that. Risks are going up in all the different traditional areas.

We talk about the 4 megatrends in trade, technology, weather, workforce, the new areas, data centers, all these are sources of demand. And as that demand continues to increase for all these reasons, that's going to work its way through pricing additions over time in our view over the long term. And we're seeing a number of different things that are happening in the micro markets, and you're right on property is down. Casualty is still going up, just slower, and we're seeing flattening in different areas.

But net-net, the real punchline here for us is we support clients in different pricing environments, unit pricing environments. It changes the way we change the way they think about their overall structure. And again, that's back to the power of what risk capital is all about, helping them understand, measure and mitigate risk some through insurance, some through retention, a whole range of different approaches. And that's the power of client leadership with what we're doing in the 3x3.

David, this is one of the -- to Greg's point, this is one of the most important questions to emphasize on the call here. It was the key theme in our prepared remarks, which was performance through the cycle. Q2 is a heavy property quarter and reinsurance, as you know, is weighted towards the first half of the year. So those are 2 biggest areas of pricing impact, and we are still performing despite the rate pressure there. And that reiterates the point that we've been making that our organic growth is more correlated to business investment in property and equipment, so nominal GDP, much less correlated to pricing. Greg's point is exactly right that we look at these as micro markets. Property has been down, to Greg's point, casualty is still growing, but maybe growing at a lower rate.

There's a different dynamic on D&O, a different dynamic on cyber, which are probably flat to low single digit. And we see differences by client segment as well. It's more muted declines in the middle market, for instance. So when you think about that, we still expect the net market impact to be in line with our expectations of 0 to 2 points. It's been positive throughout this, and we expect that to continue here. So back to Greg's final point, that has us confident in our mid-single-digit guidance or greater moving forward.

Our next question comes from Rob Cox from Goldman Sachs.

Just a question on the reinsurance business. So the 5% organic growth, which I think is impressive, particularly compared to any period with this level of property cat pricing declines. And maybe the answer relates to some of your prepared remarks. But my question is, if you think there is something that has structurally changed within Aon's reinsurance business to make it more resilient here? Or is there something unique about this time frame from a cyclical standpoint with facultative or cat bonds that's supporting the growth?

Well, Rob, Edmund just described the prior question, one of the most important on performance of the cycle. Your question around is structure changing and making a difference to our ability to serve clients. We'll spend all day long on that if you want to. The answer is a resounding yes. It has been 15 years of investment around connecting the firm, operationalizing through risk capital and human capital and then creating this massive engine called Aon Business Services, which coordinates data and content such that we can bring it together on behalf of clients.

And to us, Q2 in reinsurance is just another example of exceptional performance in the quarter, but really, this is a series of great performance quarters and real momentum in the first half of the year and going forward for all the reasons that Edmund described in his remarks and the pricing cycle, et cetera, all you described. And by the way, I would just highlight as well, we are disproportionately privileged to have the share we've got on the property side. We're glad to have it. So this is maximum pressure from that standpoint. And what we've done against that is just continue to grow the business. And this, again, reflects the power of risk capital.

This is -- if you think about it, integrated capability, the ability to kind of help clients calibrate exposure, not just insurers, but clients around the world. I mean, think about the biggest technology. The technology example I provided in my remarks was a very, very large sophisticated client, massive balance sheet trying to think about data center investment, digital infrastructure investment, how do they calibrate exposure? How do they think about their risk strategy? Then seriously, having done that, that requires a level of analytics that is not just commercial risk analytics. It's reinsurance analytics. It is what Aon Business Services gives us that no one's ever had before. With the data source and data set we've got, the way that it's been curated, the way that the fidelity of that content is just different.

And if you show up not just with the content, but with a group of colleagues who are together acting on behalf of a client, you're going beyond somebody's P&L, you're going beyond who gets credit. You're just serving a client. And we're seeing that show through. And you see that in reinsurance, where there's just a disproportionate amount of content that actually is -- provides tremendous value across our entire portfolio beyond the reinsurance piece in addition to just basic raw horsepower in treaty/fac. I mean ILS, it's a record first half, and we're near half the business on the ILS front. So it is absolutely core in the key areas, capital advisory, but really this construct of risk capital, the organization of risk capital and human capital and how they fit together, that is different. That exists nowhere else. And for us, the client response to that has been tremendous, and you see it in Q2 and reinsurance.

And just a follow-up. I wanted to ask on AI adoption. It seems like from the outside, there's somewhat of a divergence between large insurance brokers with respect to partnering with external firms or building internally to achieve their AI strategy. I was just hoping you could talk about Aon's approach with respect to that and your confidence that, that's the right move for Aon.

Well, listen, I would build off, Rob, the history here. We didn't start with an AI strategy. That to us doesn't exist. AI accelerates what we've been working on. And actually, in many respects, the track we laid down over the last 15 years to connect our firm and again, how we operationalize this through risk capital, human capital and AI business services means we have already been doing multiple, multiple years of work connecting the dots such that we can actually bring together a data lake different than anyone else could do. We could curate it and create fidelity around that data in a way no one else could do. We could then -- by the way, that's not enough. It's not just about the analytics. It's about how you get it in the hands of the great practitioners, the trusted advisers who sit across the table from clients.

And that's -- it's again, the organization of risk capital and human capital and how we deliver it. All those things, Rob, are in place. And then all of a sudden, we get an acceleration opportunity, and that's AI. And we've been doing artificial intelligence for quite some time and engineering of our business for quite some time, machine learning, but really, it is the generative AI, which is an accelerant for us. So for Aon, this is a massive opportunity to actually accelerate what we've already been working on. So it's not a new strategy, an accelerator. And we're working with all of the partners, and we're happy to chat with them. By the way, one of the things we bring to the table that's fundamentally different is it isn't just productivity orientation. We orient around revenue. We orient around growth.

So if you think about the analyzers that we've got, the risk analyzers, the health analyzers, think about what we've done in Aon Client Treaty, what we just announced what we're doing on the overall global exchange in terms of sort of how we're thinking about our business. So these are things that are revenue-generating engines on behalf of clients that are driven and reinforced through our ABS strategy with AI. So for us, it isn't about coming up with something new and hoping we have the right strategy. We tap into the best partners in the world and every way we can to accelerate our proven strategy.

And Edmund, I think, described it very well at the end of his remarks, this is what's making the difference for us, and it's making a difference for us with clients in terms of how many we win, how we retain them and what we do with them. And it's just a very integrated approach, data-driven, analytic-driven through our colleagues that really is responding to very specific client need. And that's really -- that's how we think about it.

Our next question comes from Tracy Benguigui with Wolfe Research.

You've linked commercial risk organic revenue to nominal GDP rather than pricing, but it's worth noting that hyperscaler CapEx is roughly $750 billion. It probably counts to 2 points of nominal GDP. So let's say, ex hyperscaler, it's closer to 3.5%. So on that note, I'm curious what is the largest known limit or shared underwriting capacity available for data center development since I think individual projects could reach $20 billion to $50 billion? And given hyperscalers' balance sheet dwarfs the entire insurance industry, is this mostly risk self-insured with more fee bias rather than commission-based?

It's a great question. We actually just had one of our leaders leading this actually write an article on that particular -- or actually response to an article on that particular item. First, for us, you know that we've now increased our facility itself to $5 billion over 30 carriers participating in that. We think because of the point that you're raising, we'll actually need nontraditional capital as well, and we've been working with it. But we -- to answer your specific question, we started out doing sort of single billion dollar types of data centers. We now, I think, in that article you saw, can do for a single facility, up $13 billion, $15 billion for a single facility.

But the point is these facilities are costing the amount that you just talked about. You mentioned $15 billion, $20 billion. We think some are $40 billion, $50 billion, and that's going to require capital that goes beyond traditional insurance capital, and that's back to the remarks Greg was making at the beginning. The key for us is that we have a leadership position here. We talked about the pipeline being up over 3x what it was last year. We're seeing that flow through our revenue. We've been advising on data centers. We have engineering expertise. Our facility is one of the largest out there. It's a driver of growth for us moving forward. But we think there's an opportunity for all to grow thinking about the size of these facilities. But Greg?

Yes, I'd just add -- you summarized it perfectly, Edmund. But Tracy, this is it. I mean this is the whole gig. If you think about the next big frontier and what we can do together as an industry, this is the fight for relevance. How do we bring it? You're 100% correct. On a $4 trillion capital pool, which is the insurance world, which we love, wonderful partners every day, it's not big enough. But by the way, tremendous expertise, tremendous insight. What we have to do is draw capital into our industry in a way in which they see the opportunity for meaningful return and they come in and serve. And against that pool, Tracy, it's not the $4 trillion, it's a $250 trillion pool. So this is accessing pension, sovereign funds, private equity, et cetera.

And look what Aon is doing. We are doing traditional in the way Edmund described. In addition, the content that we have is drawing capital from outside the industry into this category. And ask yourself, what is the engine that does that? It's not our goodwill. It is our content. It is our analytics. When we can do the work and show them exactly how to come into our industry, how and where they're going to make a return and have it durable enough that they'll bet their balance sheet, a pension fund, a sovereign fund, a private equity firm, then we've increased capacity. The TAM is always there in the insurance world, the addressable market.

We just can't access it because we can't actually bring capital in until Aon came along with this construct called risk capital and the data and the analytics to pull it in. So for us, we love your challenge. And by the way, the knife edge here is if we bring it in, we are becoming more and more relevant. If you don't, we'll do fine work, but we won't actually make a meaningful difference as an industry and what the potential is here. We like our chances because we think the return opportunity is tremendous.

And frankly, the way to think about risk management in a data center goes way beyond just the build of the ongoing performance. If you get the risk management right and you get the risk dispersed in the right way and understood in the right way, you frankly can change the operating cost of a data center. You can change the volatility. By the way, remember, business interruption here is going to be measured in millions of dollars a minute. You change the game. And that's our aspiration, and that's what we're trying to do with risk capital. And it's a massive opportunity. We think it is unique in our industry's history.

I'm really enthused on this topic. I appreciate the response. But can you just clarify, is this more fee-based business?

It's value-based business. You show up with a client and you provide value, they provide compensation. So it's all the different angles. We're not -- we don't discriminate in either way. We provide value. We do fine. And if we don't provide value, we're not relevant. We don't get compensated. But from our standpoint, we think the opportunity for value creation in so many different angles, the build, the operations.

By the way, not just the hyperscalers. It's also the money being raised to fund the hyperscalers. It's the builders who frankly can't get in the game. I mean there are 50 builders, 100 builders trying to do this. Many of them have never really done this before. They can't get financing unless they get the risk capital, the risk management right. They can't -- so in our view is there's opportunities here all along the value chain and all of which, by the way, if you add value and help them succeed, we're going to do very, very fine from a payment standpoint.

Great. And my follow-up is, I believe at a RIMS conference, Joe Peiser has spoken about a pricing correction over 18 months rather than a traditional soft cycle. Is that correction included in your organic revenue outlook?

Look, again, I mean, you hit on it at the beginning of your first question. We think the correlation and explanation of variance between pricing and our organic revenue growth is low. We continue to emphasize sort of the nominal GDP point that you just raised. But we do think -- listening to Joe's comments, I think they're indicative. We do think this pricing cycle and environment is more nuanced than a single cycle. We view these, as Greg said earlier, as a collection of micro markets across geography, across product and segment. Some of those products are going in different directions right now.

The key point, and I think the point that Joe was raising is that structural risk trends, primarily loss severity, argue against an extended, prolonged softness. So the duration is likely measured. And we're also beginning to see sort of underwriting focus limiting some of the aggressive price competition as you look at the carriers here. For us, our focus is going to continue to be client-centric. We're hyper focused on helping our clients in this environment, expand their coverage, increase the limits. Greg's point is the right one. The point that he just made that value capture is not in the rate. It's in our placement complexity in the solution design. So 0 to 2 points is what's showing in our results today. And as of now, we continue to expect that moving forward, that has us strongly in line with the guidance that we've set.

Our next question comes from Bob Huang with Morgan Stanley.

My first question is around capital. Edmund, I know you kind of addressed the buyback. And maybe just if you can help us unpack a little bit, right, like first half, like you said, over $1 billion of buyback already. Just given the strong earnings and the cash flow generation going forward, is there a reason not to think that you cannot maintain the current buyback momentum? Or in other words, is there a reason to believe the current level of capital return cannot be maintained?

It can absolutely be maintained. We talked about coming into 2026 with over $7 billion of capacity. What we're playing for here is the strategic flexibility given the position that we're in right now. And the first point I'd make is that share repurchases, that's a key part of the balanced capital allocation model. $1.1 billion in the first half, we've clearly hit that objective to the point that you've made. And I am very pleased to say 79% of the capital deployment in the first half has been shareholder return with buybacks representing the majority of that. But we are very excited about the position of strength we're in and the strategic flexibility.

That means that we're evaluating the pipeline opportunities. We determine that they fit our strategic objectives. We determine that they fit our financial criteria, which I've talked about before. I'd be happy to go into detail about that. We won't let -- if we don't see those objectives being met, we won't let any excess cash sit on the balance sheet. We'll return that via more share repurchases here. So this is, Bob, just a continuation of our capital allocation model. We are looking at investment for growth because that's what helps the medium and the long term with capital return to shareholders, and we continue to be in a good position of strength with flexibility moving forward here.

Got it. Really appreciate that. The second question is on the international. EMEA business is one of the call-outs you had on Commercial Risk Solutions. Can you maybe talk about the durability of growth in the EMEA segment? Intuitively, it feels like EMEA may be seeing the similar pricing pressure as U.S., but GDP growth kind of really varies depending on jurisdiction. Just curious about your thoughts on the EMEA side related to Commercial Risk Solutions.

Yes. The GDP growth is more uneven in the international markets, but not disruptive is what I would say, when you think about the regulatory environment and the geopolitical environment, that increases demand for our business. And you think about our global footprint, we have a very diversified portfolio and moderate sensitivity to any particular international region. So you're seeing strong growth across these markets that I've been calling out in EMEA, but I'd also throw LatAm in that mix with solid GDP growth is actually seeing more foreign direct investment that's actually higher than that GDP growth and helping us in those markets.

Commercial risk, our efforts on the new business side and now in specialty and then health on global benefits plus the regulatory environment. I just read an article this morning that I think will actually drive more demand on the regulatory front in the U.K. and EMEA. Those things are helping to drive that business. So for us, it's really this diversified portfolio. You might see uneven levels of growth in individual markets, but this diversified portfolio gives us resilient growth and the international locations continue to be strong contributors for us.

Our next question comes from Katie Sakys with Autonomous Research.

I guess I want to circle back to the discussion of growth in revenue-generating producers. I think the 3% year-to-date is a little bit below the full year guide there. Could you help us understand if that was subject to any impacts from timing and when hires are made? And then could you also help us understand what's driving your confidence in being able to accelerate that pace of growth back up to the 4% to 8% range?

Wow, through 6 months, we're quite excited by 3% growth through the first 6 months. This is -- our recruiting efforts and the recruiting efforts of other firms, I would say, are intense right now. The competition is intense, and we're not immune to that. We're up 3% through the first 6 months. Our '24 and '25 cohorts are contributing over 100 basis points. We're seeing the contribution from them show up in the areas that we've been focused on construction, energy, health. So because 3% through 6 months, we're maintaining that 4% to 8% objective. We've always said we'd like to be at the higher end of that objective. We've sort of built our plans upon achieving that, but the competitive environment is intense.

We do think that the capabilities that we have that allow us to help and retain clients, those things are helping us attract and retain folks. And for us, it's not about -- we always say, it's not about the quantity, it's about the quality of folks in areas that are growing higher than GDP. So we feel good about the 4% to 8%, but this is going to be hand-to-hand combat for the rest of the year for us to get to where we want to be. And Greg, I know that you're very impassioned about this topic and our efforts. So please speak up.

Well, listen, Edmund, you covered it very well. I would just highlight one thing, Katie. We've got -- we're fortunate. We have a lot of momentum on the client front, risk capital, human capital, we talked a lot about on the call. But think about it, if you're a colleague and you want a practitioner in our world, the opportunity to come in no matter how good you are, and it really is not just a number and percentage, but really quality leaders. If you can be better professionally, if you get more content capability, more stuff to do your business, to do your work, it makes us more attractive. And we have lots of folks seeking us out. And so we've been very fortunate, and we'll take this at a very measured pace to accomplish what Edmund has described. And in the end, we've got great momentum here as well, and it will contribute, but not just number, but really capability as they come in.

Yes. So certainly, I appreciate that it's a very competitive environment. I'm just trying to understand the bridge, right, from 3% year-to-date to 4% on the full year guide versus getting all the way up to 6% or better than the midpoint of the full year guide. Do you think that your relative value proposition to new hires will help you win additional producers in the back half of the year here? Like is that enough to set you apart from your competitors?

Well, listen, the history over the last number of years would say the answer to that is absolutely yes. But again, the highest quality 4% is better than a lower quality 7% or 8%. So what we're going for is true leaders who come in, practitioners who can make a difference. And then what we -- our aspiration is we help them even be better and our colleagues lead the way with the content capability we've got. So from our standpoint, we are quite enthusiastic about the momentum we have on bringing colleagues into the firm, the right colleagues.

We're even more enthusiastic about the momentum as they come in together and working with our colleagues in the risk capital, human capital construct we described, bringing, frankly, opportunities to wow clients in ways that other people can't do. And so for us, it's -- we're very optimistic, and we made great progress. And I just would reinforce Edmund's point, 3% for the first half, great progress, and we'll continue to drive it. Sometimes it will be higher, sometimes it will be lower, but the momentum is exceptionally strong.

I would now like to turn the call back over to Greg Case for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Dylan. And listen, I just wanted to say on behalf of Edmund and I, thanks, everyone, for joining. We appreciate it and look forward to catching up next quarter. Take care.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

All right. Good morning, everybody. We're honored to have Edmund Reese, the CFO of Aon to join us today. Thank you, Edmund, for taking your time. This is actually a very exciting time to talk about insurance in general, especially the brokers.

Yes.

So maybe with that, let's get started. So maybe the first thing, if we want to look at the broader environment, right, this is your second year at Aon. And it's probably 2 of the most exciting years in recent memory. So from that perspective, maybe can you help us talk about what -- going forward, what are the things that you're most excited about for Aon and also the brokerage industry in general?

Yes. Well, first, let me just thank you for having me this morning. This is always a very high-quality conference with great investors. So thanks for having me, Bob.

Yes, it has been an exciting 2 years, and there's a lot to look forward to moving forward. When I stepped into the CFO role of Aon 2 years ago, almost exactly, today, the company was lagging prior to '24, lagging on organic growth relative to the other peers. It had just done an acquisition as a percentage of its market cap, the largest of all time. And of course, that had an impact on capital as well.

So those were the 3 priorities: organic revenue growth, re-underwriting that large acquisition NFP and focusing on capital. And where are we now? Organic revenue growth has been accelerating in the most recent data point, it's 150 basis points better than the industry average. Commercial risk itself is 440 basis points better than the industry average. So the decisions that we've been making, the investments that we've been making really have us in a strong position in terms of accelerating and leading the industry in organic revenue growth.

NFP, that acquisition, you noticed at the end of the fourth quarter, we made the call to accelerate the integration into ABS. We've learned how to drive the revenue synergies, how to integrate retention is better than it was when we first acquired the company, and we're executing on the inorganic component as well. We brought in over $42 million in EBITDA last year.

And then from a capital standpoint, I joined -- or I looked at this company, it was over 30% ROIC leading the industry. That was obviously impacted by the acquisition, but a year, certainly 2 years later, we're again from an ROIC level at the top of the industry. Those are the priorities. That's what we've been focused on, and that's what the progress has been.

Now we really are just executing on the 3x3 Plan. You asked about moving forward. And it's showing up in the results. These are differentiated results relative to the peers right now. The balance sheet is stronger than ever with free cash flow back at a double-digit level with leverage actually below the objectives that we set. And I am sure we will talk about AI right now, but the industry itself, I would say, with the increasing risk, the increasing demand and the investments that we've been making in our capabilities, like it's a great outlook for us moving forward.

And so I would just say that we've just become much more relevant to the client given our Aon United model and then the investments that we've been making, I think, make the business much more valuable going forward. So an exciting 2 years, but we're really excited about what comes next.

Okay. Yes, that's pretty amazing. And also for what it's worth, right, organic growth, you have one of the best organic growth thus far within the industry. And maybe actually on that point, one of the key debate within a lot of -- in the investment community is the fact that we have a softer market environment and then the growth potentially slowing down for the industry. That seems to be less of a case for you guys so far. But maybe can you help us think about just the impact of organic growth going forward in various segments? And how can you kind of arrive to that mid-single-digit or greater organic growth?

Yes. You're right. It has been less of a case for us. We did 6% top line organic growth for the last 2 years, both in '24 and '25. And as I just said, the most recent data point was another quarter of strong organic with 7% in commercial risk. So that means for us that the business is resilient. That means that the drivers of growth are stable. And your question is about what those drivers of growth are. For us, it begins with new business. And we've been trending at very healthy levels relative to the objectives that we've set. We've said 9 to 11 points of contribution from new business.

We were at 10 points of contribution in the last 2 years, 9 in this most recent quarter. The things that are driving that are the investments that we've been making in revenue-generating hires in priority areas like data center, construction, energy, health. I mentioned last quarter, in fact, that the contribution from those priority hires was 75 basis points to overall revenue growth. So that's helping drive the new business.

Our Aon Client Leadership program is driving that new business. The pipeline and the new business growth where we have Aon Client Leaders, particularly on our large global accounts is now at a double-digit level. So that's driving that new business as well. And we continue to see this contribution from middle market as well on the new business. So that's one big driver. New business growth from existing and new clients is the largest contributor for us. That's where we've been focused, and that's what's been driving it.

But I'd also mentioned as a second item, retention. That's been up 50 basis points last year, 20 basis points in this most recent quarter and a couple of contributors there. One, the analytics, we present them, we win more. RFP rates are up over 40%. And so presenting that. What we've been doing in Aon Client Leadership that means we have the relationships with the CHROs, with the CFOs, these higher-level relationships, which make the relationship with the company stickier and the client service through ABS has been helping there.

Lastly, I'll just say the net market impact pricing and exposure. Again, what we've been doing to help clients take advantage of this opportunity has led to 1 point contribution from pricing exposure as well. On top of those things, there's some tailwinds that further support the business. The tailwind in M&A, acquisitions by company, it was up over 25% in the first quarter. The data center spend by the hyperscalers, that's a big tailwind for us as well.

And I'd also mention specialty, the MGA, the MGU business, we've been seeing growth. We have a specialty business in NFP and one in our legacy business, and we've been seeing strong growth there.

You asked about the trends, and I'll end on that. I look at our solution lines in commercial risk, you might have lower property rates, but growth in the core, growth in M&A and construction, those things are helping commercial risk. In reinsurance, again, rate pressure there, but our international facultative business is strong. Our STG business is strong. In health, global benefits from new accounts has been big. And then the regulatory environment in wealth has been strong again. So the plans are clear for us. The business is resilient. The plans are clear. We're executing on that. That's what allows us to have this continued type of growth, and we continue to feel confident in it.

Really just firing all cylinders basically.

And they're compounding. I mean it is -- we're very specific about the areas where we're going to invest, and we're seeing results from each one of them, so they should compound and lead to that kind of growth.

Excellent. Yes, I really appreciate that. So one thing you did touch on is the pricing environment for property is softening. And for casualty, it seems decelerating. If you look at your carrier partners, would you say that like have their appetite between property and casualty changed? Are they more willing to perhaps focus on casualty side? Curious as your view on how the -- your partners on the carrier side are reacting to the current pricing environment.

Yes. I mean pricing -- remember, I have to just step back and say pricing impact us, and then I'll talk about the carriers impact for us as well. It is just low correlation and a low explanation of variance. We shared a stat during Investor Day that said that the R-squared of pricing to our organic growth was 0.1%. Nominal GDP on the other hand, is 0.67. That's more important to us.

And you're right, we do -- we don't look at pricing as sort of like one cycle. We look at it as a collection of micro markets, really that vary by geography, that vary by product, which is what you're asking about now when you ask about property and pricing and vary by client segment as well. So I think you are seeing more underwriting focus driving less aggressive price competition as well.

I think you are seeing the structural trends that are impacting these underwriters, primarily loss severity arguing against an extended and prolonged pricing environment. And really, even coming back to these micro markets, you think about them, property to your specific question, that is where you see, particularly, large property. That's where you've seen over the last 5 years, the highest increases. And therefore, you're now seeing 15% decline in rate in that area for the large market. It's more muted to my point earlier about being different in client segments is more muted in the middle market.

Casualty, you might see some decelerating, but it's still growing at a high single-digit rate. So I think you're still seeing the underwriters, to your question, lean in on that. And it varies by the other products as well. For us, it really is -- the value is not in the rate for us. The value is in placing complex insurance and designing the solutions for us. And that's why we've still been able to drive results that are 1 point of contribution from this environment, and why we feel good that we'll be able to continue our mid-single-digit growth in all pricing environments.

Okay. No, that's very helpful. I think one thing you talked about that's very interesting is the value add on the brokers, right?

Yes.

And this wouldn't be a financial conference if you don't talk about AI and tech. So from that perspective, one of the things that people tend to talk about is that AI could potentially be a disintermediating force within the broker space. Can you maybe talk about is that one sensible? And then maybe to the folks that feel that AI is a disintermediating for -- what would be your messaging of those folks -- for brokers? Well, for AI specifically, actually.

Yes. I'm going to break it up into two. I hear two parts in your question. One is the question on disintermediation. The other part that I heard in your question is the naysayers, those who think that the impact is going to be negative. So first, when I think about the disintermediation point, this is an insurance and insurance brokerage for sure is a network business in my mind. And in network businesses, there's always this fear that technology will disrupt it, were disintermediated or disrupted. I -- what we've actually seen is fragmented point solutions that come in and impact a slice of the process, disrupt that or actually even amplify a slice of the process.

The strongest players, the most resilient players own or play across the entire end-to-end process. That's an important point. They own or play across the entire end-to-end process. And in insurance, that means onboarding, that means placement, policy management, invoicing, cash and collections, claims, servicing and the policy renewal. That's the -- if I were to try to summarize the process, that's the entire process.

In addition to owning that process or playing across that entire process, there are advantages that protect against disintermediation for the large brokers. We know what they are. They're very obvious. The proprietary data, the scale and the negotiating leverage with the carrier relationships, the claims advocacy and resolution. And for some of us, given the investments that we've made, the analytics that support bringing capital into the market. Those are obvious advantages. So playing across the process with these sort of advantages here. I would say those things protect against disintermediation.

But I'd also add that there's a less obvious advantage that is unique to Aon as well, and that is our organizational structure. We've been transforming the organization for the last 15 years to be more client, more centered on the client. And so that means Aon United in 2010 bringing together our geographies and our solutions, no boundaries. That means 2018 Aon Business Services or ABS bringing together our operations and technology. And by the way, we amplified that with $1.3 billion investment in technology and in the organizational structure.

What that means is that we are ready to embrace the technology. So not disintermediate. We see AI as a strategic enabler. And in an AI-enabled world, value accrues to the network integrator, integrating those processes. So that's my point on the disintermediation piece.

In terms of the disproving the negative, the naysayers here. The first thing, I mean, we are less focused on the if scenario, will it destroy the industry or not, but more focused on the scenario outcomes and the assumptions within those outcomes that drive growth or drive productivity in there.

When I think about the top line, you want to consider what's the client segment you're playing in, what's the consulting percentage of your business and how that's impacted. But very importantly, and what I think a lot of folks miss is what is the opportunity to increase the addressable market. And data center is a great example of that because that is a capital-constrained market. There's not enough in traditional insurance, and we're bringing in other players like PE. So what can you do to increase the addressable market? That's a key assumption. And then are you making the investments to increase your share in an expanding market on the revenue side.

On the productivity and efficiency side, we're already seeing tangible proof of the benefits there across the workflows in claims, invoicing, policy management, those things are already coming through. So we believe, for those who have a question about it, focus on the companies that have the right organizational structure in place that have started to make the investments in the technology capabilities that drive revenue. You do those things, and we believe you'll have an expanding addressable market, then the content, the structure that we have in place and the investments that we've been making will help us expand our share in that market. That means a more valuable company, a more durable company, a more scalable company when you think about it.

Yes. That's actually a very interesting point, right? Would you say that within the AI opportunities, which you kind of laid out right there, are they different between the Commercial Risk Solutions, the Health or the Wealth? Or would you say they're kind of similar in that regard? Just curious of your long-term opportunities there within each division.

Well, there's opportunities that are AI-driven that we're taking advantage of now across those solution lines, and there's a longer-term opportunity as well and hit them both. In the immediate term, as I just mentioned, we are already seeing benefits in construction and in particular, data center, right? Companies are spending over $800 billion in CapEx on this. That, as I've just mentioned, is a capital-constrained opportunity that if we don't bring in other capital, it really will bypass insurance and make us less relevant. As I mentioned, we've been bringing in other forms of capital for that. That's on the commercial risk side.

We had a facility for data centers that was $1 billion less than a year ago. It's now $3.5 billion, and we expect to expand that even more as we bring in more capital associated with the traditional and nontraditional. That's in commercial risk to your question.

In health, the workforce opportunity is a big driver of growth for us now and that we expect moving forward as companies look to upskill and reskill their employee base as they transition and adopt AI that's happening right now. And then I'd also call out one other area because you asked about construction and health, but I'd call out the middle market as well. The opportunity is big for us to use our capabilities for the middle markets who really don't have risk management teams in place. They look for us to come and be their risk manager, talk to their CFO. So we're diagnosing the risk, understanding their exposure, understanding the P&L impact. Those things are benefiting us today, and I would say is being largely being driven by this environment.

As we move forward, though, it is all about embedding AI in our capabilities to scale innovation across our suite of analyzers, both in commercial risk and health. to increase sort of client service and retention and to continue to get the productivity and efficiency benefits as well. We see that as a huge opportunity for us moving forward. We're making the investment in that. It is what gives us confidence that this is an opportunity and not a risk moving forward for us.

It's really, like as long as we're continuously investing in these opportunities.

And really focus on those companies that are structurally set up and making the investment in the technology capabilities that don't just help productivity, but drive top line revenue growth as well.

That was like a very great detail in terms of how you think about this. Really appreciate it. If we pivot a little bit to capital allocation, you have a very strong balance sheet, right, $7 billion of available capacity.

Now that being said, the broader brokers valuation have come down because of all the things we talked about before. And -- but at the same time, you have a very strong pipeline on the M&A side as well. Could you maybe give us an update on capital priorities? And what do you think is the most attractive use of capital right now?

Yes. I mean whether you're thinking about share repurchases or acquisitions, for us, the capital model begins with free cash flow generation. So I have to start there because we've had very strong, double digit. In the quarter, it was over 332%. That is what has enabled us to execute our capital allocation model. So leverage, as I just mentioned, is actually at the -- in a very strong position relative to our objectives. It was 2.6x. We again increased the dividend at a double-digit level here.

And if you look at Q1, it is a great demonstration of our disciplined model, right? We deployed $349 million towards tuck-in M&A in the middle market, primarily through our NFP platform. But to the question you asked, the largest deployment of capital was actually share repurchases where we deployed over -- we deployed $500 million. That's twice what it's been over the last 8 quarters, and that's because we definitely think that the market does not currently recognize the intrinsic value of the firm. So we take advantage of that.

So this trade-off between a market that is dislocated right now and below the intrinsic value of the firm, and M&A opportunities that might not yet reflect public market valuations is what we're constantly balancing, but we'll continue to be disciplined on that. When you look at our M&A over the last 10 years, the acquisitions that we've made, roughly 150 of them, after the first year of ownership, they're over 10% growth. The IRRs are over 20%. And as I said at the beginning of this conversation, our ROIC continues to lead the industry. Those are our objectives.

And when I think about those objectives, the pipeline is still strong, though I don't think the valuations fully reflect the current market. But we are focused on middle market, particularly in commercial risk in the U.S., tuck-in and further. We're focused on some of the international countries, places like France, Germany, Japan, and even some of the countries in Latin America, I think, have some opportunities for us. And increasingly, we brought together our specialty business that we purchased as part of NFP in our legacy business. And there are some MGA, MGU opportunities for us as well.

But again, it really is about the highest return for shareholders here. We're very disciplined about that. That means balancing investment for growth with capital return to shareholders. And we're just in a great position to do it with the strength of our balance sheet and the flexibility we have.

It sounds like a wonderful time to have a strong balance sheet. So -- and another thing you kind of touched on earlier on the strategy side, right? This is the final year of the 3x3 Plan. And the program is obviously successful. But what's next? Can you give us a little bit of a preview of how we should think about this going forward?

I think our CEO, Greg said this best that the 3x3 Plan was never a destination for us. It was never a destination. The goal was to exit 2026, the final year of our 3x3 Plan with momentum. And that's exactly what we're doing here. We have the ABS foundation, that growth engine in place, which allows us to have operating leverage to both invest and drive margin expansion through our core operating business, through the core business here. That's very important for us as we move next.

We have the suite of analyzers across commercial risk and human capital and reinsurance that's always been in place, really helping us with win rates and with retention. And so as we go into the next phase after the 3x3, which, again, is an evolution, not a reset, it's an evolution, not a reset. We want to scale those analyzers, make sure that they're presented in every client interaction because we see stronger results when they are presented.

Aon Client Leadership, I mentioned that earlier. When we have an Aon Client Leader on the account, which we now have for nearly 750 global accounts, we see the best retention in the portfolio. We see product penetration that's twice what it is for accounts that don't have it. We see higher new business, and we see the highest retention in the portfolio as well. So we want to get these Aon Client Leaders across the other client segments as well. We want to continue doing that. And we now have this beachhead in middle market. We know how to attack the middle market when it comes to integrating when it comes to going after the revenue synergies is there that's there as well.

So as we get into this next phase, we're going to focus more and more on that. But the organization is set up. We're making the investments in our technology capabilities that's helping us win. And so that means that we are in a great place coming out of the 3x3 Plan to really scale and enhance and have these decisions that we've been making compound and potentially be at the right end of our overall objectives here.

All right. So it's really expanding into your existing advantage and then really having technology also enable a lot of that.

Enabling that.

Yes. So maybe that's actually an interesting point on the technology side, right? Like when a lot of people talk about AI, they feel like it's a miracle drug, but people kind of ignore the cost aspect of this. AI is a variable cost. It's not a fixed cost based on our understanding and someone can spend a lot of money on that. With today's capability, how do you think about the ROI of the technology you're implementing? And how do you think about cost measures overall for all the capabilities that you're introducing to the firm?

Yes, it's an interesting question and one that me and our COO, who leads our technology and AI team connect on and discuss constantly. First thing that I'd say is, I don't look at the cost of AI as this high-risk, high visibility separate line item bet. We really look at it as part of our ongoing tech-dev investment and product innovation. We look at it as part -- increasingly as part of our day-to-day workflows as well. As I said, we use AI as a strategic enabler to scale our innovation. That's our suite of analyzers to drive client service better, enhance service and retention, and to drive productivity and efficiency.

And so we measure those things in terms of the contribution to revenue growth from the products that have it embedded in it. We measure it on the contribution to margin expansion from the productivity and efficiency that we have as well. So that's overall how we discuss the measurement.

But specifically on the cost side of it, this is again a place where I think our organizational structure and how we think about it is helping us. We've tiered the organization. It's just our terminology, where Tier 1 is broad tools that's primarily a licensing fixed cost. Tier 2 is more of a hybrid model, but Tier 3 is the high consumption, high variable cost expert outcomes. And we're really looking at measurable outcomes from those. That structure, Tier 1, 2 and 3 that have different tools with different cost structures, fixed versus variable in them is how we think about it. That allows us to have discipline on the cost, not stifle the innovation as we move forward and be balanced about the overall cost of it moving forward. And we'll just continue to monitor the innovation as the technology as it continues to evolve here.

Okay. So it's very much a balanced approach.

Yes, it's balanced approach.

Got it. No, very helpful. We do have some time for questions. If anybody have any questions, we have a mic around. So anybody want to raise their hand and go ahead. If not, maybe I can squeeze one more.

Let's go for it.

Sure. Sure. GDP, obviously, one of the bigger components in when we think about growth, right? Now obviously, there has been a lot of volatility globally. If you think about the U.S. business and the international business, curious as how you feel the opportunities between inflation, between GDP growth and then various parts of the world. Curious if you have a view on that.

Yes. I mean, certainly, in the U.S., the levels of inflation has increased property and asset values. That means more exposure. That's a benefit for insurance and insurance brokers as well. In the international regions, I would say the inflation is more uneven, but that's not disruptive to our business at all. It's not disruptive because the regulatory environment, the geopolitical environment, that increases risk and increases the demand, which is a benefit to our business.

I'd also say that our global footprint, which means a diversified portfolio, we're operating in over 120 countries, really moderates the impact from any individual region. And when we look at our international business right now, particularly EMEA and Lat Am, we have seen strong contribution to our overall growth.

You asked about inflation in GDP. If you look in EMEA, our specialty business and commercial risk, the move from public to private markets in health, the regulatory environment impacting wealth and health, the global benefit expansion from our existing clients. Those are things that in this macro environment are actually bolstering risk and the demand for our services and driving the contribution in EMEA.

In Lat Am, GDP, I would say, is lower but more stable, but foreign direct investment is growing at multiples of the GDP in those markets. That is a benefit to the overall industry and to us as well. There, you see medical inflation being impacted by the pressure on the private health care systems. And the big countries for us, places like Mexico, the last 3 years has been growing at a double-digit level for us as well. And so these international markets might have more uneven macro environments, but they've been resilient and strong contributors to our overall growth as well.

So really a very strong diversified portfolio across geographies.

Yes. Diversified portfolio.

Okay. Well, I think we're -- anybody have any questions here? If not, I think, Edmund, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. It's very enlightening. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon plc's First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time.

It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. For information concerning these risk factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent quarterly or annual SEC filings, all of which are available on our website.

Now it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon plc. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, and I appreciate you attending our first quarter earnings call. I'm joined today by Edmund Reese, our CFO. The presentation, which Edmund will reference during his remarks is available on our website.

We started 2026, the final year of our 3x3 Plan, with strong momentum. Our first quarter results reflect continued strong performance, consistent execution and progress against the strategic priorities we defined more than 2 years ago. We're operating with discipline, investing deliberately and delivering differentiated value for clients, reinforcing confidence in our ability to produce sustained organic growth, margin expansion and long-term value creation.

Today, I will focus on three areas. First, I will describe the external landscape and the forces shaping client demand. Second, I will highlight how our execution of the 3x3 Plan is translating into performance, including how advanced analytics and AI are increasing value and opportunity. Finally, I will highlight our results and share some perspectives on our outlook and how we see the year unfolding as we continue to build momentum.

Let's start with the external landscape. Now more than ever, our clients are operating in an environment defined by volatility, complexity and rising stakes. Geopolitical uncertainty, economic pressures and cyber risk are converging with rapid technological change. These dynamics are increasing interconnection across risk, capital and workforce planning. With the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we're working closely with clients, both in region and globally to help them build resilience and continue to operate and grow in a highly uncertain market.

In this environment, the value of making better decisions has never been more evident or urgent. Capital is more selective. Boards and regulators are demanding stronger governance, transparency and resilience, and management teams are focused on protecting against downside risk while enabling growth, improving capital efficiency and supporting workforce sustainability. As a result, clients demand outcome-based advice in addition to transactional solutions, and they're looking for partners who can help them understand the risk and people challenges, design bespoke programs and execute consistently across geographies.

This environment increasingly rewards firms that can integrate data, analytics and deep expertise to help clients make decisions with clarity and confidence. These trends align directly with Aon's strategic investments, client mix and innovative capabilities.

On the topic of strategic execution and the 3x3 Plan. Execution against our strategy remains strong and disciplined. The 3x3 Plan continues to sharpen focus, align investment and drive accountability across the firm. It accelerates progress behind Aon United, integrating capabilities across Risk Capital and Human Capital and scaling them through Aon Business Services, or ABS. Through ABS, technology and advanced analytics are embedded enablers of our strategy, combining proprietary data, advanced analytics and expertise to design, place and govern bespoke risk and capital solutions.

This combination creates a strong competitive advantage that technology alone cannot replicate. We established ABS nearly a decade ago and deliberately stepped up our investment beginning in 2024 to embed AI and advanced analytics across the firm. These investments are delivering results, materially improving productivity and execution for clients. By year-end, we expect to have invested approximately $1.3 billion in talent and technology, enhancing productivity and strengthening our ability to better diagnose risk, design integrated solutions, access capital efficiently and execute consistently for our clients.

There are several proof points and performance milestones worth highlighting. First, on client segmentation and revenue quality. We compete on client outcomes, resilience, capital efficiency and workforce effectiveness, not transactions. The vast majority of our business serves global, large and middle-market clients with complex risk, capital and workforce needs. In these segments, value is created through expertise, proprietary insight and seamless execution.

Meanwhile, less than 2% of our revenue is derived from SME and Personal Lines segments. This client mix translates into strong revenue quality, with the majority of our revenues recurring and embedded in ongoing client needs. Our Health and Wealth businesses together account for approximately 34% of firm revenue. Within those businesses, roughly 80% is highly recurring and anchored in regulatory and mission-critical activities, including annual valuations, pension administration and asset-linked revenue in wealth and annual benefits, broking and advisory and health.

Project-based consulting, where our advice is differentiated by proprietary data and technology is less than 10% of firm-wide revenues. Our continued investment to enhance these capabilities, including in our Radford McLagan Compensation Database, instrumental in supporting workforce transformation, reinforces how deep expertise and proprietary data translate into higher value outcomes for clients.

Second, on expanding the addressable market. We previously highlighted insured risk as a percent of GDP declining over the last 3 decades. Embedding AI into advanced analytics and modeling are making insurance more relevant by accessing new capital. This narrows the gap between economic loss and insured loss and increases the importance of firms that can design, place and govern complex programs.

A clear example of this dynamic is digital infrastructure, where AI computing is driving unprecedented global investment in data centers. These assets introduce complex construction, operational, catastrophe and cyber risk that exceed traditional insurance solutions. Our data center life cycle insurance program, which we recently increased capacity by another $1 billion to $3.5 billion, allows our firm to lead as a market maker, bringing together the sort of coverage, large-scale capacity and capital solutions across the full life cycle of these assets.

This is a growing source of demand directly linked to AI adoption, where our integration, data and expertise create a meaningful advantage, positioning Aon as a strategic partner of the clients, leading to opportunities to win new business and deepen relationships. Here, again, our investment and progress in AI-embedded analytics is allowing us to expand beyond the $4.6 trillion of traditional reinsurance capital to access the $250 trillion capital pool that includes private equity, sovereign wealth and pension funds.

Third, on innovation embedded within our core brokerage model, Aon Broker Copilot illustrates how, through large language models and predictive capabilities, we can more efficiently embed advanced analytics directly into revenue-generating workflows and transform the manual placement process. The platform draws on decades of proprietary quoting, pricing and trading data to provide real-time insights to brokers as they negotiate complex placements.

Further, we're extending these capabilities across the value chain. Aon Claims Copilot improves claims advocacy by consolidating data across geographies and lines of business, enabling better preparation, monitoring and negotiation. As a result of our advocacy over the last decade, we've been able to overturn and partially recover nearly $10 billion of financial value for claims that were initially denied. Claims Copilot strengthens our advocacy efforts and leads to even better outcomes for clients. This represents outcome-driven application of data analytics and expertise, not automation for its own sake.

In addition to supporting revenue growth, our investments are improving how the firm operates. For example, we're seeing substantial productivity gains across invoicing, certificates of insurance and policy administration. And these gains are increasingly measurable. For example, a 50% reduction in cycle time from 22 to 11 days for invoicing and 70% reduction in invoicing work, a 95% reduction in handle time and certificates of insurance from hours to less than 5 minutes and a 95% reduction in time in policy checks from 48 hours to 30 minutes.

As a result of these improvements, colleague capacity is being redeployed toward higher-value advisory and client-facing activities, fully reflecting our belief that winners in the application of AI will lead with a world-class people strategy to grow today and into the future. Critically, AI-driven productivity creates operating leverage. By lowering unit costs and reinvesting those gains into differentiation and growth, we're expanding margins while increasing the value we deliver to clients.

Consistent with our long-term philosophy, productivity gains are intentionally reinvested to strengthen differentiation, accelerate innovation and deepen client relationships while still supporting margin expansion. This flywheel of higher value growth, operating leverage and disciplined reinvestment underpins our confidence in durable value creation for shareholders.

Turning briefly to results. Our first quarter performance reflects strong execution across the firm. We delivered 5% organic revenue growth, continued to expand adjusted operating margin, realized strong growth in adjusted earnings per share and generated significant free cash flow. In particular, Q1 highlights the fourth consecutive quarter at or above 6% organic growth in Commercial Risk, reinforcing the impact of deliberate investments we've made and the value delivered through our innovative solutions.

Additionally, our balance sheet remains strong and flexible. As Edmund will discuss in more detail, we continue to execute a balanced capital allocation strategy in the first quarter with programmatic M&A and substantial capital return to shareholders through stepped-up share repurchases and our dividend. Finally, we recently announced a double-digit dividend increase for the sixth consecutive year.

Looking ahead, we are reaffirming our guidance for 2026 and remain confident in our long-term outlook. The external environment continues to reinforce demand for our solutions. Our strategic priorities are clear and our execution remains constant. We believe the net effect of technology adoption is an expansion of our addressable market. Insurance and risk management becomes more relevant as analytics improve decision-making, alternative and private capital expand available capacity and clients seek integrated outcome-based solutions.

Because Aon is uniquely positioned to source capital, integrate capabilities and govern in complex risk and human capital issues for clients across the globe, we expect to grow faster than the market and increase share over time. In closing, Aon is well positioned strategically, operationally and financially. We're delivering differentiated value for clients in an increasingly complex world and translating that value into strong performance and long-term shareholder returns.

To our 60,000 colleagues around the world, thank you. Thank you for your continued commitment to our clients, each other and our Aon United strategy.

Now I'm pleased to turn the call over to Edmund for his comments and perspective. Edmund?

Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. Before getting into the details of our first quarter results, I want to clearly anchor today's discussion on the fundamentals that define our performance and momentum as we advance through the final year of the 3x3 Plan. Over the past several quarters, we've been very intentional. First, establishing strategic clarity through our communication, then demonstrating disciplined execution, reflecting in consistently strong financial performance.

As we move through 2026, our message remains consistent. The fundamentals of our business are strong, resilient and evident in our results. First, we have high confidence in the structural advantages of our business, exceptionally deep client and industry relationships, proprietary data and analytics and integrated service and global capabilities, all of which are difficult to replicate and, importantly, position us to deliver increasing value over time, particularly as AI accelerates the shift from transaction-based models towards insight-led decision-making.

These advantages support sustained economics tied to value delivered, high retention and recurring revenue streams, existing and new, and they underpin our ability to sustain mid-single-digit or greater organic growth and generate returns through the cycle.

Second, our confidence is substantiated by our consistent execution. Quarter after quarter, we continue to deliver sustainable organic revenue growth, expand margins through operating leverage and convert earnings into strong free cash flow. The choices we've made, investing in revenue-generating talent, scaling Aon Business Services, expanding Aon client leadership and building a leading middle-market platform, are collectively working together to generate higher-quality growth that is capital-light, margin accretive and resilient across market conditions.

Third, our strong execution positions us with significant financial capacity and flexibility. During the quarter, we recognized the unique market conditions and opportunistically deployed $500 million to repurchase shares at prices we believe represent a compelling discount to intrinsic value. With consistent free cash flow generation, a disciplined balance sheet and leverage within our target range, we also remain well positioned to supplement organic growth with high return inorganic investments, ensuring that capital allocation continues to enhance long-term shareholder value.

And finally, when you step back and collectively connect these attributes, durable competitive advantages, consistent execution, differentiated performance and disciplined capital allocation with significant financial flexibility, the implication is clear. These are the characteristics that, over time, result in value creation. Our focus remains on the inputs we control: strategy, including growth investment in AI-embedded tools, execution and disciplined capital allocation. As we deliver, we look forward to the outputs, including market recognition of the quality and durability of our financial model.

With that context, let's turn to our first quarter results. On Slide 5, you see the first quarter results. Organic revenue growth was 5% for the quarter and total revenue increased 6% year-over-year to $5 billion. Adjusted operating margin expanded by 70 basis points and reached 39.1%. Adjusted EPS was up 14% to $6.48. And finally, we generated $363 million in free cash flow, up 332%.

Let's get into the details of these results, starting with organic revenue growth on Slide 6. Organic revenue growth was 5% in the quarter, in line with our mid-single-digit or better guidance. This performance reflects the impact of our strategic investments in hiring across priority growth areas, combined with the increasing contribution from our analytical and advisory capabilities.

In Commercial Risk, organic revenue growth of 7% marked the fourth consecutive quarter of growth at 6% or higher. Results reflected meaningful contributions from both North America, where growth was double digit, and EMEA as well as strong performance in our core P&C business. M&A closed deal activity accelerated during the quarter, and M&A services provided an incremental lift to organic revenue growth.

In addition, our MGA businesses across both large and middle-market clients contributed positively, supported by continued client demand for specialized underwriting solutions. Finally, construction grew at a double-digit rate and remains a contributor to growth as our data center revenue pipeline is on pace to be 3x higher than last year, reinforcing our confidence in sustained mid-single-digit or greater growth in 2026.

In Reinsurance, 4% organic revenue growth was driven by growth in treaty placements and double-digit growth in facultative placements. Treaty growth reflected 10% to 15% rate pressure that was more than offset by continued strong new business activity, including the addition of new logos. Insurance-linked securities were a smaller contributor in the quarter but continued to grow at a double-digit rate with outstanding volumes reaching $61 billion.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, our data points to further rate pressure at April 1 renewals with rates down 15% to 20% in both the U.S. and Japan, partially offset by roughly 10% higher demand. Importantly, we continue to expect full year organic revenue growth in line with our mid-single-digit or greater growth objective, supported by a strong second half, driven by continued growth in international facultative placements and growing demand in our Strategy and Technology Group Solutions.

Health Solutions grew 4% in the quarter. Our core Health and Benefits business, representing approximately 75% of the Health revenue delivered strong mid-single-digit growth across both EMEA and APAC, partially offset by slower discretionary spend in Talent Solutions, reflecting ongoing pressure that extended through the first quarter of 2026.

Looking ahead, the demand for our analytics and advisory capabilities is increasing as employers navigate rising health care costs, manage transitioning workforces and focus on delivering better outcomes for their employees. With that demand building and the core business performing well, we continue to expect full year organic growth in Health to be within our mid-single-digit or greater objective.

And finally, Wealth generated 1% growth driven by regulatory and valuation-related work in EMEA and market performance impact on NFP asset-based revenue, partially offset by softer advisory demand in the U.S. We expect mid-single-digit growth in Wealth for Q2 as the pension risk transfer market in the U.K. remains strong with Aon as the market leader.

Turning to the key components of our Q1 organic revenue growth on Slide 7. Aon has a consistent track record of generating new business that contributes 9 to 11 points to organic revenue growth, and that continued in Q1. In the quarter, new business contributed 9 points to organic revenue growth, supported by both new client acquisitions and expanding mandates with existing clients.

Our investment in revenue-generating talent in high-growth areas like construction and energy continue to deliver measurable impact. Our 2024 and 2025 cohorts contributed 75 basis points to Q1 organic revenue growth, and we expect momentum to build as these cohorts season. We've noted in the past that our data analytics and capabilities make us a destination of choice. And despite ongoing competitive pressures for talent, we continue to expect to expand our revenue-generating population by 4% to 8% in 2026.

Q1 '26 retention remains strong in the mid-90s, improving 20 basis points over last year, led by Commercial Risk and Reinsurance as deeper Enterprise Client Group engagement and ABS-driven insights enhance client value and relationship depth. Net new business contributed 5 points to organic revenue growth in the quarter. Net market impact, which captures the impact of rate and exposure, contributed 1 point to organic revenue growth and was delivered in line with estimates despite a softer pricing environment in P&C and Reinsurance.

Rate-driven pressure in Reinsurance following 1/1 renewals was offset with higher limit and expanded coverage in Commercial Risk, further reinforcing that growth is primarily driven by business investment and client demand and remains largely uncorrelated with pricing cycles. And one final point on revenue. First quarter fiduciary investment income was $55 million, down 18% from the prior year, as higher average balances were more than offset by the lower interest rates.

On Slide 8. Q1 adjusted operating income was up 8% to $2 billion, and adjusted operating margins expanded 70 basis points to 39.1%. Through ABS, we are structurally lowering our cost base by reducing technology costs, standardizing and automating processes, including the integration of NFP and embedding AI into our development and operational workflows. These actions are not only driving margin expansion but also creating durable capacity for investments that support sustainable top line growth.

Restructuring savings were $25 million in the quarter, contributing 50 basis points to adjusted operating margin. We remain on track to deliver $100 million of savings in 2026, advancing toward our goal of $450 million in total savings by 2027, with 2026 marking the final year of our restructuring investment.

Moving to interest, other income and taxes on Slide 9. Interest income was $12 million in the first quarter and up $7 million over last year, driven by interest earned on proceeds from the sale of NFP Wealth. Interest expense came in at $179 million, $26 million lower than last year, primarily due to lower average debt balances. We expect Q2 '26 interest expense to be approximately $180 million.

Other expense was $15 million lower than last year, driven by lower noncash pension expense and the remeasurement of balance sheet items. We estimate Q2 '26 other expense to range between $15 million and $20 million. Finally, the Q1 effective tax rate was 20.3%, 60 basis points lower than Q1 '25, reflecting the geographic mix of income growth and the favorable impact of discrete items. Our full year tax outlook remains unchanged at 19.5% to 20.5%.

Turning now to free cash flow and capital allocation on Slide 10. We generated $363 million of free cash flow in the first quarter, reflecting strong operating income growth. This is a strong start to the year, and we continue to expect double-digit free cash flow growth in 2026.

Turning to capital on the right-hand side of the slide. Our strong free cash flow growth enabled us to continue to execute our disciplined capital allocation model, balancing investment for growth with capital return to shareholders. As Greg mentioned, in April, we increased our quarterly dividend by 10% to $0.82 per share, marking the sixth consecutive year of double-digit dividend increases and reflecting the cash-generating strength and durability of our business and financial model.

We also remained active in M&A and allocated $349 million toward high-growth tuck-in acquisitions in middle market that align with our strategic priorities and return thresholds.

The largest use of capital in the quarter was shareholder return. In total, we returned $662 million to shareholders, including $500 million in share repurchases, a significant step-up from the average $250 million per quarter over the prior 8 quarters. As I noted earlier, we were proactive and leaned in the market conditions, repurchasing shares at prices well below the firm's intrinsic value.

And that conviction is grounded in the fundamentals of the business, driving strong performance today and also informed by the investments we are making to drive future growth in talent, AI-embedded analytics and scalable platforms, which we believe increase the long-term earnings power and terminal value of the firm.

Taken together, these actions reflect the consistent application of our balanced capital allocation model, maintaining our leverage objective, consistently growing the dividend and executing our disciplined approach to high-return M&A and returning excess capital to shareholders, ensuring capital allocation continues to enhance long-term shareholder value.

I'll conclude my prepared remarks on Slide 11 with a few thoughts on our financial objectives and 2026 guidance. The first quarter 2026 performance reflects a start to the year that is right in line with our expectations and reinforces the strategic choices we have made to drive sustainable growth. Accordingly, we are reaffirming our 2026 full year guidance for mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth, supported by continued new business wins, the compounding contributions from our revenue-generating hires and accretive growth in middle market.

We delivered 70 basis points of margin expansion in Q1, and we are seeing the benefits of efficiency gains from our scalable ABS platform and continued progress on our restructuring objectives. As a result, we are reaffirming our expectations for 70 to 80 basis points of margin expansion for the full year. The combination of organic growth and margin expansion supports our outlook for strong earnings growth in 2026, and with high conversion of those earnings into cash, positions us to deliver double-digit free cash flow growth for the year.

Our strong capital position affords us the financial flexibility to actively deploy capital across multiple avenues, supplementing organic growth with strategic M&A while also executing opportunistic share repurchases. We have substantial financial capacity to pursue our high-quality M&A pipeline, and we remain firmly on track to deliver at least $1 billion in share repurchases for the year.

As we move to Q&A, I want to emphasize that the performance you are seeing is the result of deliberate decisions. Our organic investments as part of the 3x3 Plan, $1.3 billion in talent and the AI-embedded capabilities that enable that talent to bring faster, deeper insight to clients as well as our inorganic actions are all intentionally aligned to deliver consistent earnings and free cash flow growth.

We are already realizing productivity improvements today, and we are reinvesting those gains back into capabilities that both expand what we can deliver for clients and how efficiently we deliver it. In a world where technology increasingly enables and amplifies differentiated insight, advice and outcomes, this reinvestment cycle is critical.

When executed well, it expands the addressable market by making risk transfer more relevant and increasing insured risk as a percentage of GDP, while also unlocking incremental AI-enabled opportunities to gain share with existing and prospective clients. Our investment leadership here strengthens our long-term growth profile, reinforces our conviction in the firm's growing terminal value and supports long-term value creation for shareholders.

So with that, let's open up the line for questions. Kerry, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo.

My first question, I was hoping if you could just provide a little bit more color on just the contributions from data centers to organic growth in the quarter. I know Edmund said, I think it was 3x the level this year than last year. But hoping just to size it a little bit to get a sense of the contribution to organic in Q1 and expectations for the next few quarters of the year.

Elyse, thanks for joining. Great question. I will hit data center in particular, but the important point in this question is our Commercial Risk business and how broad-based the growth was. Data center, just real pointedly, was a part of the double-digit construction in our business. But again, the growth in Commercial Risk was broad-based. So I just have to highlight that in a lower rate environment, Commercial Risk has been 6% or better for the last 4 quarters. And we're not surprised with the strength in Commercial Risk because the results reflect what I just said in the script there, our intentional strategic decisions.

So it was broad-based with strength in the U.S. double digit, with EMEA achieving strong growth in the core P&C business. New business itself in Commercial Risk was over 12 points of contribution. That's very much supported by the priority growth hires in construction, where data center shows up as a component of that. Retention was 50 basis points higher in Commercial Risk for the quarter. That's our analyzers helping with RFPs. We have a whole suite of them now rolled out in the U.S. and EMEA. And again, the net market contribution in Commercial Risk was still positive despite pricing pressure in property.

And I'll also emphasize just again, to your point, the priority growth areas. Double-digit growth in construction, that's wins and pipeline in data centers. So we had wins that were higher this year and a pipeline that is giving us confidence in the outlook for the year, but it wasn't the key driver of growth. I also mentioned M&A in that. Again, the growth was strong there as well, but we still would have been at these fourth consecutive quarters of 6% growth with or without that, just again, emphasizing how broad-based the growth was.

And I'll just point out one other item, Elyse, that the synergies that we are getting from NFP, particularly as we utilize our facilities like Aon Client Treaty in London, is just another contributor to the growth here. So we're going to continue to focus and invest in these drivers of growth, our talent and our technology. We believe those investments, including in construction and data center hires, hires who are focused on that, those are the things that will sustain new business growth and continue the strong retention that we have.

And I think really, Elyse, what Edmund, I think summarized there very, very well is the broad-based piece. And we remain incredibly excited about the data centers. But it's really very much we're at the beginning of the beginning with tremendous promise ahead, and we're very well positioned.

And then my follow-up question is on capital. I recognize you guys leaned into a buybacks in the Q1, but you left the target for the year at $1 billion plus. You obviously could have raised it. Is it just -- are you waiting to see how the M&A pipeline develops? Is it a function of what happens to your stock price? Obviously, there's been more volatility, right, within the brokers subsequent to the end of the Q1. So just trying to understand the desire to lean into buyback and also continue to pursue your M&A strategy.

Yes. Another important topic, Elyse, so thank you for raising it again. And even on this one, I have to step back as well because I have to begin with just reiterating how pleased we are with the free cash flow generation in the quarter and the continued execution of the capital allocation model, right? I mentioned in the script that we're right in line with our leverage objective, actually a little bit better in this quarter. I think we came out at 2.7. Our objective is at least 2.9 there. We announced a double-digit increase in the dividend. We're investing in middle market. And as you just mentioned, we're taking advantage of the market opportunity as well and returning capital to shareholders.

So the question just really has me come back and anchor in our capital allocation model, which we're executing with discipline here. As we go through '26, I mean, you hit on a few things there. We are going to continue to look at the pipeline for M&A. I mentioned earlier that we have strong criteria and thresholds that have to be met strategically, financially. You know that we look at M&A that can be above 10% revenue after owning it for a year, that have IRRs that are at least 20% and allow us to continue to have our market-leading ROIC in it.

That's what we evaluate, and there continue to be opportunities in middle market and select international markets like Japan and EMEA and even LatAm that we are looking at. So we have the flexibility with our strong balance sheet to pursue those M&A. If they don't meet the criteria, then we won't have a lazy balance sheet. I continue to use that terminology, and we'll return the excess capital to shareholders.

So for now, I think it is prudent for us to stick with our at least $1 billion in the year. Obviously, $500 million in the first quarter is a great start that gives us confidence in that number, and we'll see how the year plays out.

And our next question will come from Andrew Andersen with Jefferies.

On expanding mandates versus truly new logos, can you maybe just talk about what the mix was this quarter and how that has been trending versus last year? I would think expanding mandates is better for margins near term, but perhaps that's not the case, and would be particularly interested in CRS.

Yes. This is a key, key topic, new business growth. I mentioned in the script there, 9 to 11 points, as we've shown in the Investor Day and continue to produce, is what the objective is. So another quarter of 9 points. And it's a great question. If you look back over '25 or even '24, I mentioned during Investor Day that it's been split about half and half between new logos and expanding with existing clients. And you see some movement quarter-over-quarter in the different solution lines, but it's about equal.

And then Commercial Risk, in particular, on your question, 12 points of contribution in the quarter from Commercial Risk. That's a strong item. That was both, again, an equal mix between the new logos and expanding with our existing clients there in the quarter. So it's typically going to be balanced across each, and we're looking to pursue each as we deploy Enterprise Client Group, right? We have a whole focus on this, and Greg can speak up on the Enterprise Client Group, really expanding with our existing clients, increasing the relationship with the senior executives, the HR leads, the CFOs of the organization.

That allows us to deepen the relationships and retain those clients. So we're seeing that in both. New logos, I called out in the script also, was a strong driver for Reinsurance as it helped us offset some of the rate pressure there as well. So I think a strong quarter from that standpoint.

And there's been some broader industry discussion around broker commissions and fee levels. How are you thinking about this dynamic in the context of the value that you're delivering? And where do you see these trending?

Let me say, Andrew, just step back and think about kind of what's going on in the market overall, we see real opportunity. When you think about sort of how this plays into AI and all that we might talk about further on this call potentially as questions come up, but real opportunity. By the way, this is opportunity based on client need. It is interesting how the question gets positioned sometimes, and it takes a view of a zero-sum game between insurance markets and advisers. But really, we should be asking the question on whether the risk industry overall is going to be led greater value for clients.

And if we can meet this ever-increasing, ever-higher bar, it suggests a positive movement, and that's exactly where we are. In a world where risks are increasing, volatility is getting greater, the need for better solutions is very high, we are incredibly well positioned to deliver not just insights, but access to capital, which includes the traditional markets and alternative markets. So from our standpoint, we see a meaningful opportunity ahead with AI as a catalyst, driving and enhancing our strategy. Again, AI is not a strategy. Our strategy has been unbelievably strong and well proven. AI is a catalyst for it.

And we do what Edmund described in his comments. We expand addressable markets. We've got greater access to those markets. We've got the ability to add even greater value as those markets expand, and that suggests stronger performance. But really, Andrew, to be clear, the ultimate arbiter of truth here is clients. They decide. And we're really well positioned to add greater value. And in doing that, it creates greater opportunity for operational improvement.

And moving next to Rob Cox with Goldman Sachs.

First question just on the Middle East. Can you just talk about how the Middle East conflict showed up in Aon's results this quarter? And maybe if you have any ideas you could talk about the potential to see claims inflation from the conflict later on this year?

Maybe to start overall, Rob, just a general view on the Middle East. Generally, and how it's impacting kind of our clients around the world and certainly, obviously, in region. And I want Edmund to talk specifically about the results in the Middle East and sort of how that's played into the overall performance in the quarter. Listen, our first and foremost focus is on our colleagues and our clients sort of in region and supporting them and reinforcing all that they're going through.

As we think about broad-based, obviously, the Middle East is not a tremendously substantial part of our business, but it's important for clients around the world. It will have overall implications. And from our standpoint, we'll see how things evolve. But right now, uncertainty is what we work toward on behalf of clients. It's how we serve and support them. And so whatever form that takes, however long this lasts, we'll be there, and it will have implications on overall operating performance. But so far, it's very much in development mode. But specifically in the quarter, Edmund, do you want to comment on that?

Yes. Greg, I actually just want to start with what you just said, like our focus is on the colleagues and clients. But if I do move to the performance there. The headline growth for us, Rob, in the region was actually double-digit growth. You got to keep in mind that our Middle East business, as Greg just said, not a substantial part of our overall business, but over 50% of it is Health. Those renewals happened actually before the conflict and that escalation -- before the conflict escalated. So it's pretty locked in.

Commercial Risk in the Middle East was one of the largest growers in our portfolio. You can imagine, with increasing risk in the region, that actually creates more demand for us to be able to help clients, as Greg said in his opening remarks, move through that. And the Reinsurance business in that region, 70% of it is done on 1/1 renewals. So again, we had strong growth there as well.

Greg's point is the right one. It's a small part of our portfolio. We're very diversified. And as you heard me say, our strength is broad-based. Now if we continue to see an escalation or a prolonged conflict, that could have some impact that seeps into the broader impact on economy. But again, if that happens, our clients actually need more of our services. So we'll continue to monitor development closely, but we remain focused now on our clients and colleagues.

That's super helpful. And I just wanted to follow up on the risk analyzers. Edmund, I think you attributed some of the retention gains in Commercial Risk to the risk analyzers. I'd imagine it's also contributing to new business. How are you actually measuring the benefits from the risk analyzers? And can you just give us some color on adoption usage compared to the past in the various businesses?

Yes. We've -- our team, led by our COO and our business partners have really been rolling out our risk analyzers. And Greg said it earlier, and I'm sure he will emphasize that. Where we started here was with Commercial Risk. And we've started to roll some of this out into Health, and we're starting to see some of that benefit in core health and benefits. But the Commercial Risk area is where we're seeing the business. And what I talked about, as I said, we've rolled it out. We're on later versions in the U.S., sort of mid-game in EMEA and rolling out in the other regions as well.

But it is very clear and measurable to look at the impact of when we use the analyzers and when we don't use the analyzers. And we look at win rates, we look at renewals, and we look at new business from it. Again, it is the first place. The priority hires and the analyzers, if I had to boil it down the 12 points of contribution in Commercial Risk to two things, talent and technology, our hires in the priority growth areas and the analyzers coming through across property, across D&O, across cyber.

And now Greg in his script mentioned us rolling out Broker Copilot as well, which is helping us bring insights on pricing, trading data to our clients very quickly as well. So if I had to attribute that new business to two things, it would be those two items. And we're able to measure it very well. But Greg, any comments from you on that?

No, I think you've covered it well. I do want to -- just for context, Rob, back up, and it isn't just the analyzers, right? This is a very measured approach we've taken over a number of years to answer a very straightforward question. How do we address increasing client need. And so the analyzers are a direct response to that, driven by client need.

We can do the analyzers because we've got the raw data, the quantity, the quality, how we've ingested it and curated it. We've got the analytic capability, and then we have an organizational structure. When you think about Risk Capital, Human Capital, it doesn't exist anywhere else. And that allows us to take very high-quality talent, the best in the world, as Edmund described, and really make sure we're aligned to deliver this. And so it's not just the analyzers. It's also the service component, what we do on certificates and ad hoc certificates, a whole range of things, invoices.

So it is revenue driven and service driven. And then, obviously, it creates -- we have efficiency then that Edmund described before, which means we can reinvest back into that capability. And the reason that's important is it highlights the versions. Don't miss that point. We're on like Version 10 or more of the property analyzer. And across the suite of analyzers, we continue to evolve them. We're about to attend the RIMS Conference. We're going to come away with 15 ideas that are go into a next iteration, and we've got the machine that can just keep innovating to do that.

But the real punchline here is we're making a difference, and they're making a difference because they matter to clients on revenue, how they help build their businesses and make decisions and how they run their businesses around service.

And our next question will come from Mike Zaremski with BMO Capital Markets.

First question, focusing on the really nice commercial risk organic. Just want to make sure we shouldn't get over our skis given we know that 2Q is one of the biggest property quarters in the industry. So when you think about the net market impact, Edmund for 2Q, in the last 2Q it decelerated fairly materially from 1Q. Should we be kind of keeping that in mind as we think about the rest of the year or just the near-term 2Q is maybe a governor on how excited we should be?

Well, there's two parts to your question that are important to highlight. One is, you're right. We are running this firm on an annual basis, and not on a quarterly basis. And so we think about the guidance as full year annual guidance because there could be movement within the quarters.

Setting that aside, on net market impact, the second part of your question, which I think is important, the guidance, as you know, is 0 to 2 points of contribution from that as the quarters have moved through the end of '25 and into this quarter, despite the pressure that we see, whether we're talking about Commercial Risk in P&C or even in Reinsurance. We've been at roughly 1 point or slightly higher, and that continued in this quarter. That's what we expect throughout the rest of the year, including Q2.

It's just important to highlight here that it's not -- that could have an impact, 0 to 2 is still how you should be thinking about it. But more importantly is the growth in GDP, the business investment that we're having right now because that's the pricing piece that we're talking about in the net market impact. And the diversity of the products, the diversity of the geographies, I just talked about the broad-based growth in Commercial Risk. Those are the things that allow us to grow at mid-single digit or better in any pricing environment, and that's where we focus on.

So even in this quarter, it's not new, right? Property was down 15% in this quarter. Casualty, like mid-single-digit growth. D&O, a little bit of an uptick in price there. Cyber at low single-digit rates. We have these micro markets on pricing, but we take actions to help our clients take advantage of these markets, help them increase their limit, increase their coverages. And those are the things that allow us to still have the mid-single-digit growth. Greg?

And Mike, I don't miss -- I hear your point on over our skis. We've taken in a very measured, methodical approach year-over-year-over-year period. But you would observe the 4 quarters that Edmund described in Commercial Risk, observe the fact that we, in our 3x3 Plan, have really laid out a series of capabilities defined by clients, driven by serious, serious industrial strength content and content behind them. And we focused initially on Commercial Risk and across the U.S. And what Edmund just described is a very broad-based 7% organic against whatever pricing environment. We didn't qualify it on that. It doesn't matter. It's helping clients succeed, winning more clients, doing more with them, keeping them longer, all those things with it.

And the team was phenomenal. They delivered 7%. I think you described double-digit North America. And so this is a pretty unique progress. We don't get excited about it. We just stay focused on client need, and we've got to deliver for the year. But you ask yourself, did we increase probability of the mid-single digit or greater, you should feel good about that progress with that context.

Yes. Definitely, even seeing the net margin impact not move much over the last many quarters has been a great result. Just lastly, real quick. In your prepared remarks, you talked about driving productivity improvements. Clearly, a lot of GenAI technology adoption that's being accelerated across your firm. Do you envision a future where Aon's productivity per employee could accelerate to much higher levels than historical levels? Or too soon to know? I guess I asked because one of your broker peers did offer kind of a very long-term North Star about productivity improvements that could be fairly material.

Yes. Listen, this is probably worth a little bit of time since it's come up so much. And I'd really like to offer a couple of thoughts, and then, Edmund, I want you to jump in here, too. This is so fundamental to our firm. Look, on this whole topic of kind of the impact of AI, is it productivity? Is it -- what is it going to be? And how is it going to play out?

First, we want to be clear on our position here. We're incredibly excited about the possibilities of AI to reinforce, and we mean reinforce our strategy. It's not our strategy, reinforce our strategy, accelerate it and strengthen it. And we mean over the next 5 years, and we mean equally important over the long term. And we also want to be clear, the capability, we've been doing this for multiple years now. It's already being seen. You saw it in the quarter. And it's going to be seen more over time. And we're going to deliver for clients now and increase long-term value for Aon.

And again, our view has developed over time. I mean, we restructured our firm over many years to address this Risk Capital, Human Capital, ABS, how we deliver from an integrated client standpoint. And we also were clear on, look, this comes from our -- how do we do this? How can we pull it off? People can talk about it. We can pull it off because of the data, the raw quantity, the quality, how we've ingested it, how we changed that over time, how we curate it. The analytics, Mike, that come with it and how we model and what we do with it. The analytics are interesting.

But when they become a suite of analyzers with the sort of service capabilities that have been introduced and refined 10 or 15x, that's when it becomes powerful. That can only happen with Risk Capital and Human Capital, which is why we're pretty excited about this. And I will come back to look, it's all driven by a few principles. One is literally what do clients need? How is it changing over time?

And these responses that we've driven are all around revenue enhancement and driving that piece first and foremost, service enhancement second, and then productivity, which is why we've said, listen, you're not going to get success here in AI without an absolutely world-class people strategy out in front driving this. And that's what we're seeing. And the analyzers from client demand have actually changed the way clients think about what their businesses -- how they evolve, their risks in their business.

What we've done on the service side as well. But if that's the client piece, the other piece to your question is really around value and what are the economics of that, the operating results of that. And frankly, greater value, as I described before, is greater margin potential. But then it also has to be continuous. So that's got to be durable. So I would just say, look, from our standpoint, we have our North Star. We're driving toward it. It's really delivering. And we see greater, greater opportunity to have an impact. To go back to Elyse's first question, one of them are in areas that are on the net new, which is data centers. Just beginning. But we're positioned unbelievably well because of all the work we've done.

So we're pretty excited about the potential here and see it developing over time and see real opportunity. We don't see this as a defend the house. We see this as a true build the house opportunity. But Edmund, I'd love you to talk a little bit about the value part of this and the durability part of this.

Yes, absolutely. And your question, Mike, is on the value part and the impact on the economics. Greg just talked about the demand of it. There's the economics, which I think have an impact today. And the third part is the durability of it, the ongoing benefit, how we will perform better. And that's the compelling part of it. We are operating and you're seeing it in our results, today. It's not just margin, though. It's in the new business growth. And I think our compensation there is tied to the outcomes, as Greg talked about earlier, as we help clients with capital, so we help them with workforce, as we help them improve their resilience. It shows up in retention. We had NPS up 10 points, something that I don't think I mentioned earlier here. And the analyzers I have mentioned are improving the RFP rates. And then it's showing up in your question, the margin improvement.

Greg gave some stats earlier on claims, certificates of insurance, invoicing, policy management, all those things are lowering our unit costs, and we had talked earlier about 5% to 15% productivity improvements. Those things are happening right now, and we're doing it in a way that still allows us to bring value to our clients. So that's number one. The economics of it are showing up top line and bottom line and in our results today. The important point is that the performance builds over the coming years, right?

Like you see multiyear tailwinds from this. Our work in data center is a great example of that. Our work on workforce solutions is a great example of that as well. So our insights and our capabilities are going to help us expand this market. Our content and the investments are going to help us gain share in this expanding market. And as we continue to lead in the investment and get these productivity improvements, we will reinvest, which creates this virtuous circle loop, which at the end of the day, just means that more durable business, a more scalable business and a more valuable business, more valuable business over the long term as we bring this value to clients.

And we'll go next to Bob Huang with Morgan Stanley.

So my question is really also related to the Middle East, but not really Middle East. As we think about the Middle East conflict, the elevated energy price should have a fairly notable impact on GDP in Asia. I understand the Middle East contribution to you is probably small, but the Asia contribution probably is not.

As we think about Asia growth slowdown due to energy prices, can you maybe help us understand the impact on organic growth guidance throughout the year, think about the inflation impact and things of that nature?

I'll start overall, Bob. We want to come back and, again, governing thought, reaffirm exactly where we are on mid-single digit or greater from a growth standpoint. We're looking now across the world, see all that you're looking at as best we can. And our view has been single digit or greater. So start with that overall governing thought.

And then I just want to highlight a point that Edmund alluded to earlier around ambiguity and uncertainty. Pieces that create challenges in one area create opportunities in other areas. We've seen it countlessly. I mean, I think about even now in the Middle East, which, again, as Edmund described, is not a big part of our business, has done unbelievably well, helping clients understand the situation and really protect themselves as they also think about growth.

APAC, Asia, tremendously important for us, still, on a relative basis, not a massive part of the overall firm, but fairly important. And we get your point on the energy side, but frankly, it's going to create other opportunities. Clients trying to decide how to navigate that environment. And that's what we do. We're going to help them do that, which is why you kind of come back to the form might change. The form might change. What we do might change. It may evolve. But our ability to help clients succeed in an uncertain environment has never been greater and is continuing to strengthen, and it's why we come back to that affirmation. But what else could you add to that, Edmund?

Greg, I don't have much to add to that except like that shows up in the results, right? Our international markets are really leading the growth in many of our individual solution lines. And as that mix changes, we feel good that, that continues to be the opportunity where we can help the clients, which shows up in our results. So not much to add to that.

Okay. Really appreciate it. My last question is about the AI expense, right? So on your press release, you talked about, there's an $8 million increase in IT expense. As we think about AI expense, it's variable expenses, it's token-driven, prompt-driven on the input cost side. Going forward, like as you build out more AI capabilities, how should we think about that overall expense? Is that all essentially factored into the margin guidance? Is it -- as you have a higher and increased utilization of AI, can you just help us with that a little bit?

It's a great question. And the short answer is yes. It is factored into the margin guidance. Again, me and our COO, our Chief Operating Officer and I talk about this all the time. We are model agnostic. We're building our own models, Broker and Claims Copilots are great examples of that, but we're also working with all the big names you know in the space. And in fact, that comes back to our organizational readiness. Me, Greg and the leadership team just spent some time actually tiering our organization from who needs the basic tools that have less need for tokenization and who needs the tools that are experts. Zone 1, 2 and 3 is sort of how we frame it.

So we're super focused on who's going to be using it. Again, our focus is top line growth and productivity. So we want to equip the organization on both of those areas to build the things that help us with top line growth and get the productivity while being conscious of the cost.

When I come to the cost, clearly, we have it baked into the $1.3 billion investment that we did as part of the 3x3 Plan. And you've astutely and rightfully called out the tech development part of our income statement, where I would say probably half of what you saw, nearly $600 million in 2025, is connected to AI as well. Obviously, there's a tech infrastructure part of that, but a significant component is the tech dev completely focused on AI.

But again, it's our commitment to those investments that highlight our leadership in the space. We factor that in, those costs and the reinvestment of productivity improvements from that in our overall guidance here.

And maybe one observation I'll just add to that, Bob. As you think about the mechanics of literally how we thought about the investment, the cost, as Edmund described it, maybe Simon, our COO and how they discussed it, and it is really an intricate discussion. These are all critically important. So understand sort of how we look at that. But the real breakthrough here is not just cost efficiency, right? The real breakthrough is delivering client value. Literally, it's the revenue part of this and the service part of this. So it's more revenue, better retention of that revenue, all these things factor in. And this is where we want to absolutely -- this is where we've got to get yield to get return, not just efficiency.

So again, back to some of the earlier questions on the call around sort of the zero-sum game that everything boils down and gets smaller and smaller. For us, it's bigger and bigger with opportunities. That is a revenue conversation. That's a productivity conversation that's beyond efficiency. And this is where we have seen some breakthroughs. This is really what's led to a lot of our work to accelerate not just taking cost out. We've done that before and continue to do that. But we're truly helping clients do things they couldn't have done before.

And we'll go next to Cave Montazeri with Deutsche Bank.

So you started investing in ABS over 10 years ago. And I think until recently from the outside, really felt like it was primarily a margin expansion story. But now, and you've mentioned that several times on the call today, it really looks like we're seeing the tangible impact on organic as well, and we can really see the flywheel effect that you guys are talking about.

Now others have noticed and everyone now wants to be a bit more like you guys, can build their own version of ABS. How important is it for you to have that first-mover advantage? Because as more of your peers implement their own version of ABS, will those efficiencies and better analytical tools become commoditized? Or is there like a real moat to being early and that others will always be playing catch-up because you keep on investing and getting better at ABS?

Listen, I really appreciate the question, and it is the question of the day in terms of sort of when you think about some of the evolution, I would really start and emphasize, again, this starts with client need, how it's evolving over time and how we respond to it. We're responding to client need. That's the strategy. Again, AI is not a strategy. Serving clients in a more effective way as their risk increase, that's the strategy.

And if you think about what's required to do that, this is where we come back to -- we have been -- it's taken a long time. It's hard to pull this together. And it isn't just the analytics and the data. By the way, that's critical. You don't have the raw quantity and then turn it into quality in a way you can ingest it, curate it, you don't have anything. So that's taken a long time. By the way, ABS was doing cost and that for us, so important. We had great Reinsurance data. We had great Commercial Risk data, great Health data. But they weren't connected. Now we've got them connected in a way that we've not ever seen before.

The analytics of that result in these capabilities. But also to be clear, this isn't about analytics. At one level, it's about organization. It's about alignment, Risk Capital and Human Capital. We broke our firm down organizationally and rebuilt it to connect the dots around Risk Capital. This is Reinsurance and Commercial Risk. So imagine Reinsurance contend and insight ingested into a Commercial Risk decision process. This is a massive, massive change in terms of sort of insight for clients. So for us, the organizational change, absolutely important. The analytics and ABS, absolutely important.

And then the way we go to market. Edmund described it before around Enterprise Client and a connected global firm, that sounds trivial, but it's powerful. Clients should not be negotiating or trying to understand Aon. We should understand them and bring the integrated firm. If we bring the integrated firm, Aon client leadership with capabilities that never existed before, Aon Business Services, driven by a set of analytics not seen before. That's what for us is the wow. And if we can do that, that's a revenue-driven engine. And we're just going to keep investing in that engine and driving that engine.

And the outcome, and don't miss this part that Edmund described. This is about not just in the next 5 years' performance. This is as you think about our terminal value, if you want to look at it that way, this is a bigger market. Data centers are a bigger market. Solving cyber is a bigger market. And then the way to serve that market requires real expertise, new expertise, which means if you've got it, you're going to win more share. And if you win more share, you're going to create more value. And value means you have the opportunity to deliver for clients and for shareholders on margin. You can do both. So that's our mission. That's our view. And we feel fortunate we made progress.

But to be clear, we got to hammer down. We see the opportunity here for the clients, and we're going to keep driving it.

And then my follow-up question was on the personal lines exposure that you said was less than, I think, 2% of premium. Could you kind of remind us like how that came about? Is that something that kind of you want to keep, that's core to Aon or that your clients ask for?

Just a quick overview. Just first of all, personal lines, this is complex at some level. The piece we serve, this is higher net worth individuals, sometimes tied into businesses, really trying to think about what they're up to. We're working hard to support that. So I don't want to dismiss that as not complex, but it's a very small part of what we do. It's less than 2%. Sometimes it comes with the businesses overall. So put it in context, I understand it's not priority, but it's also important. Yes, Edmund, go ahead.

Yes. And the way that we've sort of -- the majority of our personal lines business has come as part of the acquisitions that we've been doing over the past decade, right? We've done over 150 acquisitions. And you actually see us continue to have active portfolio management where we look to focus on our core, the higher-growth core businesses.

You've actually seen us have cash from dispositions. It was over $730 million in 2024. That comes from the disposition of the personal lines business as we continue to go through our portfolio hygiene here. So that's why it's at that percentage, and I would say, continuing to shrink as we move forward here because we're super focused on our core Risk Capital and Human Capital business.

And thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Greg Case for closing remarks.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for joining the call. We appreciate it, and look forward to the next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon plc's Fourth Quarter 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I'd also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time.

It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results of those anticipated. For information concerning these risk factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent quarterly or annual SEC filings, all of which are available on our website.

Now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon plc.

Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year earnings call. I'm joined by Edmund Reese, our CFO, and the financial presentation, which Edmond will reference in his remarks, is posted on our website. 2025 was a year of great strategic progress and performance milestones for Aon.

Among the highlights, we advanced the disciplined execution of our 3x3 plan, which continues to accelerate our Aon United strategy by further integrating risk capital and human capital, expanding Aon client leadership and leveraging Aon Business Services to drive greater capability, innovation and efficiency. This work is enhancing our relevance and delivery capability to meet rising client demand amid increasing complexity. We outlined this momentum at our first Investor Day in 2 decades where we demonstrated the strength of Aon United and the central role of the 3x3 plan, including the power of ABS.

We believe our performance this year is proof that our strategy is working, producing tangible sustainable results today and positioning us for long-term success. We continue to innovate. ABS provides the foundation to deliver innovative solutions and deploy AI where it drives real value across our business. We expanded our risk analyzers, launched Aon Broker Copilot and more recently launched Claims Copilot. In addition, we help clients access alternative forms of capital through cat bonds, which may include parametric triggers, where market issuance rose more than 40% in 2025 and Aon's issuance increased more than 50%. And we continue to innovate in population health by helping employers manage health care costs through GLP-1 strategies.

We also launched our data center life cycle Insurance Protection Program, DCLP, which provides coverage for data centers from construction through operational readiness under a single integrated facility. This solution continues to gain traction, and we recently announced a $1 billion expansion, increasing total capacity to $2.5 billion. We substantially advanced our middle market strategy, including great progress in building upon our independent and connected strategy with NFP. The business is performing well with strong producer retention as we build upon NFP's strong client relationships with the full breadth of Aon's capabilities.

We're also accelerating the connection of NFP onto our ABS platform, which we believe will further enhance performance over time, highlighting our even greater conviction in the power of ABS to onboard middle market companies. And we continued our very effective tuck-in M&A strategy, further accessing a large $31 billion North American addressable market.

As we close 2025, we entered the final year of our 3x3 plan with strong momentum, fueled by our client-centric strategy and integrated capabilities that enable us to win more opportunities, deepen client relationships and deliver more value in an increasingly complex macro environment. Turning to our results.

We finished the year strong with continued momentum in the fourth quarter and delivered on our full year objectives, including 6% organic revenue growth for the second straight year, 90 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, strong adjusted EPS growth and double-digit free cash flow growth. These results demonstrate the consistency and durability of our business model and the impact of our Aon United strategy. They also reflect investments in revenue-generating talent and the impact of our solutions.

To set the context for our results, I will highlight 4 representative examples that are driving results and fueling momentum into 2026. First, a client story, which shows how our teams are trusted strategic advisers to clients and how we bring the best of Aon to the market. After partnering with a large international construction client for several years, the company needed a dedicated broker to support the full life cycle of a new data center project. We combined our role as a trusted adviser with a united global team, bringing together account leadership with construction, data center, energy and cyber specialists to deliver an integrated proposal.

Our winning response showed the full capabilities of AON, including DCLP, advanced climate analytics and proprietary risk analyzers, all aligned to the client's long-term growth strategy. We demonstrated distinctive ability to support both construction and operations, leveraging data and insights to improve capital efficiency and resilience. The client credited our team's expertise and our global connectivity and capabilities as central to the win, reinforcing our strength in leveraging trusted relationships and leading analytics to create high-quality growth opportunities.

Second, we continue to innovate and lead in the data center opportunity. In addition to our DCLP capacity increase and the client story I just referenced, our reinsurance team recently designed and placed the first ever data center-specific treaty, delivering a solution that aligns up to $5 billion of capital to the insurance value chain behind a single leading insurer, and we're actively engaged with several others to help them expand and strengthen their capabilities to provide capacity for clients.

Our advisory capabilities around site selection, design and engineering as well as tremendous data and advanced analytics are critical to informing effective capital protection decisions in the face of extreme weather, supply chain and cyber risk. And while we're still in the very early days of this generational opportunity with data centers, we have some exciting wins under our belt, and our leadership in this space is another factor that supports sustainable organic revenue growth. It's also another impressive example of Aon innovating to solve client problems.

Third, talent continues to be a critical driver of our success and ability to achieve sustainable growth. Our client-centric strategy remains focused on attracting, developing and retaining top performers who see the value they can bring to clients and grow their business with our best-in-class analytics and capabilities. We continue to hire in high-growth priority areas and revenue-generating talent increased a net 6% this past year. We're also expanding with existing clients through Aon client leadership and seeing higher new business and better retention with ACL covered clients.

Finally, our capital position, which Edmund will detail further, puts us in a position of strength and flexibility. This year, we continue to generate strong free cash flow and further strengthened our capital position through disciplined portfolio management, including the sale of NFP Wealth. Our enhanced capital position will remain focused and balanced on investments in high-growth opportunities and capital return to maximize shareholder value.

In summary, as we head into 2026, the final year of our 3x 3 plan, we're well positioned to continue our strong execution. The 4 megatrends we've highlighted, trade, technology, weather and workforce are as relevant as ever. We're building momentum with clients as our globally connected team is equipped to deliver data-driven insights and better outcomes for our clients. At the same time, we're committed to delivering strong performance, including sustainable organic revenue growth, supported by our investments in ABS and talent. It's inspiring to see all that our colleagues have accomplished on behalf of our clients to achieve greater resilience and growth over the last year.

Our conviction and level of excitement as we execute our strategic vision has never been greater. Aon United is more than just delivering on our objectives in any given year. It's about delivering for our clients, colleagues and shareholders over the long term. And in an increasingly complex world, AON is better positioned than ever strategically, operationally and financially to achieve this mission. Finally, to our over 60,000 colleagues around the world, thank you. Thank you for your relentless commitment to our clients, each other and our Aon United strategy. Now let me turn the call over to Edmund for his comments and insight. Edmund?

Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. I am energized to be here discussing Q4 2025, a quarter that delivered results within our guidance expectations and capped off strong full year performance that continues to reflect our disciplined execution of the 3x3 plan, the power of our financial model and the momentum we have built across the firm even in this macro environment. Throughout the year, we've been focused on communicating our strategy and the consistency of our delivery. Our team is executing, and it is reflected in our results.

Before diving into the quarter's results and our outlook for 2026, I want to take a moment, consistent with how we frame this section each year. to underscore the core growth drivers that are underpinning our momentum. These drivers reflect the intentional choices we've made over the first 2 years of the 3 x 3 plan and are not only delivering in the current period, but also fortifying our ability to sustain performance through 2026 and beyond.

First, with 2 consecutive years of 6% organic revenue growth, we have more conviction than ever in our ability to deliver sustainable top line growth. This conviction is grounded in the strength of our 3x3 plan now in its maturity phase and in the deliberate investments we've made to support long-term growth. We continue to add revenue-generating talent, strengthen Aon client leadership and accelerate our presence in the middle market where demand signals remain robust and clients continue to benefit from our broad capabilities. These investments are contributing to top line growth today, and they have a cumulative and compounding impact that benefits the years ahead.

Second, we achieved critical milestones by integrating NFP and delivering double-digit free cash flow growth in 2025. These results are the product of disciplined prioritization and execution. And third, our strong operating cash generation, coupled with our disciplined portfolio management, including the sale of the NFP Wealth business, brings our total capital available in 2026 to $7 billion. This means that in addition to our organic revenue growth, we are in an even stronger position from which to execute our balanced capital allocation model, including the pursuit of high-return inorganic investments that amplify our organic growth momentum.

Overall, our performance this quarter and for the year demonstrates the power of our disciplined execution and the strength of the strategic choices we've made to drive the durable growth reflected in our results. With that context, let's turn to the detailed results. Our full year performance is right in line with our guidance for mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth, adjusted operating margin expansion, strong earnings and double-digit free cash flow growth.

Organic revenue growth was 6% and total revenue increased 9% year-over-year to $17 billion. Adjusted operating margin expanded by 90 basis points over last year and reached 32.4%. Adjusted EPS was $17.07, up 9% year-over-year. And finally, free cash flow increased 14% over 2024. For the fourth quarter, organic revenue growth was 5% and total revenue impacted by the wealth and Straws dispositions increased 4% year-over-year to $4.3 billion. Adjusted operating margin expanded by 220 basis points over last year and reached 35.5%. Adjusted EPS was up 10% to $4.85. And finally, free cash flow increased 16%.

Let's get into the details of these results, starting with organic revenue growth on Slide 6. Organic revenue growth was 5% in the quarter with both Commercial Risk and Reinsurance delivering 6% or better growth on the back of new business and continued strong retention. This performance reflects the importance of hiring in priority growth areas and the strength of our analytical and advisory capabilities, which are helping clients capitalize on favorable pricing conditions. In Commercial Risk, 6% growth reflected continued strength in our core P&C business globally, including strong growth in the U.S., EMEA and Latin America.

Additionally, construction delivered another quarter of double-digit growth driven by ongoing demand for large global infrastructure projects, including data center construction for major technology clients. I'll also note that while the lift from M&A services was modest, we remain well positioned in this space and expect M&A activities to support our mid-single-digit or greater growth as we enter 2026. Reinsurance delivered 8% growth, driven by double-digit growth in both insurance-linked securities and our strategy and technology group as well as continued strength in facultative placements.

Insurance-linked securities benefited from record cat bond issuances, which reached $59 billion outstanding as investors increasingly see uncorrelated asset classes. STG also saw elevated demand for our analytics, which help clients access alternative forms of capital. Looking ahead, our data indicates softer Jan 1 property renewals with rate declines of 15% to 20%. Even with this market headwind, we continue to expect full year 2026 organic revenue growth in line with our mid-single-digit or greater objective, supported by higher limits, ongoing strength in international facultative placements, record activity in insurance-linked securities and growing demand for STG analytics.

We are uniquely positioned at the intersection of insurance and capital markets, helping clients access alternative capital at scale. This positioning becomes even more valuable in a softer rate environment where innovation matters as much as price. Health Solutions grew 2% this quarter, and this growth reflects mid-single-digit growth in our core health and benefits offerings across the U.S. and EMEA, partially offset by delayed closed sales moving into Q1 '26 and slower discretionary spend in talent solutions. While consulting services in areas like talent may experience short-term deferrals, these needs are structural and demand typically rebalance as conditions normalize.

We continue to expect health to remain an area of strength and well within our mid-single-digit or greater objective. Wealth generated 2% growth, in line with the 1% to 2% we guided to last quarter. Performance for the quarter and the full year was led by strong advisory demand in the U.K. and EMEA related to ongoing regulatory change. Importantly, for the full year, all for of our solution lines were in line with our mid-single-digit or greater objective. Growth was broad-based with commercial risk and reinsurance at 6% and each of our human capital solutions delivering 5%.

Let me walk through the components of our Q4 organic revenue growth on Slide 7. We extended our consistent track record of strong new business generation in Q4. New business contributed 9 points to organic revenue growth, supported by steady new client acquisition and expanded mandates with existing clients. Our investment in revenue-generating talent particularly in high-growth sectors like construction and energy has supported the 10-point new business contribution to organic revenue growth for the year.

In 2025, despite intense competitive pressure for talent, revenue-generating hires were up 6%, firmly within our 4% to 8% objective. The 2024 and 2025 cohorts for tracking to similar seasoning curves for both incremental revenue and timing and together contributed approximately 50 basis points to 2025 organic revenue growth. We expect continued momentum in compounding benefit from the seasoning of the 2024 and 2025 cohorts. We plan to continue investing in growth and to expand this population by an additional 4% to 8% in 2026. And again, this is because we see specific opportunities in high-growth priority areas.

Q4 '25 retention remains strong at the mid-90s rate, supported by continued improvement in commercial risk and reinsurance. Increased engagement through our enterprise client group and enhanced service delivery from our ABS capabilities are playing a meaningful role in sustaining and strengthening client relationships. Net new business contributed 3 points to organic revenue growth in the quarter.

Net market impact, which captures the impact of rate and exposure contributed 1 point to organic revenue growth, consistent with each quarter this year, and within our 0 to 2-point estimated range. Reinsurance was down primarily from rate declines of 101 renewals, and that impact was offset by limit and coverage increases across cyber and commercial risk, supporting clients managing rising health care costs and health as well as rate benefits in wealth. And one final point on revenue. Fourth quarter fiduciary investment income was $63 million, down 17% versus the prior year as higher average balances were more than offset by lower interest rates.

Our full year 2025 results underscore why we have high conviction in our durable mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth model. we are executing on each component of the model. First, delivering 9 to 11 points of growth from new business. We delivered 10 points with significant contribution from our investment hires and NFP revenue synergies. Second, maintaining a mid-90s high retention rate, we improved 50 basis points over last year. Finally, achieving a 0 to 2-point net market contribution in this macro environment. We consistently delivered 1 point in each quarter this year.

Turning now to margins on Slide 8. Q4 adjusted operating income increased 11% to $1.5 billion and adjusted operating margin expanded 220 basis points to 35.5%. For the full year, adjusted operating margin was 32.4%, and we delivered 90 basis points of margin expansion. We continue to expand margins primarily due ABS-enabled scale improvements ongoing disciplined expense management, including the NFP OpEx synergies and the benefits from the restructuring initiative to accelerate our 3x3 plan.

We ended the year with $160 million in restructuring savings, $10 million ahead of our plan, supported by $50 million of savings in Q4. Restructuring savings contributed approximately 115 basis points to adjusted operating margin in Q4 and approximately 90 basis points of full year margin expansion. As we enter the final year of the accelerating Aon United AAU restructuring program, we have identified additional opportunity to accelerate the NFP integration into ABS, leveraging our global capability centers and deepening integration across our technology platforms.

We now expect to complete the AAU investment at $1.3 billion, and we are firmly on pace to deliver $450 million in total savings. We have used the AAU program to strengthen our foundation for ongoing margin expansion within our core business operations, and we have clear visibility to growth and higher profit margins driven by continued operating leverage through ABS.

Within the interest, other income and taxes on Slide 9. Interest income was $14 million in the fourth quarter and up $10 million over last year, driven by interest earned on proceeds from the sale of NFP Wealth. Interest expense came in at $191 million, $16 million lower than last year, primarily due to lower average debt balances. We expect Q1 '26 interest expense to be approximately $185 million. Other expense was $21 million compared to a $2 million benefit last year, driven by gains from balance sheet currency exposure gains from the divestment of our noncore personal lines business and our hedging program. We estimate Q1 '26 other expense to range between $20 million and $25 million. Finally, the Q4 tax rate was 20%, bringing the full year tax rate to 19.5%, 60 bps better than last year and in line with our estimate of 19.5% to 20.5%.

Turning now to free cash flow and capital allocation on Slide 10. We generated $1.3 billion of free cash flow in the fourth quarter, bringing our full year free cash flow to billion, an increase of 14% compared to 2024. As we expected, our double-digit free cash flow was driven by strong adjusted operating income including contributions from NFP as integration costs wound down.

Turning to capital on the right-hand side of the page, our strong free cash flow growth enabled us to continue to execute our capital allocation model. We paid down $1.9 billion of debt in 2025 and coupled with strong earnings growth lowered our leverage ratio to 2.9x. Both the level and the timing are consistent with the 2.8x to 3x Q4 2025 objective established when we announced the NFP acquisition, again, reflecting our disciplined execution. Additionally, we remained active in M&A.

Continuing our programmatic tuck-in acquisitions across high-growth priority areas, including middle market acquisitions through NFP, which required $42 million of EBITDA for the full year, in line with our expectations. And finally, in 2025, we returned $1.6 billion in capital to shareholders, including $1 billion in share repurchases. The strength of our results in 2025 and demonstrate commitment to our balanced capital allocation model, prioritizing our leverage objective, consistently growing the dividend and executing our disciplined approach to high-return M&A and capital return.

I will conclude my prepared remarks on Slide 11 with our 2026 guidance and some forward-looking perspective on our growth objectives. As we enter the final year of our 3x3 plan, the drivers of growth are stable, and we are executing on both our strategy and the financial model with precision. We carry substantial momentum in the 2026. And in summary, our full year '26 guidance includes mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth 70 to 80 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, strong adjusted EPS growth and double-digit free cash flow growth.

And let me walk through the key drivers of each guidance points starting first with organic revenue growth. We expect mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth, fueled by recurring new business wins with both existing and new clients, the compounding contribution from revenue-generating hires and priority areas and within the Enterprise Client Group in accretive growth in the middle market, including revenue synergies from MFP. We also expect continued mid-90s retention and 0 to 2 points from the net market impact which assumes we continue to offset rate pressure in property and treaty.

On adjusted operating margin, we expect 70 to 80 basis points of expansion driven by 3 key components: First, the impact of lower interest rates on investment income from fiduciary balances is expected to dilute margins by 20 basis points. Second, we expect $180 million in restructuring savings over '26 and '27, including additional savings from accelerating the NFP integration. From 2026, $100 million of savings will contribute approximately 50 basis points of margin expansion. Third and most important, we expect 40 to 50 basis points on margin expansion from the operating leverage in the scalable ABS platform.

Our ABS growth engine continues to deliver scale benefits, capacity for growth investments and margin expansion that drives earnings growth. Our expectations for mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth and 70 to 80 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, support a strong adjusted EPS growth outlook for 2026. I Embedded in this earnings guidance is a 2-point EPS tailwind from FX based on today's FX rates remaining stable, a 2-point headwind from the sale of the NFP wealth business, an expected tax rate of 19.5% to 20.5%, excluding any extraordinary discrete items and a noncash pension expense of $80 million.

Our financial model is built on sustainable top line growth, consistent strong earnings and reliably converting those earnings in the double-digit free cash flow growth. In 2026, we expect $4.3 billion of free cash flow generation from operating income and working capital improvements. The tax impact from the over $2 billion in proceeds generated from the NFP well sale will be reflected in operating cash flows and will reduce free cash flow by approximately $300 million prior to any benefit from the usage of those proceeds. Of course, with over $2 billion in proceeds we have significantly strengthened our capital position with approximately $7 billion of available capital and substantial strategic flexibility.

In 2026, we will remain committed to disciplined capital allocation, balancing investment for growth with capital return to shareholders. We plan to return at least $1 billion in share repurchases while continuing to evaluate our inorganic pipeline for high-margin, high-growth areas across risk capital and human capital. In closing, our performance in 2025 demonstrates the resilience of the firm and the precision with which we are managing the business, executing the 3x3 plan delivering on our financial model in allocating capital with a sharp focus on returns.

Our disciplined execution is evident in our organic revenue growth, margin expansion and enhanced earnings power. This consistency gives us confidence that what you're seeing today is not episodic. It is the result of our strategy and financial model producing durable outcomes and gives us even greater conviction in our ability to continue creating long-term value for shareholders.

So with that, let's open up the line for questions. Kevin, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Bob Wang from Morgan Stanley.

Congratulations on the quarter. Maybe if I can just ask a question to follow up on talent and retention in today's environment. Obviously, net hire has been a strength to your growth. But can you maybe give us a little bit more color in terms of what competition for Cal looks like today. Obviously, there are some brokers that are extremely aggressive out there, does that significantly impact you in terms of talent retention and hires especially in key growth areas like data centers, energy infrastructure, things of that nature. Just curious about attrition and retention and things of that nature.

Thanks for that question. I appreciate it. And I'll throw a couple of thoughts and Edmund jump on in here. First of all, for us, talent is fundamental. You know this, Bob, we've talked about this pretty much on every call. And what you see us doing is continue to invest not just in additional talent in priority areas. We've talked about construction and energy and health and mid-market and data centers, et cetera, but helping that talent be more effective. literally, the tour to force investment around Aon Business Services is really around content capability.

So not only our existing colleagues but new colleagues who come into the firm I have an opportunity to do things with clients they've never done before. As such, Bob, we are uniquely positioned to bring talent into the firm. That's why in the current environment, as Edmund described, we're well up on a net basis. from a talent standpoint. And we're going to continue to make investments to support our mission and our efforts here and look forward to it. And the reaction we're getting as colleagues come in is incredibly positive. But it's met and exceeded by the reaction of our existing colleagues who see the opportunity that we bring to their to their backdoor on be out clients that really no 1 else can bring.

So for us, it's always been competitive out there will continue to be, and we're going to enter the freight with a lot of confidence and excited on behalf of our colleagues and clients. But Edmund, what else would you add to that?

I'll just emphasize the 1 point that you have and then talk a little bit about the contribution on that point. I mean, clearly, it's an aggressive and competitive intense environment right now. And as you just said, Greg, our talent, the attractiveness of it. We're not immune to that. But the point you made about being up 6% net in revenue-generating hires for the year means that not only were we in line with our objectives, but we're on our front foot, and this continues to your point, to be a high area of focus for us right now.

I mentioned in the prepared remarks that the '24 and the '25 cohorts, 5 are contributing to strong growth contribution, and that means that the 24 cohort was right in line with what we guided to earlier. We said 30 to 35 basis points for the full year. They're tracking in line with that and so is the 25%. And that's showing up to your question in the priority areas, I mentioned double-digit growth in construction, strong growth in energy and in our core Health and Benefits business, also showing up a new business where we finished the year with 10 points of contribution from new business. Those things are being impacted by our hiring in those priority areas.

So we expect, again, to Greg's point, we have the capacity through ABS to continue making this investment. Our objective, again, going into '26 is another 4% to 8%. We're going to stay focused on creating this capacity, building the capabilities that Greg just mentioned to attract them and retain them. That's part of our strategy for growth moving forward.

Got it. I really appreciate that. It sounds like the talent is strong, benches in core areas. Maybe the other question is really on acquisition and inorganic growth. You're obviously very optimistic in the middle market environment. Just given the broader market volatility, pricing deceleration, do you foresee more attractive valuation for M&A? Or do you -- in other words, do you see more opportunities for organic growth? Or is it something that just given the current environment, how do you think about -- is there a way to think about it, are you stepping on the gas, so to speak? Or is it something more of its time to dial back a little bit on that side?

Well, let's first, just -- because this is an important question, and we should just take our time and make sure that we understand this just talk about the capital allocation first and maybe Greg and I both can make a comment on your question about valuations. But I think the first part is capital allocation. I just first need to reiterate that we are just really pleased First, with the free cash flow generation in '25 and then the execution of our capital allocation model over '25, paying down $2 billion of debt and meeting the leverage objective paying a dividend that was 10% higher, over $40 million to the question that you're asking of middle market acquired EBITDA, primarily through NFP and $1 billion in capital return versus share repurchases, that means we continue our track record of disciplined execution on this capital allocation model.

As we go into this new environment into 2026, we're focused on continuing that. The strong free cash flow generation and we're in a position of strength with $7 billion in available capital. So what does it look like? How do we allocate that? First, I think now that we've met the leverage objective focused on paying that again, increasing dividend. But M&A is going to be a key part of the capital allocation model.

As I said in the prepared remarks, it complements the organic revenue growth, and we've been a great acquirer. It is important to highlight the point we made at Investor Day that our acquisitions over the last decade have generated 12% of revenue growth after we've owned them for a year that the portfolio IRR of acquisitions over the last decade have been above 20%. And we continue to lead the industry in ROIC. So we evaluate opportunities for that strategic fit for that type of financial profile.

When we look at the environment, getting to your point now, getting to your question, the portfolio of pipeline opportunities to unlock growth. We've got a robust pipeline. But again, we're going to be focused on the high-margin, high-growth areas across both risk capital and human capital. We're going to continue to scale in middle market to NFP, particularly in North America commercial risk. And there are some geographic areas of priority for us where we think there's specific opportunities. So that will be a part of it. I think the market is attractive. We have a strong pipeline. But again, they have to meet the criteria financially and strategically.

And finally, I'll just say the share repurchases will continue to be a part of the balanced capital allocation model as well. We hit the commitment that we made for 2025 sitting here in January, we feel very comfortable about at least $1 billion in share repurchase says and any changes of that will be dependent on the pipeline opportunities, meeting the criteria that I just talked about. So we won't let any excess cash on the balance sheet. And all this, I would just say, is the continuation of our capital allocation model. That's about balancing investment for growth in capital return to shareholders. That's a discipline that we've had that I think benefit shareholders and allowed us to maintain industry-leading ROIC.

On valuations, I'll make my final point. I think there's always a lag. Sellers anchor and trailing EBITDA and prior transaction comps, so you don't necessarily see sort of lower valuations in this market right now. I think debt costs drives the lag here. The quality assets, the type of assets that we're looking at remain resilient. They're high growth, high-margin assets. So I think you see strong valuations there. The bid-ask spreads are changing in these markets.

But look, we will continue to have our criteria for assessment and evaluation and we'll make decisions for high return things that allow us to continue to leading ROIC. That's more of a comprehensive answer than you asked. So I think this is an important topic, and I wanted to hit on all of that.

Our next question today is coming from Elyse Greenspan from Wells Fargo.

I guess my first question, I'm going to follow up on Bob's question on capital, right? So Edwin, you outlined -- or you said you have $7 billion of total capital available in 26 the buyback was set at $1 billion. So I guess from a timing perspective, do you guys have line of sight on a deal or potentially deals for the first half of the year that will consume a lot of that $7 billion. And is that why you only expect to buy back the $1 billion?

Elyse, first, it's important to add 2 words before $1 billion, at least $1 billion. We want to have the strategic flexibility given the pipeline right now, there's not a specific deal or asset that we're looking at. We, as I just said, have a robust pipeline of opportunities in some of the spaces that we talked about. They have to meet the strategic criteria, they have to meet the financial criteria and we want to make that decision. We think that we've been very good at balancing the investments for inorganic growth and capital return. In fact, we put up a slide during Investor Day that showed roughly a 55-45 balance.

And ultimately, and over time, we expect to have a balance like that. So we want to make sure that we have the strategic flexibility to make the right decisions on behalf of the investors here. But Greg, let me let you comment on that.

Listen, I mean, I think you've covered it well, but at least, listen, answer to the prior question was really a layout of how we think about capital allocation. It's exactly consistent with what we've done historically. And the ethic around that is high. We went through all the different aspects. I would add on to that. we are so dedicated to actually generating capital that gets the maximum possible return to shareholders. We also executed a very the divestitures. NFD Wealth really required our NFP teams to come together.

Our Aon teams to come together. And in the context of bringing NFP into the hold, we actually executed a divestiture to generate additional capital so we prioritize what I'm trying to do here for you at least is highlight this is how strongly we feel about the principles that Edmond laid out. So we're essentially applying those in the current environment. The environment is moving around. It will be what it will be. but watch us do what we do. And that's another proof point on how focused we are on the highest possible return on capital allocation we can get.

And then my follow-up is on the data center opportunity. I appreciate some of the comments in the prepared remarks, but I guess I was hoping just give us a little bit more color how much of a contributor were data centers to organic in the Q4? And how would you expect, I guess, the tailwind from that opportunity to benefit your organic growth in 2026?

Well, first of all, Elyse, the data center opportunity, let me just offer a couple of thoughts, and Evan can really just talk about the mechanics of how we're thinking about it for '26 and '27. But remember, the data center opportunity, it is unique. It has never been seen before. It is monumental. It also requires a level of response and complexity that's beyond what the traditional industry has ever accomplished, just be clear about that. This requires real new net new innovation around alternative forms of capital, how we think about risk, how we pool risk all those pieces.

All I'm trying to highlight is -- and while I think we probably do 1/3 or more of the data centers that are out there now, we're incredibly well positioned, and we're having the dialogues no one else is having, but we're at the beginning of this process. So if you think about it, there are lots of data centers out there, thousands of them. But as we think about the build that's going on now, last week at Davos, this was one of the primary discussion points and it was really this in AI and how they fit together, this race is just beginning.

The opportunity is just beginning. So I would characterize it, Ed I want to get your input here as well. This is another proof point on both our ability to innovate and drive net new insight into the market. And second, it just reinforces mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth. That's really all we're trying to do. And so that's what I would factor in. It's another weight on the scale if you think about sort of what's going to drive that over time. And we'll see how it plays. But it's a unique opportunity, and we're very well positioned it. But Edmund what else would you add?

Great. You hit that so thoroughly. The only thing that I'll add is just backing it up to our commercial risk business, where we see this contribution showing up. We've now had for the year in commercial risk and 6% or better for the last 3 quarters, again, very much in line with what we've been talking about, and I highlighted earlier global strength in core P&C, the contribution from net new business retention, but the priority growth areas, construction, which is where we see our data center contributions show up being at a double-digit growth and contributing to that.

I think in addition to the innovation that you just mentioned on the data center, we also sort of have the tailwind some potential pickup in M&A to support that growth in commercial risk as well. So to your point, Greg, we just feel very much confident in the mid-single digit or greater growth for commercial risk that will be supported by us leading in this data center space.

Next question today is coming from Matthew Heimermann from Citigroup.

I wanted to follow up on your comment to that last question, Greg. And one of the things I'm trying to understand is, given there's a totally different set of constituents really driving a lot of this investment, I'm curious whether or not we should think about market share in this new opportunity correlating all the historical market share in historical data center builds.

Matthew, you love the question. Apologies. You're reflecting the overall integrated challenge here. And this is why, in some respects, it's so profound, but almost amusing on sort of how the different constituents now approach the market. Past is not prologue. This is net new innovation. By the way, the constituents here are the hyperscalers, they're the builders. They're the asset gatherers who want to create investment into this category. They're the banks who rice think they're doing primary credit sort of in the middle of all this.

There's an entire consistency that lays out here. And the response is, as we talk about mid-single digit or greater and Elyse's question is really around -- it isn't just commercial risk, it's reinsurance. It's why for us, Matthew, risk capital matters so much. As we described, this is -- we didn't show up and say, well, we need to cord so we can actually meet client demand here. We didn't just coordinate we changed structure, risk capital. It's connecting reinsurance into the commercial risk environment in a way that's never been connected before.

So for us, we don't take anything for granted. Our view is we need net new innovation. And no matter where we are in our current position, lean or not, this race is just beginning. It is not in mid-game, it's not in endgame. It's profound, but it is beginning. And so for us, our obligation on behalf of clients, all categories I just described is massively more innovation. This is why we -- I must say, you go back to 2023. We doubled down on an integrated AI embedded capability and we doubled down on risk capital and human capital. We changed the organization, and we applied it through Enterprise client. We did that 2.5 years ago.

In some respects, we're preparing for what we need now in order to deliver against this marketplace. So we're feeling good about that progress. It's one of the reasons we spent $1 billion to accelerate it. So for us, we like our position. We love the demand profile. We see opportunity that's very, very unique. We see a level of investment players who have capital that no one's ever seen before with an absolute focus to drive. So for us, we think this, by the way, is an industry opportunity. So it's not any one single player. The question is, can the industry respond and make a difference and be relevant. If our industry can respond and make a difference to be relevant, this is profound for everyone. And we certainly think if we can serve a primary role in the tip of the sphere here, we're thrilled to do it on behalf of our clients.

I guess relationships matter, too. So I'm just curious with respect to the M&A practice you have given the asset owners or financing parties, how big an advantage that is, if at all?

Listen, being able to sit down with the primary players here at the top of the house and help them understand that in the end, is it just brute force investment. This is very much around an integrated risk management strategy will change the economics of how these play out over time. beyond just the build, but also the operations. When you think about business interruption measured $1 million a minute now, there's a way to think about this differently and you have to think about it differently.

So you're right, being able to actually access the pivotal is fundamental. And we are in a very privileged position to do this. It's one of the aspects of our M&A services business and with financial sponsors that puts us in a unique position. In addition to the work we do with it scalers in addition to the work we do with the asset gatherers in addition to the work we do with the constructors, the builders because matting about it, they're in a very unique position. They're being called on to do things they've never done before, and they're being asked to take on risk on behalf of the scalers that is also uncomfortable.

So how one thinks about that risk management profile and how we deliver against it. And then remember, Matthew, this only matters if our analytics could convince capital to come in and buy down the volatility. Otherwise, we don't have a transaction. So we have to get the capital to work to do this. This is why in the end, this is tour to force analytics, the analyzers and the capability. It's tour to force reinsurance, access markets, and it's tour to force commercial risk.

And then to be clear, one other piece here I just have to throw in. And this is -- man, this is front and center at Davos last week. The human capital application of this is going to be massive. And everyone was is going to talk about AI and job reduction, we don't think about it that way. We think about it as how we amplify the capability we've got and help our clients navigate the path the from 2 on as you embed this kind of capability into their firms, not just hyperscale, we're talking about the users now. The human capital opportunity here, we think, is profound as well. So I know that's maybe more than you wanted, but we're pretty optimistic about this opportunity. And for Aon, certainly, but equally for our industry.

Your next question today is coming from Charles Lederer from BM Online.

Maybe I'll move off of data centers. Can you maybe put a finer point on the incremental opportunities you identified with the upsizing of the AU savings and with I guess what's the pacing of these savings? And how much of the 50 basis points you laid out for this year.

Well, maybe Charles, I just -- we do want to start with just maybe a quick overview but literally, the discipline at which we undertaken this is really sort of at the helm of admin, and I really want to describe exactly the discipline and the approach and the progress. But remember, let me provide a quick overview. What got us here? What drove this was our initial investment and incredible progress we've actually made so far against it. And now what we're talking about doing is taking this proven progress and applying it into the middle market. So that's in exactly the same time frame that we had before.

But remember, I alluded to it in the prior discussion with Matthew, what we did in '23 has made a decision to double down on AI business services connected to the rest of the firm. By the way, embedded in AI Business Services is an AI platform. I mean, I kid you not, literally on Monday, 2 days from now, we're literally going to show up in Orlando. There will be literally 1,600 clients and markets and the property suppose and casualty symposium of Aon. The entire world is going to shut down on property casualty for the most part for 3 days. And that will be driven by a set of analyzers and content and capability that's come out of the investment that we've made. That's why we're so excited about it, the power of it.

And now we see that opportunity. This is, by the way, an AI platform at scale globally that no one else has, we've spent 2.5 years working on that. And now we're going to finish in the third year. And what Edmund highlighted was in addition to what we've done in the core business and the work we began with NFP, the success of NFP for the last now coming on first full year of 2 years, 2.5 years in this effort together has truly proven the opportunity inside the middle market. We always had high expectations. Now we see them even greater than ever before. And that's what we're talking about the additional spend on in the current time frame.

But Edmund, how else would you describe it?

I mean I think the key -- I'm just excited about our opportunity here, what we've accomplished in the opportunity, Greg. The key is that we are staying consistent with completing the AAU program this year in 2026 and the savings have moved from $350 million to $450 million. And I said back, look, we started this program in 2023 when we announced it, and we've accomplished a lot. Mindy and I have both been talking about our applications going down 25% about the applications going into the cloud, 80% of them by the end of this year here. We now, to help drive revenue, have a full suite of analyzers in EMEA and U.S., given the investment that we've made as part of AAU. And we are continuing to move our colleagues but have 1/4 of them today in our global capability centers, standardizing our operations and creating operating leverage.

So -- and we knew that building this foundation was sort of a catalyst that allowed us to continue to bring on these middle market platforms. right, you know that me and the NFP team, we went to our global capability centers over the past months in many different countries. And the NFP team saw that they could standardize their operations to your specific questions, they can integrate their technology platforms and innovate and drive product development that was applicable to the middle market. given that we're so focused on this $31 billion middle market opportunity, we think this is a significant opportunity for us in Aon.

So as opposed to doing this over multiple years, we'll accelerate this into 2026, we'll see revenue growth and synergies from it. And it's all because ABS is the scalable foundation that enables us to do this and expand margins in the near term and over the medium and long term. So we're quite excited about this.

For my follow-up, this is dovetailed to that question and also sort of Elyse's capital question. On the free cash flow guide, you laid out you're committed to the $4.3 billion. You at Investor Day. I guess if I just look at the adjusted earnings growth, you're implicitly kind of forecasting in your guide and factoring in these upside costs and the tax payment, you mentioned on the NFT Wealth sale, can you help us think about the moving pieces, how you're going to get to that $4.3 billion in '26.

And to clarify, the $4.3 billion is prior to the tax impact from NFP Wealth is driven by the same items that have allowed us to drive double-digit free cash flow over the last 10 years to drive it in 2024 as well the operating cash flows that we have and the continued working capital improvement. And right now, what we're experiencing is the completion of the AAU program that we just talked about in the last question, and the wind down of the original integration costs that we have here.

So I think about going into 2026 with an outlook for double-digit free cash flow growth in line with our history. I think that's anchored in completing the restructuring program, including the acceleration of NFP, the operating income growth, the working capital improvements offset by the tax on the NFP wealth proceeds here. So that momentum going into '26 and confident in the double-digit growth for 2026.

Our final question today is coming from David Motemaden from Evercore ISI.

I also just wanted to clarify just on the $7 billion of available capital in 2026. Do you guys expect to deploy all of that in 2026? And then relatedly, in the past, you guys have given an acquired EBITDA target. Is that something you guys can share for 2026?

On the first 2 questions there, in terms of the deployment, of course, in that is the capacity that we have maintaining our leverage objectives as well. So if there's acquisition, of course, we would use debt capacity associated with that. But outside of it, we would either return just as we do each year any excess capital through share repurchases and not allow excess cash to be sitting on the balance sheet here, just as we've done in all the other -- in the past years. As we think about the pipeline of opportunities, again, we're very pleased with the $42 million in acquired EBITDA.

After selling NFP Wealth, we said $35 million to $40 million expectations for the year coming in at 42%. We feel very pleased with that. We have a pipeline in the desire for high capital deployment in NFP, but we'll continue to balance that with the other opportunities in the pipeline as well and think about using capital for the entire pipeline as opposed to just one component of the business, given that we have strong opportunities across all of risk capital in human capital.

We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

I think we are good. Thank you for joining us today. We're very excited for our results in 2025 and the momentum that we have going into 2026. I just want to end the call with exactly what Greg said an appreciation in the shelf to our over 60,000 colleagues around the world. We thank you for all that you're doing each day, and we look forward to going into 2026. With that, Kevin, I think we should end the call.

Certainly. That does conclude today's teleconference. Webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

All right. Well, I think we're just about at time here. So we'll get started. Very happy to be joined up here on stage with Edmund Reese, CFO of Aon. Thanks for joining us, Edmund.

Thank you for having me, Rob. It's always good to participate in this conference.

Yes. And so Edmund, maybe we just start off with some background. You've got some unique insights coming to Aon with a fresh perspective about 1.5 years ago. Can you give us some insight into where Aon's business stands today versus when you joined? And maybe just walk us through the key strategic priorities for the firm?

Yes. Yes. Remember, you're right, it was just about 1.5 years ago. I remember, I was coming in to Aon after we just exited the 20-year period of what I'd call financial outperformance. TSR was at 16%. That was above the S&P, that was above the industry. I met with a lot of investors as I was coming in the door. And I think investors were wondering if we were -- if we had reached an inflection point, and they wanted stronger conviction, I'd say, in 3 key areas. One was, were we going to be able to continue to drive organic revenue growth at industry levels; two, were we going to be able to continue to expand margins? And I'm sure we'll get into what our history has been there, but were we going to be able to continue to expand margins given our already industry-leading 32% margins; and three, were we going to see a capital -- see a return on our capital investment, our inorganic investment that still allowed us to be at industry-leading ROIC.

So we came out and had an Investor Day 6 months after I joined. It was the first one that we had in 2 decades. And the objective there was, first, to talk about how our 3x3 Plan because you asked about our strategic priorities, how our 3x3 Plan was helping to accelerate our Aon United growth strategy primarily in 3 areas: bringing together our content and capabilities, this is the strategy part; in risk capital, in human capital; enhancing our client-centric model, so expanding across geographies, expanding across solutions through Aon client leadership and Enterprise Client Group within that; and all of that being powered by ABS. That's the strategy. Those 3 items over 3 years, '24, '25 and '26. So you ask today, where are we and after sitting here?

Now I think we're past the strategy point. And the key word, the key discussion that I have with investors is execution. And I think we have been executing. '24 was 6% organic growth, 10% earnings growth. We're now 9 months into '25 and very similar results through 9 months, 6% and 9% on those 2 metrics, but very importantly, double-digit free cash flow growth. Again, we're 13% year-to-date, and we continue to have the active portfolio management. So that means that we are in a position of strength from a capital standpoint.

So when I think about that, I think that we are inflecting up in growth, delivering results today, but have a foundation that gives us momentum as we move forward here. So position of strong financial performance, but momentum executing on our strategy today.

That's super helpful. Thanks for all that background. If we could set the stage for the market environment, I know you guys talked about these 4 megatrends over the long term, it's trade, technology, weather and workforce, and you all outlined that very well. How does the current environment in 2026 fit into that? And are there any headwinds to capitalizing on those megatrends? Or is this full steam ahead?

Yes. The short answer would be full steam ahead, but a little context on it. Our corporate clients are facing increased complexity, increased volatility from these trends that you just talked about, the 4 megatrends, but more importantly, the interconnected risk and people challenges that are connected with those trends. There's interconnectivity there. And so they look to Aon with our data analytical capabilities to be able to provide solutions to help them protect and grow their businesses. And if you think about those trends, the extreme weather events continue. As an example, our insurance-linked securities business has nearly doubled this year. That's the business that captures like catastrophe bonds, which are up 20%, nearly a $54 billion market right now. We're the leader in catastrophe bonds. We have over 135 catastrophe models in 90 countries. So weather continues to be an issue that impacts our corporate clients here.

The technology boom with the AI boom within that, obviously, I'm sure we will talk about data centers. Everyone is asking about that. Our construction business has grown at a double-digit level over the last 3 quarters that captures like that data center, but we are seeing now, and I think as we look further out, increases in cybersecurity coverage, as you think about resiliency associated with it. The health care costs. Premiums for employees and employers have gone up over 4x over the last 5 years. Employees are spending nearly $7,000 in premiums, employers $20,000 per person they've gone up. And so our global scale and insights help corporations and clients with benefits, with health coverage to help them maintain their workforce.

And then I'm sure you -- I don't have to say anything about trade and the continued uncertainty in that environment, how that disrupts global supply chains and our supply diagnostics help with them. So look, the short answer is, those things continue to be -- drive complexity. We think our analytics capabilities help clients protect and grow their businesses. This is a $4.6 trillion industry right now. It's a great time to be in it as we use our capabilities to help clients and drive our revenue growth.

Great. And maybe somewhat related, but the market impact, I know since you joined the firm, you've been talking about the 0 to 2-point net market impact on growth. How should we be thinking about that going forward? Is there any differences between the Risk Capital and the Human Capital businesses when you think about that? And does a changing outlook on that potentially drive any difference in the sort of mid-single-digit or greater organic...

So that's a really relevant question. First, just to define for some of the folks in the audience who may not be as familiar. Risk Capital and Human Capital, just to be clear, those businesses, through the first 9 months, are growing well within that mid-single-digit or greater level of growth that we've been talking about. Risk Capital is 6% through the first 9 months, Human Capital is 5%. So we feel very confident in our performance there.

Your question is about net market impact, and to define that for the audience here, that is both the impact of pricing and exposures, pricing and exposures. And you rightfully pointed out that we guided at the beginning of the year to 0 to 2 points of contribution from the net impact of pricing and exposures. In every quarter throughout this year, it's been about a 1 point contribution. It was quite strong in Q3 as well. But your question astutely points out that Risk Capital, I would say, has had less of a contribution from the net market impact. If you think about the impact of 10% to 20% declines in price in property or you think about the treaty business being down 5% to 15% because it's reinsurance and commercial risk that make up that business.

So the contribution has still been positive, but just under 1 point from that. Human Capital, and as you think further because that's what your question is about, think further out, and of course, we'll give specific guidance at a later point. But as you think about Human Capital, the contribution has been greater, nearly 2 points as you continue to see medical cost increase, we help clients with that, as you continue to see us price for the value of our retirement solutions as well. It's wealth and health that make up that Human Capital business. And on the flip side, we have a client-centric model. So the reason why I think we will still be able to perform is because we are helping clients in this environment, in this pricing environment. We think it's an opportunity for our clients to future-proof their risk program. So that means more limit as the values at risk increase. That means more lines of coverage.

I just talked about cyber as another line of coverage. And we're also innovating. We came out earlier in this year. My IR team is here. I don't know if it was Q1 or Q2 when we introduced a stop-loss surge program really to help with cyber events that might go on over longer time periods and might hit multiple things. That was innovation in our space that clients are taking advantage of in this environment. We recently launched the data center life cycle program. And again, I'm sure we'll get into that. But those things are innovation that still allow us to be able to perform despite the net market impact and the pricing environment that we're in.

So we certainly feel comfortable in '25. And we'll give guidance on '24 as we get -- on '26 as we come to our Q4 call. But for me, I always bring it back to this, you and I have talked before. Your question is about net market impact. The thing -- the drivers of our growth have been new business. I've talked about a range of 9 to 11 points. We are at 11 points of contribution from new business over the past 2 quarters and retention has continued to hold up. We estimated that, we talked about at Investor Day, a 4% to 6% impact from retention, and we've continued to have our Enterprise Client Group and ABS increased service, strengthen the relationships. So those drivers of growth are strong. That's what gives us confidence in the mid-single-digit or greater growth that you're asking about here.

That's super helpful. And if we could think about just geographically, Aon is a global business. Your brokering insurance and advising clients globally. How do you think about the different areas around the globe right now? Are there any areas that you're particularly excited about or have unique opportunities?

Yes, I suspect you won't be fulfilled by my answer here. I mean we are operating in 120 different countries. So that means we're bringing our local expertise in those countries and combining it with our global capabilities. And you think about our business, all the geographies are performing well right now. The U.S. is up over 5%. Our international businesses are well. Both EMEA and LatAm are over 7% through the first 9 months of the year. So we feel good about the business globally.

If I were to highlight some pockets for you, in the U.S., the commercial P&C business, particularly in middle market, and we continue to drive organic and inorganic growth in that space, is a focus of ours. Global benefits in EMEA like France and Germany, we see a lot of activity in that space. Construction all over the globe, but I'll call out the Middle East is a place for us. The Japan market is opening up to moving from in-house to our carriers. We're partnering with firms to help our positioning in LatAm markets as well.

So that answer sort of signifies to you that the growth today is broad-based across our countries and solutions and the opportunity is broad-based across our solutions and countries, both inorganic and organic. So we're excited to be in this large and growing industry. We're expanding geographically. And again, that's what we think helps support our mid-single-digit or greater growth guidance here.

Sticking with the topic of growth, one thing Aon has been doing is investing in talent in key revenue-generating areas. Can you talk about the hiring trends? What type of strategic impact they're having in key focus markets? And how to think about it more quantitatively going forward?

Sure. Yes. The -- we've been focused -- you said an important thing in there on priority areas. We've been focused on areas that we think there is high client demand, that we think are growing faster than GDP and that we -- places where we think we have -- are well positioned to win and right to win. And when we think about our hiring, that's where it's been. So think things like infrastructure projects and construction an area of hiring, things like energy, that's renewables, that's oil and gas or fossil fuels, but also nuclear, as you think about things like powering data centers, hiring in that space. Also in health, I just talked a moment ago about our -- the global nature of our business helps multinational companies and global companies in their health. So our hiring has been focused in those priority areas because we think they outpace GDP growth. We think they're areas of high demand.

Without a doubt, you pick up the headlines on this industry and what's been going on, the competition on hiring has been increasing. I think it's always there, but as of late, it's been increasing. I still think Aon is on its front foot though. I communicated at Investor Day, increasing our revenue-generating hires by over 4%. Through the first 9 months of this year, we've increased by over 6%. So again, I think we're faring well. It's hard work day to day. I've mentioned 11 points of contribution from new business. I would say these hires focused on these priority areas are contributing to that new business growth. And to your point or question about quantifying it, we talked about the '24 cohort, that 4% increase contributing -- ramping up over time, but contributing 30 to 35 basis points to organic growth in 2025. And that was a ramp where the fourth quarter was over 40 to 45 basis points.

We now have the '25 cohort on, which has a modest contribution to '25 as well. But the cumulative impact of those hires, plus our continued focus on investing in talent, I think will continue to be a benefit for us as we move forward into '26. So we're a growth company. That means investing for that growth in talent and capabilities is where we're going to be focused. And that's how I think about quantifying it.

And then I think it's pretty similar, but you talked about construction and energy. I think those are 2 lines of business that might help you with the data center opportunity. Can we talk about data centers? And can you help contextualize the $10 billion premium number...

We got our CEO through the call is what you're referencing. Yes.

Yes. And the opportunity just for Aon specifically?

Yes. I mean we -- I think it's important to have the context that we've either advised or brokered capital on roughly 1/3 of U.S. data centers thus far. And when you think about data centers in the U.S., estimates vary, but think about 5,500 data centers in the U.S. today. They're just not fit for purpose when you think about AI. What needs to be in them aren't fit for purpose, and that means that companies are spending $400 billion to $500 billion today on infrastructure and construction of these data centers. And that number is estimated to be $2 trillion 5 years from now and just on the construction part and maybe another [ 5 ] show you when you think about the operations in the technology part.

So we have some expertise in this space given how we've been involved thus far. We have the engineering expertise. So that means we can help with what site, what's the design of that site? And as I mentioned earlier, we actually put in a facility recently called -- we call it the data center life cycle program facility. So that's helping with the construction component of it, so think builders risk or delay in start-up. That's helping with the operations part of it, so think general liability. That's helping with the resiliency component of it, so cyber as well.

So the $10 billion number, I just gave you a sense about what we think our share has been thus far, and you can estimate a premium, a fee or a yield on that amount, and we think we're going to be strong participants. And the key point for me though is that this data center opportunity is just another one of those places where Aon has the expertise and is leading in providing the facilities to help clients, no different from pooled employer plans, where we're leading and brought that to the table, no different from master trust. These are areas where our analytics, our capabilities and expertise and experience allow us to lead for the industry, bring in new sources of capital and ideas to help transfer risk.

And by the way, these are large construction -- these are large numbers. So the risk cannot be concentrated. So the need to be able to bring in alternate sources of capital, reinsurance and alternate sources of capital, that's an area where we've been focused and we think we excel as well. So again, it's another one of these spaces where we think we have an advantage and will help support our mid-single-digit or greater growth.

Yes. It's a super interesting space. How about something you guys talked a lot about more at your Investor Day, about the Enterprise Client Group. I wanted to ask about the expansion there, and I think it focuses on some of your largest clients. Can you talk about how that model differentiates Aon from competitors? And what are you seeing from benefits from that model?

I'll hit the differentiation point first. I'd call it Aon client leadership of which Enterprise Client Group is a component of it. We have enterprise clients. We have large clients, middle-market clients, et cetera. So Enterprise Client Group is a component of our Aon client leadership. But the differentiating point is the fact that it is a client-centric model instead of a broker-centric model. That means you're bringing -- your going to the client as opposed to the client trying to find who in Aon they need to talk to. You're going to the client and bringing the integrated solutions across the entire workspace as opposed to having a siloed and transactional conversation broker to clients here. You need both of those things.

If you have Aon client leadership, that means you have more client loyalty because they have more solutions, and likely higher lifetime value from the clients as well. So this point about differentiation, I think, is probably unique for this industry, not unique for other industries, but we've had great success. We see the success in the second part of your question.

When you think about our Enterprise Client Group in '24, we've seen 97% retention. We've seen those clients have over 2.5x the number of products and solutions that nonenterprise clients have. We've seen growth across the geographies they hold. 50% of their revenue is international. And we've seen the contribution to new business from existing clients because new business is from existing clients and new clients from ECG increase year-over-year. So there's no doubt that we are seeing tangible economic benefit from having this as a part of the 3x3 Plan, and we're driving it. We're looking to scale it. Anne Corona came up on stage, the person who leads that for us, during Investor Day and saying that we are looking to expand our Aon client leaders across the 500 enterprise clients and the next 1,500 large clients as well. And we want to go as fast as possible on that.

The thing is hiring the right client leaders who know the business and training them to know all of our solutions because we see the types of benefits that I just mentioned there.

How about artificial intelligence. Aon has, I think, a significant amount of data you've been collecting for years, supported by Aon Business Services. Can you talk about the revenue and expense opportunities you're seeing from leveraging AI? And what's the magnitude of investment?

Yes. So I've heard this question. My view, Rob, as the CFO of the company, I don't view AI as like a separate line item or a high-risk bet in the corner of the room. For us, we are embedding AI into all of our solutions, and I'll talk a little bit about it. And so that means it's embedded in our CapEx, which -- look at the financial statements, and you'd see it has been roughly 1.5% to 2% of our revenue. It's embedded in our tech development as well because we embed AI at scale across our suite of analyzers, the model risk, the model volatility and determine how much you should retain versus transfer. And when we evaluate those analyzers, the contribution to revenue growth, the products themselves, the AI analysis is embedded in that.

We also think that there's a margin opportunity associated with it as we embedded across our back office workflows -- our back office and our workflows, things like Aon Broker Copilot, our proprietary Copilot, the Bloomberg for insurance, I would say, as you think about the data that we see on pricing in that system, or as we embedded in things like claims or policy management or certificates of insurance. And in fact, I talked at Investor Day about having 5% to 10% productivity improvement from back office workflow and co-development as well.

So look, I think with our bespoke data, reinsurance and commercial risk data, human capital data with over 40 million in our database, with no silos cut across our geographies, we think we embed AI at scale and that differentiates us in terms of players in the insurance brokerage industry here.

Maybe that's a good segue into margin discussion. You've got guidance about, I think it adds up to 80, 90 basis points of overall margin expansion this year, and you all highlighted at Investor Day, 70 to 100 basis points of ongoing adjusted operating margin expansion. Is that the right way we should be thinking about the next couple of years? And can you kind of walk us through the core building blocks?

The answer is yes, and I'll walk you through the building blocks. And I'll give you a little bit more context. So we just had 120 basis points per year of average margin expansion through the 10 years through '24. '24 itself, against the adjusted NFP baseline, 90 basis points in this year to the point that you just made, 80 to 90 basis points, as you said, is the expectation. So we have a long history of being able to drive margin expansion.

It is important to note, though, that we see margin expansion not as the end, but justification for what we're trying to drive, which is strong earnings growth that we can translate into free -- double-digit free cash flow growth. And we think we now have, through Aon business services, a foundation in place that when our organic revenue growth is over 4%, it allows us to receive scale benefits. And I talked about some of those scale benefits at Investor Day like reducing our applications, like moving to the cloud. And importantly, and as we think out into the future, continuing to move to our target operating model into global capability centers and doing that offshore in ABS. And we quantified that as we thought about this overall 70 to 100 basis points. We said that would drive 100 to 120 basis points is sort of step 1 of our model.

The second component of it is we talk about these building blocks is what I would just call the ongoing expense discipline and management. And I highlighted items like the 16% reduction that we've had since the beginning of the 3x3 Plan in real estate, or savings from managing our supplier management program, those things collectively have contributed, and we think on an ongoing basis, should contribute 10 to 20 basis points more. So that's 100 to 120, 10 to 20 from that. We continue to manage the portfolio, things that we may need to dispose of so that we become a higher growth, higher margin business. The impact of that has been 0 to 10 basis points. You add that up, and the important point is that we have capacity to invest in the business 40 to 60 basis points. And all of those numbers, the net of all of those numbers is 70 to 100 basis points.

So we do have margin expansion. So that means that the scale in our business gives us the capacity to invest in medium- and long-term growth, investment capacity for medium, long-term growth, that's the flywheel, that's the growth engine that we're after. And we think we have a long runway to be able to continue at those levels given where we are. It's early innings for the movement in ABS.

And you mentioned the double-digit free cash flow growth there. I know you've recently announced NFP Wealth deal. How should we just overall be thinking about the trajectory of free cash flow? You also have, I think, restructuring spending winding down. So what's the trajectory look like?

I mean we committed to '25 being double-digit free cash flow and the 3-year double-digit CAGR from '24 through '26 as well, and we're right on track for that. '25 is 13% year-to-date. I might have said that earlier. And the drivers of that -- we're in a strong position for free cash flow. The drivers are our continued strong operating income performance, so that includes NFP. We continuously push on days -- DSO and day sales outstanding in our supplier program that drives working capital improvements for us. And we're now starting to complete the integration of NFP, so transaction and integration costs that impacted '24 free cash flow is winding down, and to your point, going into '26 is our final year of the accelerating Aon United restructuring program.

So to your point, we have line of sight on the conclusion of that as well. And so double digit in '25 is right in line of sight. We'll be specific about '26 as we again come on to the Q4 call, but the drivers of double-digit free cash flow are very clear to us as those items.

And I did want to touch on NFP, which you mentioned there. Can you just talk about the strategic rationale of that deal and sort of the early results that you've seen? And maybe more specifically, I think you guys talked about a 50-basis-point revenue synergy going forward on an annual basis or so. Is that still all on track?

Yes, it's on track. And at the very beginning of the conversation here, I talked about the return on our capital as being an area where investors wanted more conviction. One of the first priorities that I had, and I've shared this with many of the investors in the room, I used these words, was reunderwriting the NFP acquisition. And there's no doubt in my mind that Aon made the right decision to get into this fast-growing $31 billion middle market space. To be able to combine our capabilities with the NFP distribution is a smart call for us. And as I think about the financial commitments, I -- you're asking about revenue synergies. We committed to $80 million in '25, $175 million by '26 in OpEx as well, I'd add to that at $30 million and $50 million for those 2 time periods. Those things are on track. But I'd normally begin the answer to this question with what's really important, and that's producer retention.

The engagement from these producers from the sales force because of the access to the capabilities and their synergies has been beyond expectations, beyond what was happening in terms of retention prior to the acquisition as well. So we feel very good about the financial performance of the business. And we feel very good about the acquisition as well, the continued tuck-in acquisition where we did $36 million last year and are already up $32 million through 9 months this year as well. So I think about NFP and the engagement from the producers, the integration, the financial performance and the acquisition are all performing well.

What we're focused on right now is -- I was actually in India 2 or 3 weeks ago and the NFP team was there with me. So we think there's opportunity to move even faster and move more into our ABS target operating model, and that's what we're assessing as we close out the year right now. And by the way, I will say that it sets us up for a comprehensive middle-market strategy. Having globally consistent technology platforms and policy management systems in ABS right now gives us the scale to look at middle market and do it in a way that doesn't dilute our margins and still allows us to have the type of growth that we've had.

I think we're coming up on time here, but maybe just to ask you, finish up with capital management. I think at Investor Day, you all highlighted a pretty strong number for capital available for M&A and share repurchases in 2026. Since then, you've closed the sale of the majority of the NFP Wealth business. So how are you thinking about balancing the capital deployment priorities?

The important -- the number that we said during Investor Day available for those 2 items, M&A and share repurchases, is $5.6 billion at that time. And we announced, obviously, with the NFP Wealth sale proceeds over $2 billion as well. So needless to say that we are in a position of capital strength with flexibility to execute our capital allocation model. And you know the priorities right now is to get the debt leverage back down to levels that we think are acceptable and that we committed to prior to the acquisition 2.8 to 3x by the end of this year. We're at 3.2 at the end of Q3. We've again increased the dividend. We're doing the tuck-in acquisitions through NFP. And we have flexibility to look at acquisitions if they meet our strategic criteria. During Investor Day, I talked about IRRs above 20% still getting to industry-leading ROICs. So they have to meet the strategic criteria. They need to meet the financial criteria as well.

If not, we will continue to return capital to shareholders. We've returned $750 million in share repurchases alone this year. So right on track for the $1 billion commitment that we've had, $1.4 billion, I think, including the dividends in it. So for us, it's all about balancing investment for growth with capital returned to shareholders. That's been quite balanced for us when you look across our history, and we're even more diligent about it as we move forward in the strong position that we're in.

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing all your insights, Edmund.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon plc's Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time.

It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. For information concerning these risk factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent quarterly or annual SEC filings, all of which are available on our website. Now it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon plc.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. I'm joined today by Edmund Reese, our CFO. The financial presentation, which Edmond will reference in his remarks is posted on our website. To begin today, we want to recognize the great trauma and suffering resulting from Hurricane Melissa.

We're thinking about everyone affected by this terrible catastrophe, and we feel very, very humble and hopeful, but the work Aon undertook with the World Bank to arrange a cap on for the government of Jamaica will accelerate in support recovery. .

Turning now to AOP. Our third quarter results reflect another quarter defined by continued acceleration of our Aon United strategy, great progress executing on our 3x3 plan and financial model and ongoing momentum as we head into the final months of the year. Our focus on execution is translating into value delivery to our clients, while at the same time producing results for our firm and strong financial performance.

We're winning more in the core by deepening relationships with existing clients through data-led solutions, capturing demand in existing markets by developing new capabilities for emerging risks and creating demand in new categories by innovating unique capital solutions. And we're strengthening our clients' insurance programs to ensure they are positioned well for the future with enhanced coverage and limits. Let's start with a look at our third quarter highlights. We delivered another strong quarter of financial results. highlighted by 7% organic revenue growth, a 26.3% adjusted operating margin and 12% adjusted EPS growth, which keeps us on track to achieve our full year objectives. Our continued success in winning new business and deepening client relationships reflects the strength of our risk capital and human capital capabilities powered by ABS.

Simply put, our analytic capabilities enable smarter and faster decisions for clients, which when coupled with our advisory expertise, helps clients capture greater opportunity. And while any firm can point to client wins, 2 highlights from this quarter truly demonstrate the impact of our differentiated strategy. The first example demonstrates how our advanced analytic capabilities were critical in securing our appointment as the captive insurance partner for a leading global logistics company. replacing a competitive relationship that span decades.

Our ability to deliver global expertise with local leadership provided the client with relevant insights into captive management and the risk capital structure, making Aon the clear choice. And as an example, by demonstrating our distinctive client service and enterprise mindset to the enterprise client group, we not only retained but expanded our benefits work with a long-standing financial services client in an intensely competitive process.

We leverage deep industry knowledge and governance, risk management and employee experience. And this resulted in securing global benefits across new, existing geographies, U.S. H&B and Total Benefits Administration. Our proactive approach combining innovation, analytics and advisory continues to deliver measurable impact and position us for sustained success as our solutions have never been more relevant for clients.

Our latest 2025 Global Risk Management survey revealed a significant shift in the risk landscape and how decision-makers are thinking about risk. Trade and geopolitical volatility entered the top 10 global risk for the first time in nearly 2 decades, reflecting growing global uncertainty.

At the same time, climate risk and natural disasters also reached their highest ever rankings, underscoring the need of resilience in a world where severe weather events are driving up costs. and workforce-related risks continue to have a growing impact on how employers manage affordability, access and productivity. In addition, investments in AI are surge in demand for cloud infrastructure and are fueling unprecedented investment in data center construction with CapEx estimated to exceed $2 trillion globally over the next several years. These technological developments are not only reshaping physical infrastructure but also amplifying cyber and operational risk.

Active risk management in this area has become a strategic necessity and traditional approaches alone unsufficient to cover this risk. With connected risk capital and human capital capabilities we're truly uniquely positioned to guide clients through a complex environment, access capital, unlock value and build resilience. As we review our performance this quarter, several strategic milestones demonstrate progress on our 3x3 plan. These achievements are the direct result of our team's dedication, collaboration and focus on advancing priorities.

First, Talent remains a significant driver of sustained growth. And the competitive environment for attracting and retaining top performance is as intense as ever. No company is immune, which makes it essential to stay focused and deliberate in our approach. In this environment, our platform is a unique advantage in attracting talent and helping client-facing talent win more business and retain clients, especially in priority areas like construction, energy and health.

Revenue-generating talent is up 6% net year-to-date, reflecting our strong position and differentiated capabilities. We have a great team, and we remain focused on continuing to strengthen it. Second, our enhanced capital strength gives us greater flexibility to execute our capital allocation strategy with discipline and precision. We divested the NFP Wealth business, an asset better suited to an owner prepared to make the capital investment required for long-term growth.

At the same time, we remain highly committed to our core wealth and retirement offerings, which represent key components of our human capital value proposition. Also during the quarter, NFP closed more than $10 million in acquired EBITDA as part of programmatic M&A. We have a great pipeline of high-return middle market opportunities and our improved capital position reinforces our commitment to long-term strategic investment and shareholder returns. And finally, equipped with better data and analytics built from years of investment. We're mobilizing capital into the industry, particularly to address the rapid expansion of data center construction driven by AI and cloud infrastructure adoption.

As highlighted earlier, the opportunity here is monumental. Data center CapEx increased 50% in 2024 and is expected to increase significantly over the next several years as trillions of dollars of CapEx go into the construction of these facilities. Near term, we estimate data center demand could generate over $10 billion in new premium volume in 2026 alone.

Our globally aligned risk capital and human capital teams are helping clients navigate this transformation and support stakeholders across the value chain, from technology companies to contractors and operators to capital providers, each with unique insurance needs, given the role in the data center development. While still early days, we're excited by the specific accomplishments that showcase our ability to help clients navigate this transformational opportunity. We recently became the risk partner for a leading global engineering focus insurer with a mission to work with them to build significantly greater level of insurance capacity. This work complements the launch of our data center life cycle insurance program a proprietary multiline insurance facility that consolidates coverage for construction, cargo, cyber and operational exposures and offers clients end-to-end risk management and insurance solutions.

We're also working to support resilient design and engineering from the outset of these projects to optimize the industry's ability to provide the limits necessary for hyperscaler data center development and management of accumulation risk. Another example of our global distribution analytics and expertise in both traditional and alternative risk transfer is already delivering results is a recent client win or replaced nearly $30 billion in coverage for a top global hyperscaler data center developer for operational data centers and data centers under construction.

And this is just the beginning. Overall, we accomplished a lot this quarter, and there's a lot to be energized by going forward. Our results and the momentum we have going into the final months of the year give us confidence in reaffirming our 2025 guidance. Let me conclude with 2 points. First, our -- and United strategy accelerated through the 3x3 plan and the strength of our financial model are generating strong results today and building momentum for future success. Our unique capabilities and integrated solutions have never been more relevant to clients as we help them reduce volatility, protect their assets and grow their businesses.

We're attracting exceptional talent to strengthen our great team. delivering innovative new solutions with unmatched data and insights and building and deepening client relationships. And we're winning more in core markets, capturing new demand in existing markets and creating new demand in new categories.

And finally and most important, to our over 60,000 colleagues around the world, thank you. Thank you for your commitment to our clients, to each other and to our Aon United strategy. Your dedication is the driving force of our firm.

Now let me turn the call over to Edmund for his resections on the quarter and outlook for the year. Edmun?

Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here to discuss our third quarter results, which marked another quarter of disciplined execution on our 3x3 plan and financial model. To frame our discussion, let me highlight the most important factors shaping our third quarter performance. First, our Q3 performance demonstrates continued momentum across the key drivers of sustainable top line growth.

Our investment in revenue-generating talent enhanced by ABS and our continued expansion in the middle market is translating into strong organic growth. Organic revenue growth of 7% in Q3 serves as another proof point in our ability to execute on each of these drivers, keeping us in line with or ahead of industry performance.

Second, we continue to deliver scale improvements in operating leverage through ABS while also investing in talent and capabilities that deepen client engagement and drive new business. We again delivered in Q3, expanding margins over 100 basis points and increasing our revenue-generating hires by 6%. Third, our enhanced earnings power disciplined portfolio management and strong free cash flow generation, up 13% in the quarter have strengthened our capital position. Through 3 quarters in 2025, we have reduce debt and remain on track to achieve our leverage objectives, closed $32 million in EBITDA from Middle acquisition, and returned $1.2 billion in capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Our strong capital position empowers us to pursue high-return inorganic investments further accelerating and supplementing our organic growth momentum.

Collectively, these 3 components: momentum on the growth drivers, accelerated scale benefits through ABS and a robust capital position are delivering growth today and setting the foundation for future performance. We continue to invest in capabilities and innovate capital solutions that create even greater value for our clients. And this gives us confidence not only in achieving our 2025 guidance but also in the upside potential of sustaining top line growth and delivering double-digit free cash flow beyond 2025.

Turning to the quarter's results. Organic revenue growth was 7% and total revenue increased 7% year-over-year to $4 billion. Adjusted operating margin expanded by 170 basis points over last year and reached 26.3%. Adjusted EPS was $3.05, and finally, free cash flow increased 13%. Let's get into the details of these results, starting with organic revenue growth on Slide 6. Organic revenue growth was 7% in the quarter, in line with our mid-single digit or greater guidance range. Growth was broad-based, 5% or better in each solution line with 2 of our solution lines delivering 7% or greater, a strong result achieved despite pricing pressure in certain products and geographies, underscoring the contribution from new business and continued high retention.

In commercial risk, 7% organic revenue growth reflected strong performance in our core P&C business globally, including double-digit growth in the U.S. with meaningful contribution from the middle market through NFP and continued strength in EMEA. M&A services continued to grow at a double-digit level, and this contribution provided an incremental lift. Construction also delivered double-digit growth. driven by demand from large-scale global infrastructure projects, including data center builds for major tech companies, reinforcing this category as a strategic priority.

Reinsurance delivered 8% growth driven by treaty placements and double-digit growth in facultative placements and the Strategy and Technology group. Insurance-linked securities also had significant growth, but off a smaller baseline. While July 1 treaty property renewal rates were softer, this was balanced by higher limits and ongoing strength in international facultative markets, especially in EMEA. Demand for STG analytics remain high, underscoring our platform's increasing importance in supporting clients as they navigate volatility and match capital to risk. Health Solutions grew 6% this quarter, befitting from data analytics-driven sales in our talent business and new business in our core health and benefits offerings across the U.S. and EMEA.

As Greg mentioned, we continue to leverage our analytics and advisory capabilities to support employers as they navigate rising health care costs and achieve better outcomes for their workforces. And finally, wealth generated 5% growth. The performance reflects strength in advisory work in the U.K. and EMEA related to ongoing regulatory change, partially offset by softer advisory demand in the U.S. Additionally, the NFP contribution was meaningful, driven by asset inflows and market performance.

Importantly, for modeling purposes, I will add that we expect wealth growth in Q4 to be 1% to 2%, impacted by delays in U.S. advisory work and the sale of the faster-growing MFP Wealth business, which closed yesterday. Let me take a moment to walk through the key components of our Q3 organic revenue growth on Slide 7. In Q3, we extended our consistent track record of strong new business generation to drive organic growth. For the second consecutive quarter, new business contributed 11 points to organic revenue growth with balanced contributions from both expansion with existing clients and new client wins. Our investments in revenue-generating talent, particularly in high-growth sectors like construction and energy continue to deliver measurable impact. We remain proactive and on the front split in attracting top talent. Our revenue-generating hires are up 6% year-to-date.

Importantly, we're already seeing these new colleagues make contributions to new business growth. As the 2024 hiring cohort continues to ramp, we are confident this group will contribute 30 to 35 basis points to full year organic revenue growth, leveraging advanced analytics and client engagement tools through Aon Business Services. The 11-point contribution from new business this quarter underscores the effectiveness of our investment in client-facing talent, and we expect continued momentum as the 2024 cohort seasons and the 2025 hires continue to on board. Q3 25 retention remained strong year-over-year, reflecting the continued strength and stability of our client relationships supported by investments in enhanced service delivery, innovative capabilities and Aon client leadership.

Net new business contributed 5 points to organic revenue growth in the quarter. net market impact, which captures the impact of rate and exposure contributed just over 1 point to organic revenue growth, consistent with our 0 to 2-point estimated range. rate pressure on property within commercial risk was offset with limit and coverage increases across cyber and other financial lines. Reinsurance net market impact was flat as rate declines and higher retentions were mitigated by increased limits and facultative growth. Health Solutions continued to benefit from our ability to support clients managing rising health care costs, providing a significant contribution to net market impact.

And one final point on revenue Third quarter fiduciary investment income was $75 million, down 12% versus the prior year. While average balances increase, lower interest rates more than offset that benefit. On Slide 8, adjusted operating income increased 15% to $1.1 billion and adjusted operating margin expanded 170 basis points to 26.3%. These results reflect strong top line growth and the operating leverage in our business, powered by ABS, giving us capacity to fund growth investments in client-facing talent and middle market while still expanding margins.

When we provided full year guidance, we highlighted 4 components that would impact 2025 margin expansion. NFP, fiduciary investment income, restructuring and operating leverage, all 4 remain fully in line with our expectations. We have now fully lapped the headwind on margin from NFP, and we are on track to meet our $30 million OpEx synergies target, resulting in a net 20 basis point headwind from NFP for the year. while the outlook for U.S. interest rate cuts has shifted from 2 at the start of the year to 3 in the latest top plot, the delayed timing of the first rate cut from June to September effectively offsets the additional reduction in the margin impact from fiduciary investment income remains unchanged at 20 basis points.

Restructuring savings totaled $35 million in the quarter contributing approximately 90 basis points to adjusted operating margin. We remain firmly on track to deliver $150 million in restructuring saves for the full year. and advancing toward our $350 million run rate savings target by 2026. With ABS driven scale improvements and strong execution year-to-date, we remain confident in delivering full year margin expansion of 80 to 90 basis points aligned with our long-term financial model. Moving to interest, other income and taxes on Slide 9. Interest income was negligible in the third quarter and $4 million lower than last year. Interest expense came in at $206 million, $7 million lower than last year, primarily due to lower average debt balances. We expect Q4 interest expense to be approximately $200 million. Other expense was $13 million versus a $33 million benefit in Q3 '24, which included gains from the divestment of [indiscernible] lines and real estate advisory assets partially offset by the remeasurement of balance sheet items in nonfunctional currencies.

We estimate Q4 '25 other expense to range between $25 million and $30 million. And finally, the Q3 tax rate was 19.2%. Our full year tax outlook remains unchanged at 19.5% to 20.5%. Turning now to free cash flow and capital allocation on Slide 10. We generated $1.1 billion of free cash flow in the third quarter. And year-to-date, free cash flow of $1.9 billion is up 13% year-over-year.

As we complete the NFP integration, we continue to expect strong adjusted operating income, including contributions from NFP and ongoing working capital improvements to drive double-digit free cash flow growth in 2025. And turning to capital on the right-hand side of the page. I noted earlier that we closed the sale of NFP Wealth. And with over $2 billion in proceeds, the transaction significantly strengthens our capital position and we approach the final months of the year in an even greater position of capital strength with enhanced flexibility.

Importantly, we remain disciplined in allocating capital, balancing opportunities that meet our strategic and financial growth priorities with capital return to shareholders. This discipline reinforces our commitment to creating long-term shareholder value. And we continue to execute our capital allocation model in Q3 '25.

We reduced our leverage ratio to 3.2x in Q3, remaining on track to reach 2.8x 3.0x by the fourth quarter of 2025, consistent with our stated objective. We continued our programmatic tuck-in acquisitions, including middle market deals through MFP. Through 9 months, NFP has closed $32 million of EBITDA. And following the NFP wealth sale, we expect to close $35 million to $40 million in acquired EBITDA by year-end. The pipeline remains strong primarily composed of U.S. P&C opportunities. And finally, we returned $411 million to shareholders in the quarter, including $250 million in share repurchases. With $750 million repurchased year-to-date, we remain on track for $1 billion in capital return through share repurchases for full year 2025. I enabled by our high free cash flow generation.

These actions demonstrate our disciplined capital allocation, reducing leverage, investing in high-return growth opportunities in delivering meaningful capital return to shareholders. I will conclude my prepared remarks on Slide 11 with our 2025 guidance and some forward-looking perspective on our growth objectives.

We are reaffirming our full year 2025 guidance, including organic revenue growth, mid-single digit or greater capturing the impact of our growth investments. Second, margin expansion, 80 to 90 basis points, including $260 million in cumulative annual savings from our Aon United restructuring initiative. Next, strong earnings growth, supported by the scale improvements from ABS. I'll also note 2 additional points related to earnings. First, the sale of NFP Wealth is expected to have an immaterial impact on 2025 earnings growth. Second, we continue to expect an effective tax rate of 19.5% to 20.5% for the full year.

For modeling purposes, we are estimating 7% to 9% adjusted EPS growth in Q4 '25. Finally, free cash flow. Double-digit growth in 2025, demonstrating our ability to consistently convert our strong earnings into capital for investment and shareholder return. We entered the final stretch of the year with strong momentum, executing our 3x3 plan and financial model to deliver results today.

At the same time, scale improvements enabled by ABS, the cumulative impact of our growth investments and our capital capacity are strengthening the foundation for future performance, positioning us for sustainable top line growth and consistently strong earnings growth. This powerful combination gives us high conviction in our ability to create long-term value for shareholders. So with that, let's open the line for questions.

Darryl, I'll turn it back to you.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first questions come from the line of Robert Cox with Goldman Sachs.

Just first question on talent. The revenue-generating hires were up 6%, and it sounds like you're executing on that 40 basis points contribution to organic growth during the back half of the year. if we start thinking about stacking the benefits from the 2024 hiring in 2025 cohorts, does that get us to something like roughly 80 basis points in 2026?

Rob, thank you for the question. Well, before even getting directly to the answer, the first thing, and Greg may comment on this is that you see the headlines across our industry. It's clear that competitors are aggressive in their recruiting efforts. And given the expertise and attractiveness of our talent, we're not immune to that. So we continue to be super high focused on the investments right now.

And as I said in my prepared remarks, I think we're on the right. But through 9 months, 6% increase in revenue-generating hires. That's right in line with the 4% to 8% that we communicated during investment days. And to your question, they are contributing right in line with our expectations on the full year 30 to 35 basis points there will be a cumulative impact when these 24 cohorts ramp up.

And as I said in my prepared remarks, the 2025 hires are also coming on board. We'll give specific guidance on the contribution from those hires when we come back into Q4 and talk about 2026. But the key point for us right now is that, that is a significant contributor to the 11 points of the new business contribution to organic revenue growth, they're performing right in line with our expectation in terms of incremental revenue and ramp-up time, and there will be a cumulative impact.

We'll give the results of that and an outlook on that when we get into 2026 guidance on Q4. But make no doubt about it. The investments in these client-facing talent is a key part of the growth strategy, particularly in the market that we have now. That's helpful. And then I just wanted to follow up on commercial risk, specifically in the U.S. business, core P&C, it feels like the double-digit growth is significantly in excess of what some of your peers are reporting. So I just wanted to flesh out what you might attribute that excess growth too. I know you talked about data center construction and talent. And also, I just wanted to ask if that result was flattered at all by multiyear policies.

Robert. Appreciate the question. And listen, we think about the growth result. This is continued progress. continued progress. We're halfway through the 3x3 plan fully executed against it. When you think about what we bring to the table with risk capital and having capital and then Barry substantially reinforced with the on Business Services. Remember, these are the sort of analyzers, risk tools that help clients make better decisions by driving revenue, also retention. Obviously, you have some benefits from the cost side, too, but really is around client impact. And you're seeing these results. And although you're not just seeing it in the U.S., it's really globally, and contributes to Edmond's commitment around what we're going to be able to achieve each and every year around mid-single digit or greater. And so this is really what you're seeing. And I want to be clear, it really is just -- it's part of the day-to-day. There really isn't anything that we would highlight. We talk about M&A services. It's [indiscernible] progress, but it did not drive the results. The results were driven fundamentally by what we're doing day-to-day with clients.

And we did it. I would just also highlight in the face of all that's going on in the overall marketplace. So we talked time and time again about the fact that we're -- this is not about unit pricing in specific areas, and I'm sure we'll talk about pricing before we end the call today. It's not about that. It's really about a client by client impact and our ability to take analytics with our great team in place and do things that really have a meaningful impact. And that's really what's driving growth has driven the growth in the U.S., but also driving growth in the same respect around the world.

Greg is exactly right, Rob. We're pleased but not surprised by the strength in the commercial risk growth in Q3 because it's being driven by specific actions that we're taking durable growth drivers. We talked about 11 points of contribution at the company level, but within commercial risk itself, it was 11 points of contribution from new business and the retention was better year-over-year.

That's driven by what Greg just talked about, the analyzers helping us win RFPs by ECG, our enterprise client group and the tools that we have in ABS. The outlook and the results in this quarter remains strong as we continue to have the hires in construction and energy as clients increase limit and add coverages. So we're going to continue to be focused on net new business plus retention and the investment in the specialty hires and giving them, equipping them with analytical tools that help them win new business. That's what drove it in Q3 within the U.S., but as Greg said, globally, and that's what gives us confidence in our mid-single-digit guidance going forward.

Our next questions come from the line of Andrew Anderson with Jefferies.

Just look at Health Solutions, 6% organic , really strong and has been for a couple of years now. You listed a few drivers there of the organic input positive market impact kind of last there. But I would think that is one of the bigger drivers. Maybe you could just help us breakdown between net new business, retention and market impact?

Yes. I mean you're right, there was an impact from networked impact as you continue to see health care costs rising, but make no doubt about it. Health is actually 1 of the largest parts of our portfolio when it comes to new business contribution, expansion with existing customers.

Greg actually called out an example on the call of expansion with existing customers coming in through new business. So in the quarter, you had the strength from our talent analytics business. Data continues to be seeing high demand. our core health business had strong growth in EMEA and U.S. as well. The market is attractive right now for these solutions and the macro factors are having an impact. So you are seeing a positive and net market impact. But without a doubt, I highlight that it is new business driving this primarily expansion with existing customers.

And Andrew, I just want to add, if you think about where we are in terms of the continued progression as we began the 3x3 program and thought about the areas we compete in, each one of them had a set of characteristics, which for us, suggested our ability to grow, and those are going to be very, very strong. Health is exactly in that wheelhouse. Think about it. this is 20-plus percent of the U.S. economy as an example, and growing at 9% to 10% a year. It's a tremendous burden on companies as they think about supporting their employees and their families from a health standpoint.

And what we bring to the table is unique in content and capability. Just look at -- we recently published a set of analytics never been seen before around overall population health and the impact of medications in that context, demonstrating that you might be able to see something we've never been able to save before, which is we can potentially improve population health and bend the curve. And so that kind of opportunity for us, we're incredibly excited about -- and we're just beginning to sort of tap that thread. And so for us, we love this category like we do across the risk side as well and the retirement side. But you're right, a lot of progress here, and we'll continue to take steps to build the business.

And then reinsurance, just as we -- I realize 3Q is a little bit of a later quarter, but as we kind of shift towards 26%, how are you kind of seeing the reinsurance pricing environment? And maybe just some color on demand changes?

Listen, overall, [indiscernible] can comment on the '26 a little bit from that standpoint. But listen, again, think about overall demand and supply. Demand -- when you think about what's going on in the world these days, greater and greater risk. There is absolute pressure on a unit price basis, as we've talked about, particularly on the property side, and you're seeing that really across the board. But think about how we react. We react on a client level, and we're essentially helping clients understand how to mitigate risk on a much broader -- even a much broader scale.

So this has been just traditional treaty and facultative think about interns securities. I started off with the obvious tragedy in the catastrophe in Jamaica and then talked about how we brought capital in to try to do something about that. We've done now we're going to do well over close to 150 or greater cap bonds or parametric instruments for companies in addition to insurers. So this is really the opportunity to bring more capital in to support an environment which is demanding it. What we described on the hyperscalers.

This is an opportunity to truly address a level of opportunity that we haven't seen before. it's truly unique. Think about $2 trillion of investment, and that's just the operating investment. And sorry, the build investment doesn't even get to the operating investment or the innovation investment, which happens over time. So for us, the content capability we have in such an extraordinary group on the reinsurance side in the context of reinsurance and risk capital with our commercial risk capabilities is extraordinary, and we see a great opportunity over time. Anything else you'd add to that?

Look, the only thing I'd add is we are seeing pressure on the rate side today. reinsurance, the net market impact there was flat in the quarter. Clearly, we're seeing pressure in the property side of it. But to Greg's point, the demand is high. clients are buying more sideways coverage to cover payrolls, we are seeing a focus on our facultative placements growth in our STG businesses. So again, we'll come back in '26 to your question in Q4 and talk about 26 specifically. But these pressures come today, and we still are in 2025, growing at a mid-single-digit level Because of the demand and the solutions that we're providing for our clients here.

Our next questions come from the line of Bob Wang with Morgan Stanley.

So my first question comes around the thoughts on capital deployment. Obviously, free cash flow increased significantly year-on-year, but your buyback slowed down. I know that we talked about this a little bit. Just curious capital deployment going forward between the acquisitions that NFP is going to make versus how you think about buybacks versus dividends?

Yes. So appreciate the question on the capital. It's an important point for us. You said back slowed down. I wanted to just highlight that we a criteria by which we evaluate the options. We started talking about that previously and emphasized it during Investor Day as well. Those criteria are focused on long-term shareholder value creation. And so we're going to remain committed to balancing investment for growth with capital returns to shareholders.

And for us, that means paying down the debt meeting our leverage objective, obviously, consistently paying the dividend. We're very pleased with what we deploy towards middle market acquisitions this year and will be even and a stronger position to do that next year, particularly given the proceeds that we have from the NFP Wealth sale. But those acquisitions will have to meet, as I said during the prepared remarks, our strategic criteria and our financial criteria as well is worth emphasizing, I showed some information during Investor Day that showed over 20% IRRs and over 10% revenue growth after owning these acquisitions for 1 year.

So that gives you some sense about how we think about the financial return. Of course, we balance that with returning capital to shareholders. So we feel very good about the position of strength were in and our ability to evaluate the options moving forward. But let me turn it to you, Greg, to add some color to that.

Listen, I think you captured it exceptionally well. maybe one observation I would just add. Even just went through a whole series of actions whole series of activities. Bob, hopefully, what comes through clearly is our absolute focus on long-term shareholder value creation. And we're taking specific actions on the balance sheet side, the capital side, the capital deployment side to make that happen, acquisitions and divestitures. These are difficult things to do. And if you think about just even in the last 18 months, bringing in NP, which has been phenomenal, but by itself, a mimental effort.

The decision to divest of a specific piece of NFP, which good business, but really not one we're going to invest in and double down from a capital deployment standpoint. So you make the decision to divest against that. That's a hard thing to do, a lot to cover on our finance side with our NFP colleagues, and it went exceptionally well, closed yesterday. The pay down of debt, the buyback, all the different pieces. What I'm trying to highlight here is we have an absolute commitment, and it's not just something we say. You see it in our actions, which is an active management of our balance sheet and our capital position. which happens to be currently the strongest it's ever been against the criteria on long-term shareholder value creation.

And the team has done a remarkable job actively managing this, just like we do on the operational side.

Really helpful. And also, apologies for carry fresh question here. Yes, you're absolutely right. My second question is going back to the data centers a little bit. Obviously, is a huge momentum for you and it's likely to be very long tailed. But just curious to how you think about the competitive environment now that data center is very much in the front and center of discussions for insurance, do you see large competitors coming in? Like how should you think about your market share in this expanding pie, so to speak?

So first of all, I really appreciate you asking the question. This is the wheelhouse, right? When you think about sort of what we have been built to do think about levels of innovation. What we did on Aon Client Treaty when it first came out. What we did on the GLP-1s, I just described. what we've done in multiple other environments. What we did on the -- on retirement on the employment plan, trying to bring 401(k) economics to the middle market from large companies. All these things are innovations that we have driven over time. And they come, Bob, with from the standpoint of truly require integrated capability, risk capital and unit capital and the ability to bring capital from in the industry and outside the industry to bear on behalf of these [indiscernible]. All that's true, and that's a proof point how we approach the market. This happens to be bigger than anything you've ever seen, $2 trillion, right? By the way, $2 trillion is only the bills. It's not the operating or the innovation that comes over time. So it's just the tip of the iceberg. This isn't really about competitive position. By the way, from our standpoint, we have taken a very, very hard, hard look at this, and we've taken a very much an engineering-driven approach.

I referenced the partnership we've got with a very unique firm -- it will be clear over time on how you take an engineering-driven position around where do you position these things? How do you think about where you build them, by the way, how do you think about the actual building, not the core technology. We'll leave that to the technology companies, but literally how do you do this in a way in which you can create better business continuity and business resilience. When you think about business interruption in the context of a data center in this world is giving me measured in the millions of dollars per minute, and it's going to be a completely different scale.

So for us, what we want to do is bring a set of solutions, which may be copied by others. It will be difficult that they might be. And there's an approved for everyone here. The question is how we can increase relevance of our industry to help reduce the volatility of the operating -- building and operating these data centers. And for us, it's a massive, it really is unique. It's a massive opportunity for our industry to make a difference in a way that's going to really matter globally and get bigger and bigger over time. But the scale is quite -- we've just never seen it before. We're pretty excited about it.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Zaremski with BMO Capital Markets.

Sticking to the exciting data center conversation, Tayo gave us some great color potentially over $10 billion in new premiums in 26 alone for the industry. Any color is that -- are those premiums more of like a if you do the math and then it was commission based, there'd be a lot of growth. Is this mostly fee-based. And is AM getting a disproportionate share of this, you think? Or is it most of it going to the E&S market? Just any other color would just be great, clearly a great opportunity?

Yes. Listen, from our standpoint, it's still very early sort of in the process. So let's don't -- this is not a mid-game or even end game. This is like the beginning of the game. This is all beginning to sort of develop over time. And think about Mike, from the standpoint of this is around how you build these things, how you operate them and then they evolve and they innovate on a time frame that's measured in a few years. So you're going to continue to iterate this.

And for us, this is about accessing capital to connect with risk. Whatever market it goes through, primary admitted E&S or frankly, alternative markets, we're accessing all that capital. And by the way, it's going to require access to all that capital. And then literally, how -- from our standpoint, we're looking to provide value for clients. We always find a way we do fine on compensation when we provide value for clients. And ours is always a value-added approach in terms of how we think about it. And so we're, again, excited about the opportunity to make a difference, and we already are. As I mentioned before, we've already done some major programs underway. But we see potential to do substantially, substantially more. And by the way, this isn't just a U.S. opportunity. This is a global opportunity. And for us, again, we see great opportunity.

But really the issue, Mike, is is convincing the capital to come in and actually provide the coverage and do what we need to do on behalf of the hyperscalers. And really, it isn't just the hyperscalers. It's also the builders. And then the money as well because if you think about sort of funds that are being created, opportunities there as well. So for us, this really cuts across the ecosystem and represents a very unique opportunity.

Interesting. And my follow-up is probably for Edmond. On the accelerating Aon United app program, can you give us a flavor of how much cash spend remains? And is that kind of evenly spread out over the next 5 quarters?

Yes, you should be able to -- we'll -- in the 10-Q, you can see what the cash spend has been over the time, we're just over $600 million in cash spend thus far or later this evening, you'll be able to see them getting a signal when the 10-Q comes out. But the key thing about that is we're right on track for what we expected to spend there.

We'll continue to assess that as we go into 2026. And more importantly for us, the savings. We did $110 million last last year and on track for another $150 million this year. So we continue to feel good about setting ourselves up for ongoing scale improvements and capacity through that and capacity to invest in our capabilities and in our folks moving forward. So that's where we are in terms of spend and savings.

Our next questions come from the line of Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan.

So I had a question first just on organic growth. in commercial risk. If you look at your results, they've accelerated over the course of the year, 5% in 1Q to 6% in 2Q, 7% in 3Q. And the change has been more than hiring the hiring tailwind ramping up alone. So maybe if you could give us some key drivers of the improvement, things that actually help in 3Q that might not have been there in 1Q and just trying to assess which of these factors are sustainable versus might not sustain at the just what do the ramp-up in growth.

Yes, I appreciate the question, Jimmy. Maybe I'll just start at an overall high-level strategic approach to what we've done and then how we've operationalized it. And Ed and I know we'll add a lot of color on some of the detail here. But listen, we came into 2024 with a 3x3 plant. We architected plotted it put it in place, locked it down in '23 and announced it and drove it in '24.

We said 24, 25 and 26, very straightforward. We talked about this on Investor Day. What are we bringing that's different? What are you doing that's different? Well, risk capital is different. Human capital is different. We're connecting the dots in ways they've never been connected before. Not because it's a nice thing to do because we can actually take the data that cuts across these theaters and pull it together under Aon Business Services and create better data fidelity so we can actually inject it into our analytics. That drove a set of analyzers. We're going to kick off the property symposium early next year. And when we bring our 1,000 clients into the room, we're going to start with our property analyzer and what's going on. They're going to see things they haven't seen before with better data than ever before. For us, this is a revenue driver. This is a driver of attracting clients. They see that opportunity. It's also an opportunity to change the retention profile, already a very strong retention business, but really the opportunity to win more clients, do more with them and keep them longer. And that's really all the efforts around the 3x3.

And then if you think about risk capital and human capital, really [indiscernible] [indiscernible] we just continue to build momentum on this and then delivered to enterprise clients and all the things we're doing on client leadership. So it's one voice that actually brings the content of on behalf of the client. So that's the 3x3. So Jimmy, we're halfway through that, and we're happy when they progress. but we have high expectations, and we're going to continue to make progress on the -- against the 3x3 against that specific piece. And then step back and think about NFP we've accessed the $31 billion market with a great asset and a great set of capability. And it turns out the content and insight for making our business services is highly applicable in the middle market. You think a CFO and a middle market company doesn't want to see opportunities to change the cyber risk profile they've got or do something about the -- how -- what they pay for their 401(k) on behalf of their employees, all these things sort of come into play that really are part of the 3x3. So what you're seeing here is the progress on the 3x3 and what we laid out in the Investor Day, and we're working diligently to provide as much energy behind that as we can.

And we call it basically industrial strength execution. And then you're right, we added on top of that priority hires, and Edmonds describing these priority hires, I think, exceptionally well, and they will continue to build on that chassis that I just described. That's -- it isn't complex, hard to do, but not complex. That's exactly what we're trying to accomplish with the 3x3, we're halfway through, and you're seeing some progress. And we'll keep working the ball, but a long way to go here.

Our next questions come from the line of Tracy Benguigui with Wolfe Research.

I'm going to stick with the theme of the data centers. Just 1 quick one. You mentioned a recent client win that replaced nearly $30 billion in coverage for a top global data center developer. Does that represent any one-offs for the quarter?

It really doesn't. It's really just part of the ongoing piece. All I really wanted to do, Tracy, there. and Ivan commented on this as well. I'll just give you an example that this isn't conceptual. It's happening now. It's also an interesting observation. We have an opportunity as an industry to step up and really make a difference here. But irrespective of what we do, these are happening. The investments are being made, and it's quite substantial. So I just wanted to provide a very concrete example of where it's where something is sort of ongoing. But also think about the data center that we actually provide coverage of in that specific example.

That was, by the way, part build. And in part, they have ongoing data centers and which actually help them understand how to think about the business continuity differently. And so for us, that is an ongoing effort. Again, back to why this is so unique. It's not just the build, it's the ongoing operation and then the innovation, and that means this is not just a monumental opportunity. This is a sustained monumental opportunity, which is one of the reasons we're so excited about it.

Yes. And Tracy, the only thing I'll just add to it. I'll just be very direct that our growth in this quarter, in particular, is not because of one-off items or nonrecurring business, it really are the durable ongoing sustainable drivers that Greg just talked about. Our data to risk capital and human capital, the middle market growth the analyzers through Aon Business Services? And then on top of that, the cumulative impact of the hiring that we're doing right now. So your question is an important one. I just want to make the capacity here we're describing.

Has never been seen before real time and they're happening, being able to step up to any share of that is going to be meaningful in the conversation we just had about our performance. And then we see tremendous potential.

So yes, we believe we've got a unique perspective. I'm not saying it's the best. They're the perfect ones but very unique. And by the way, they are integrated risk capital, human capital. By the way, the talent aspects of this embedded in it as well. All these things would come together, and we think put us in a unique position to both attract capital into this game on behalf of the hyperscalers, but also help the hyperscalers understand that beyond the technology, there are ways to conduct business with 1 of these data centers that actually might reduce cost over time. and certainly could reduce volatility. So this isn't the core technology, but it's everything around it that sort of makes it more attractive. And so for us, this is just the beginning.

Okay. And also just 1 quick clarification. So when you talk about revenue-generating talent up 6%. I'm assuming that's a gross number. Could you put context over maybe some talent exits and what the net number would look like?

It's actually a net number because this question has come up, Tracy. So we've just been very explicit about warning to ensure that we give all the information that consumers to be transparent on it. So the 6% you should think of that as a net number. Four of those hires in the categories that we talked about previously, producers, brokers, account executives, health and benefit consultants. .

Our next questions come from the line of Andrew Kligerman with TD Cowen.

Amazing quarter across a lot of metrics. Focusing on the organic revenue growth, 2 areas. Edmond at Investor Day, you talked about 4% gross net talent growth. Is that something you think that you could do going forward into 28 -- '26. And then you've touched a lot on this call about middle market opportunities. Is that coming from an SP people? Is it coming from prior Aon talent. Where is it coming from? I suspect it's your investments in analytics and human capital as you've addressed all one. But I'm kind of curious where in the company it's coming from?

Yes. So let me hit the first part, Andrew, and thank you for the question because it's an important one, and then maybe I'll turn the second on middle market to Greg as well. On the first one, I will sort of direct you back to what you and I have specifically discussed our engine in ABS that allows us to get scale improvements up to 120 basis points the expense discipline that we have, that gives us the capacity to make investments.

And I think I sort of quantify up to 60 basis points in investments. Those investments right now are focused on revenue-generating hires in priority strategic growth areas. They're focused on some of our capabilities within ABS, but the model itself is intended to be able to drive capacity to both invest and have margin expansion. We talked about 70 to 100 basis points as a sort of ongoing model over time here. And so we feel good about continuing to drive that growth engine and having the capacity. It's not a onetime thing for us. We think a continued focus on this, making this ongoing in the right areas because that changes over time as well. the growth areas. We're focused on making this an ongoing part of our strategic growth model here. And Greg, maybe the or the middle markets.

Yes. And listen, before I get to middle market to, again, Andrew, I appreciate the question. Remember back to Investor Day, we talked about the 3x3 and all we are going to accomplish risk capital, human capital ABS delivered to enterprise client all the pieces around that and the investments we're making behind that. And then Edmond described what really is the growth algorithm and what we're trying to do. that piece, go back to the math behind that, really, it truly does kind of capture everything we're doing operationally to a financial outcome, which is really the capacity to improve margin and invest and invest on an ongoing basis. This is a very -- for us.

Now the very powerful construct, and that's why we were so committed and that's why we made the investment on the building to kind of make that really happen and bring that to life. So I don't want to lose that. That's so important in sort of your question. And then fundamentally, middle market is one aspect of that. It's the $31 billion North America and U.S. market that we didn't have access to in the way we do now.

NFP, high expectations, as we described at Investor Day, exceeded in so many ways in terms of what we've been able to accomplish, not just as the middle market segment, but also what we can bring to the middle market with our content and capability and what NFPs brought to Aon in their view. So and perspectives and their client leadership. So for us, it was one aspect of the entire growth algorithm that's sort of being brought to bear here, but an important 1 and an exciting one. And we're very pleased to have brought the end of the panel to do this.

Got it. And as we kind of approach the end of the year, it seems like with that divestiture of the NFP Wealth business, you've kind of met your leverage objective. So as you do look at M&A and you cost about $32 million of EBITDA for NFP deals in the quarter. Are there potentially big ones out there that you could do? Is that something you're thinking about? And do you feel like 1.5 years in you're ready to do it, the NFP is assimilated enough that you could do a bigger middle market type deal?

So Andrew, I think Edmond might have answered this earlier in the call. I'll answer it again. He'll do it better than me. No doubt. Listen, you know where we are. We are absolutely focused on long-term shareholder value creation, making the decisions to sort of drive that. That's the capital allocation piece. And as you highlighted, we actively manage this. This is not something we leave the chance, and we'll take the hard decisions, the difficult ones. The divestitures are hard, but they're important because they create capacity to do what we need to do.

And then we'll make calls based on based on what really is the best answer from a long-term shareholder value creation opportunity for Aon. So you're right, we've got great flexibility based on the terrific work of our teams around the world from a balance sheet standpoint and anticipate we're going to do our level best to make sure we're making the right calls on behalf of long-term value creation.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Greg Case for closing remarks.

Just want to say thanks again for joining us, and we look forward to an opportunity to job with you in the next quarter. Take care.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day. .