Aon plc (NYSE:AON) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: Our next question is from the line of Mike Zaremski with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Mike Zaremski: I guess back to the organic growth environment. Just curious, you mentioned some headwinds on the M&A side. There’s probably some tailwinds, too, which we can see. But would you say you were clear to about 5% or greater is still the outlook. But would you say growth is kind of thinking back to the back half of the year is kind of steady or accelerating or decelerating? Or any trends you’d like to point out in any of your businesses in terms of momentum or tailwinds other than the M&A call out that we should be considering into the back half of the year?

Greg Case: Yes. Literally, Mike, I love this question. If you step back and think about sort of the growth platform and how it’s evolved. First, just for context, we put — we think about growth and really all the benchmark objectives over the course of the year. So if you think about it, for us, growth is organic revenue and growth is, by the way, margin improvement, and growth is absolutely the translation into free cash flow. And we would say, if you think about just performance in Q2 and really the first half, it’s really reinforced our confidence and you see momentum around meaning our full year 2023 objective. So this is mid-single digit or greater across the board, look at the strengths in health, which were exceptional for the first half, and certainly for the quarter in reinsurance and other areas, too, even in commercial risk with the headwind that we just highlighted.

So very strong on the solution line side. And then you also saw exceptional movement on margin expansion. When you think about the growth here to 110 basis points for the Q and 90 basis points for the first half. And most importantly, you heard Christa reemphasize double-digit free cash flow growth for the year. So for us, we see this trend continuing to turn where we are. And there’s a lot that goes behind that. Maybe, Eric, additional context around that foundation or what’s driving that?

Eric Andersen: Sure, Greg. And you mentioned 2 of them in your written remarks around the Parametric that we did for Puerto Rico as well as the Human Sustainability Index. Those are just 2 examples of the Aon United teams working together. But I think I would also say that the client demand is evolving, and it’s getting more complicated, I think as the world gets more complicated. And so our strategy of evolving to risk capital and human capital, I think, uniquely positions us to take advantage of that capital to drive growth — I’m sorry, take advance of that situation to drive growth. And when I think about it, just to put a little clarity on it, from a risk capital standpoint, I think it gives us a couple of things. It gives us access to global capital no matter what form.

So insurance, reinsurance, ILS parametrics to help clients transfer the risk that they want to transfer, and also create more dynamic markets. And I think it also helps us to create and deliver the analytics that have historically driven our reinsurance business over to the large corporate clients who have a more acute need today, to understand their risk from property exposure, to climate change, as well as the cyber liability exposures. And it also gives our leaders client leaders and brokers, the best insight of the market dynamics. So that’s on the risk capital side. On the human capital side, bringing health, wealth and talent together is effectively meeting clients where they are today. Clients are looking for a holistic view for their employee relationships, both from hiring, training, health wellness all the way through to retirement.

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