Charlie Lederer : Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.
Elyse Greenspan : Hi. Thanks. Good morning. My first question is on commercial risk. Growth slowed there in the quarter. I was hoping to get more color on what’s driving that. Is that still a slowdown in the M&A and IPO activity, or is there something else going on within that business in the quarter?
Eric Andersen : Hi, Elyse. Hi, Thanks, this is Eric. We continue to see strong activity across EMEA Pacific and core P&C very solid new business retention all the sort of underpinnings that you would look for. We did continue to see a slowdown in M&A and call M&A services which are the things that come off of mergers and acquisitions whether it’s DL one-off whether it’s reps and warranties things like that continue to slow down pretty significantly in the quarter.
Greg Case : And we’ve said this last time I think on the call Elyse. We love this area and this team. They are phenomenal. We just got such great capability here and Eric and team have continued to kind of double down and invest behind content capability. We’re quite confident that transactions will come back at some point in time when they do we’re unbelievably well positioned. And we’ll absorb the headwind in the process but very, very bullish on the future in this category.
Elyse Greenspan : So until the activity comes back would, you expect like the organic growth within commercial risk to stay in like a 4% to 5% range, or was there anything unique to the third quarter?
Eric Andersen : There was nothing unique in the third quarter. When we look at some of the strong areas around the world, some of the specialty businesses like construction that continue to have very solid performance, we’re pretty happy with the way the business has been performing and when that area comes back. We’ve held the team and are really excited about the future opportunity.
Elyse Greenspan: And then I want to come back to the savings program. So $350 million by 2026. Are you expecting the entirety of that to fall to the bottom-line and that I know you guys mentioned in your comments as well as in the slides that there is platform location technology there’s some workforce changes. Can you bucket can you break down the $350 million by the areas that are specifically driving the savings?
Christa Davies: So thanks so much for the question, Elyse. The first answer is yes we do expect the $350 million to drop to the bottom line. We obviously are continuing to invest in the business as I described earlier. A good example of that is the investments we’ve made in technology in the first nine months of the year. You see that in our technology expense and our CapEx expense both being up funding investments in long-term operations, technology platforms and product development to meet client needs. And so we will see those savings drop to the bottom line but they are in the context of our overall financial guidance which is mid single-digit or greater organic revenue growth for 2023 and the long term. margin expansion in 2023-2024 in the long term and long-term double-digit free cash flow growth.
And then in terms of the breakout we do expect the breakout of the $900 million to be primarily technology expense and workforce optimization. We have not provided specific details on that and we will report on it each quarter.
Elyse Greenspan: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan. Please proceed.
Jimmy Bhullar: Hi. Good morning. So first just on organic growth. Are you able to quantify how much of the slower M&A and transaction-related activity has been to your growth maybe either in an absolute sense versus normal or maybe versus a year ago just so we get a sense of how your results will be versus peers that have less of that.
Eric Andersen: Sure. This is Eric. We don’t disclose that number, but I would just say if you track M&A from outside sources is certainly down 30% year-on-year and that continues to show headwinds. And I would just say, listen as that recovers we will recover with it. We’ve maintain the team. We’ve maintained the relationships. We continue to stay very close to those clients. And when they react we will be right there with them. But it’s a good business for us. We really think it provides great value to them and the ultimate clients and we continue to hold and invest in that team.
Jimmy Bhullar: Okay. And then on free cash flow should we assume that it will get to double-digit growth in 2026 once the program is done, or is it after that earlier than that?
Christa Davies: So we haven’t given specific guidance on the timing. What we have said is that we absolutely expect long-term free cash flow growth. We run the firm on free cash flow. We are extremely bullish on long-term free cash flow growth driven by operating income growth and working capital improvements. And so this will absolutely contribute to that. And so we’re very, very excited about the outlook for free cash flow growth long-term.
Jimmy Bhullar: Okay. And then just lastly we’ve gotten a lot of questions on the sort of impact on your business from the West fallout. And do you expect any financial impact or reputational or otherwise, or have you seen anything that you’re able to discuss beyond what’s in your regulatory filing?
Eric Andersen: Listen, I would say from a best view — go ahead Christa, I’m sorry.
Christa Davies: No you go Eric.
Eric Andersen: I would just say best view is one of the many parties that have been involved in the business whether it’s reinsurance, whether it’s other areas. And we continue to monitor the situation very carefully working with our clients helping them to provide options to replace that lost capital. And we continue to see that work being done and our expectation is, it will continue to evolve as their bankruptcy process works its way through.
Jimmy Bhullar: All right. Thank you.
Operator: Our next question is from David Motemaden with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.
David Motemaden: Hi, thanks, good morning. I just had a question on the accelerated Aon United program more so on the revenue side and how we can think about that. It sounds like a big opportunity. I guess I’m a little surprised that you aren’t making any changes to your organic growth outlook in the mid-single digit or greater. So maybe could you just talk about how much you would expect this program to contribute to accelerated organic growth. It would be helpful just to maybe put some numbers around it. I’m sure you guys look at it internally. So yes, I’m just trying to get a sense for how we can think about the revenue opportunity here.
