Good day, and welcome to the Aegon Q1 2020 Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Weidema. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining this conference call regarding Aegon's first quarter 2020 update. We would appreciate it if you could take a moment to review our disclaimer on forward-looking statements, which you can find at the back of the presentation. Given the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, our CFO, Matt Rider, will give you an update on our financial performance and capital position for the first quarter of 2020. At the end of the presentation, we will, of course, leave more than sufficient time for your questions. I now hand it over to Matt.

Thanks, Jan Weidema, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for your continued interest in Aegon and for joining us on today's call. Due to the unprecedented situation caused by COVID-19, we consider it important to provide you with an update on our first quarter financials. Before we start with that, I would like to take the opportunity on the next slide to share with you our response to the pandemic which has clearly changed the world as we know it. We are acutely aware of disruption, fear and pain that this outbreak has caused for so many. Our employees, our customers and for people in the communities in which we operate. Our #1 priority is to protect the health, safety and security of all our stakeholders. We are dealing with extraordinary circumstances, and I am pleased to say that our resilience, experience and business continuity plans have enabled us to serve our customers at a high level. Our purpose to help our customers achieve a lifetime of financial security, remains the same. We believe we are well positioned to manage through this difficult period. We have introduced a global framework to protect the health and safety of all our employees. It is important to keep our staff engaged and motivated. Most of our staff in the U.S. and Europe are currently working from home. In China, the majority of our staff has returned to the office. To ensure that our services can continue uninterrupted, various solutions have been implemented. For example, call center staff can answer calls from home, and we have enhanced our capabilities to digitally interact with customers. This has been done while abiding by the same high standards regarding cybersecurity to which we always hold ourselves. We are also working closely with our critical outsourcing partners…

[Operator Instructions]. We will now take our first question from Farooq Hanif from Credit Suisse.

Just firstly, on the U.S. capital position. Clearly, it's recovered in April, but there are headwinds from potential downgrade, impairments, et cetera? At what level of capital position, would you be worried about being able to remit capital from the U.S. to the holding? And how likely do you think given what you've seen so far in 2Q, that could be a reasonable risk? That's question one. Question two is, if you make a decision -- I mean, clearly, you're not paying a full year '19 dividend. To what extent do you think that surplus capital could be used to support capital in the subsidiaries? And would you consider -- I mean are you considering using that extra surplus capital to inject back into the subsidiaries? And then lastly, on sales impact. Could you give an early read on what's happening in 2Q?

Thanks for your questions, Farooq. I would just -- so on the U.S. capital position, I would just remind you that according to our own capital management policy, as long as the U.S. RBC ratio would be above 350%, then it would be expected to remit its normal planned dividend. And I think that's pretty much all I would say about it right now other than maybe to say that the -- so the normal remittance pattern for the U.S. would be pay half their normal remittance in June and the other half in December probably too early to tell about December, but the June dividend to the group, unless something crazier happens in the markets, we would expect to receive. So that, I think, is the U.S. capital position. With respect to the 2019 final dividend, I think what we've said here is that we would look for opportunities to return that capital to shareholders at the earliest possible convenience. But we are going to wait to see how the COVID-19 crisis plays out. So as I said in the overall presentation, we would make a decision on the interim dividend in August of this year. And at the same time, we would obviously have thoughts on how we might -- or what we might be doing with the 2019 dividend. But for right now, as you know, we have foregone it, but we have to look for ways to return that as quickly as possible. Also recognizing, as you mentioned, that we don't know how this is going to play out, particularly in the credit markets in the U.S. and also with respect to the mortality. On the sales side, the first quarter sales that we reported were not so much affected by the pandemic crisis just because…

We will now take our next question from Robin van den Broek from Mediobanca Bank.

Just coming back on the RBC ratio in the U.S. I mean I think your commentary would suggest that since the end of March, there is some improvement you have, I think, still the San Francisco building coming through. You mentioned the TLIC mergers within your variable annuity business. So if you would give a pro forma indication of that RBC ratio, where do you think that would sit? And what does the impact be on clearing of captive structures within the organization in the U.S.? That's the first question. Secondly, when it comes to your dividend policy, it is linked to normalized capital generation as it stands. However, I think in normalized capital generation, you are assuming only a 20 basis point impact on cost of risk. Well, during the global financial crisis, your cost of risk was more around 100 basis points. So that could suggest that, that normalized capital generation number basically doesn't mean that much for the next few years. How willing would you be to tap into your hold of cash buffers to still continue the dividend promise that is on the table? That's the second question. Third question is more around your U.S. payers. I mean your long-term interest rate assumption is still at 4.25%, while payers are moving to 2% to 2.5%. I think at the Morgan Stanley conference, you gave a fairly limited impact from changing that assumption, but there's a comment in that presentation also saying that the starting point of interest rates is sort of important. So could you update that number basically assuming that U.S. is up 60 basis points rather than 2% at the beginning of the year. And is there any knock-on effect from changing the long-term interest rate assumption for PDR testing within your framework? Sorry to ask that many questions by the way.

No. That's okay. We kept tracking them. So maybe -- so first of all, on the pro forma RBC ratio for the U.S., we did say that the U.S. RBC ratio at the end of April had improved somewhat given tightening credit spreads and the improved equity markets. So we think it's in a 390% to 400% range. But in terms of a pro forma outlook, I would be very reluctant to do that. You tell me what credit markets are going to do, in particular, credit migration and credit defaults and then I can sort of give you a number, but we run scenarios internally to test these kind of things. And I think it's just best to leave that one live. We need to see how this one plays out. But for the time being, we are more than adequately capitalized in the U.S. and we're in a, like I said, a good starting position there to withstand some pain that is going to be coming. You mentioned a couple of the management actions, the TLIC and TPLIC merger. That is still going on for the second half of the year, though we will get some basically cash flow testing benefit from that. The sale of the pyramid is still on target for the end of the year. We're still in exclusive negotiations with a single party. They have to get financing. So we'll see how that -- we're still in a process, but we still anticipate that, that would come through. Maybe on dividend policy, you called out that -- and rightfully so, our dividend policy is tied to normalized capital generation. We try to do that to give you an indication that we try to pay out 45% to 55% of normalized cap gen. But our…

Okay. And anything else on other assumptions you feel less profitable with going into H1 social review?

No. We're just going to have to look -- we're just going to have to continue to work through our processes. What we've seen so far. And I think I've talked about this in other quarters. But for example, like the long-term care assumption seems to be tracking well with respect to our expectations. We did -- you've noticed the poor mortality result that we had in the U.S. for the first quarter. It was really isolated in the month of March. So it's -- by the way, that wouldn't even be taken into account into our experience review. There's a bit of a lag. But we'll have to see how that one evolves over time.

We will now take our next question from Fulin Liang from Morgan Stanley.

I think my first question is about the U.S. RBC ratio because I did a calculation based on the sensitivity you provided. So I had expected about 14 percentage points for due to interest rates and about 22% for due to equity and then you would have like 8 percentage points from the capital generation. So net-net, I was actually expecting your solvency ratio to be around something 410%, obviously, your reported is much lower than that. I'm just wondering whether any actual material, actual impact to the solvency, which is not actually interest rate and equity market related. So that's my first question. Sorry for the long question. And secondly, is the -- so coming back to the assumption, the LTC -- LTC assumption, can you actually mention, kind of talk, because one of your competitors in the U.S. was asked by the regulator to -- for basically reserve enhancement due to one of the reasons regulatory quoted is mobility improvement assumption being too aggressive. So I just wanted to actually compare your assumption to your competitors' assumption where you are about that assumption. So that's the second LTC assumption? And lastly is about impairment. So in first quarter, your impairment is slightly larger than 2019, but this still like you kind of you show in the slides, way lower than the average, which -- but given what you've seen in April, do you think actually this amount will go at a much higher?

Okay. Fulin, thank you for your questions. It's nice to hear your voice after the Morgan Stanley conference. So it's probably an appropriate place to start because at that conference, we had put an estimated RBC ratio for the U.S. at that moment in time. By the way, based on March 12 economics at 410%, which is obviously where you're coming out when you do our, let's say, the basic sensitivities. I would make a couple of points on this. One is that once you start getting into very, very volatile markets, then there is some interplay between the sensitivities, and they're not all perfectly linear in the way that you would expect them to be. But there were a couple of notable points that caused that difference between, let's say, that 410% and where we've published the 376% for the first quarter. I think the first one is a -- it's basically the effect of spread widening and credit migrations and defaults. And a lot of that spread widening is actually happening in the variable annuity book. There is a large portion of the variable annuity underlying assets that are based on bond funds. And in fact, a lot of our guaranteed benefits like withdrawal benefits and accumulation benefits are underlaid by what we call, volatility control funds. What these funds do is if -- basically, if their equity market declines, then there is program trading out of equities and into more high-quality corporate credit. So while we were -- while that trading was happening, effectively, corporate credit spreads blew out that's something that you couldn't get from the sensitivities. And we estimate that, that would have had about a 16 percentage point difference in off of the basic sensitivities that you had mentioned. Another one is the fact…

We will now take our next question from Nick Holmes from Societe Generale.

Just a couple of questions. The first is with the variable annuity book, are you worried about an increase in the cost of hedging if markets remain volatile, which is probably quite likely? And secondly, with the RBC ratio, it's really the same question. How vulnerable is that ratio to an increase in variable annuity hedge costs? If markets do remain volatile, and we see a lot of the sort of movements that have, as you were explaining in your last question, actually caused unexpected losses to the ratio.

Thanks for your question, Nick. So just a reminder, this is a 1 quarter -- or first quarter trading update. So we haven't gone into a lot of the detail that we would normally do for a results release, so I don't have an update on expected hedging costs. What I can say about it is that in the dynamic program that we have that is associated with the WB and AB books, our hedge costs are more, let's say, influenced by actual volatility, actual volatility. So they are going to increase there. There's no question about it. What we did do a pretty good job was, I think, in the course of the first quarter and coming into the second quarter is on the macro hedge. And that's where we had gone in with some out of the money put options and have actually done quite a bit better on that hedge than what we would have expected because you get the benefit of the higher implied volatility in the option prices, and that we've since pivoted a bit. So that we're more out of options and the high prices of puts for the implied vol and more into linear instruments. But the actual running cost of the hedge program, that's -- I would say that's a second order concern to me, both in terms of capital in regards to earnings. What is -- what's more of the thing that we have to watch out for is the impact of credit markets, credit migration on the balance sheet in the U.S. together ultimately with the impacts of additional mortality due to COVID-19. So as long as the hedging programs are effective, that's perfectly good. They performed extremely well in the first quarter and have continued to do so. As we've gone through the month of April. And frankly, that's in a very volatile environment. That was a terrific result.

Great. Just a very quick follow-up. I think a lot of your competitors are using just dynamic hedging rather than a macro hedge. Is that something that you would say is correct? I mean you're using both macro and dynamic. Is that unusual, would you say, in the industry?

You there -- how do you want to say it, there are many ways to skin a cat, and you're trying to hedge basically the same risk. I mean really the macro hedge, and I think you know this well relates mainly to variable annuity exposure. People do it in dynamic programs. We tend to do it in -- have typically done it more in a tail risk scenario. But it's just a choice. It's always -- it's a trade-off between the hedge costs and what kind of downside protection that you're looking at. So right now, as we were in put option programs before for the macro hedge that was a pretty good trade because we're operating at very high solvency levels in the U.S., and we did it to minimize the cost while protecting a big downside. So we're super successful at doing that. But at this moment in time, I think I mentioned in my presentation that we go to more linear instruments, so it will be more like a dynamic program that other companies might use. I hope that answers your question.

We will now take our next question from Albert Ploegh from ING.

I've got three. Basically, the first one on the U.S. mortality. You alluded in the presentation, it was not very much linked to COVID-19 in the first quarter, so more seasonal and clearly bigger than normal. But can you update a bit on what your expectations are on the COVID itself on the mortality and maybe for the remainder of the year or at least the second quarter so far. The second question on the U.S. capital generation, yes, and setting aside for the moment, the new business strain and discussion on the normalized impairments. But can you help us out a little bit on, let's say, the headwinds from lower rates so far this year in relation to the €1.1 billion generated last year. So front book -- back book kind of yields? And then what kind of offsets you at least have from still elevated credit spreads? Just feeling what normalized generation is going to? And then the third question is on the new business strain. It seems to me that the U.S. still was a pretty normal quarter, I think is somewhere on the slide, €230 million. The sales clearly will be more complicated in the second quarter. Do you see any risk to cost assumptions underlying sales volumes, if I recall correctly, that, that was an issue in the latter half of last year.

Thanks for your questions, Albert. So maybe on U.S. mortality, yes, it was a poor quarter, and it was, in particular, it was a poor month. So most of that for mortality came through in the month of March. I talk about this as not being necessarily COVID-19 related. But we do have a bit of an issue in that. You can't tell for sure. Because of that, if you're in February, March, people were becoming infected and we're dying, but like COVID-19 cause of death was not being printed on death certificates. So at this moment, it's just -- it's safe to say that it was not COVID-19 related. But looking forward, yes, we have many estimates related to mortality rates that we're already seeing in the U.K. and other places and transposed over to the U.S. But what we don't know is how this is going to happen in the insured population. So we have estimates, but it's just simply too early to share those. We're going to watch this play out over the coming quarters and not provide any specific guidance in that respect. On the U.S. capital generation, you specifically mentioned lower rates and credit spreads. So maybe just to give you a little -- we always give these numbers. So for U.S. reinvestment yields in the first quarter, so this is new money yields were coming in at 3.64%, and the back book yield was 4.5%. Now that was an interesting one because in the first quarter, you saw 10-year treasury come down by 125 basis points. But generally, corporate credit spreads had blown out by like almost 95 basis points. So net-net, it wasn't that big of an impact, but there is a strain for generally lower interest rates. And these are numbers that…

We will now take our next question from Johnny Vo from Goldman Sachs.

Just three questions, if I may. Just the first question, you said that your RBC ratio has gone from -- to about 390% to 400%, but the group's solvency ratio has gone to about 190% to 200%. So is it fair to assume that the negative movement has all come from the Netherlands? Or has there been debt redemption or something going on to account for the move in the group solvency down? The second question is, just your comment on the U.S. hedge program and the move from implied to realize, which suggests that you're leaving open gap risk in equity markets. So can you sort of give us a sensitivity for a 20% drop in equity markets and the change in your RBC ratio when you use options when -- versus when you're not using options? And the third question is in the Netherlands business, is the regulator stopping you remitting from the Dutch entity to the holding company? Or can you still remit from the Dutch entity to the holding company?

Yes. So maybe on the first one, Johnny, so you have it exactly right. So we would -- we see the improvement. So for April, we see that improvement in the U.S. RBC ratio, but EIOPA VA has come back now for the Netherlands. So -- so that one is, we would think it's probably more in the 215% to 225% range. So on balance, the group ratio is coming down into that 190% to 200%. So it's just a mix thing. The U.S. hedge program, you're talking about GAAP risk and equity markets and quantifying the linear versus out of the money impacts for a 20% decline. I'm not going to comment on that now. We've published new sensitivities. I think they should be pretty, pretty okay, linear for smaller movements. But I'm going to let IR come back to you on that one. I don't have the figures in front of me. On the Dutch regulator, I might answer this question a little bit more broadly. It has been -- it's been interesting the response of various regulators to the EIOPA guidance about being careful about recommending to not make dividend payments. Some regulators like, for example, Poland, have just said, no money going out of legal entities even intergroup, other regulators like the Netherlands are fine to have the money come from within the group, but they put their restriction based on the EIOPA guidance, and it applies to other insurance companies in the Netherlands only on external dividends. So from a Dutch regulatory standpoint, they're not putting a restriction on intercompany dividends or intergroup dividends, but other regulators could potentially have concerns about that. And it's -- by the way, it's a pretty broad spectrum of approaches. It's a little bit -- I would say, a little bit unhelpful not to get a unified approach from EIOPA.

We will now take our next question from David Motemaden from Evercore.

Matt, I had a few questions on the U.S. First, just some of your peers in the U.S. have provided some level of sensitivity to COVID deaths in the population, for example, if there are 100,000 COVID deaths in the U.S., what sort of impact that would have in terms of mortality for their books. So wondering if you could provide some detail in a similar way, if that's possible? Second, just on the legal entity merger, the TPLIC/TLIC merger in the second half of the year. I was wondering if you could just quantify how much you expect this to benefit capital? And if that's something you view as being fungible? And then just lastly, a quick follow-up on the LTC book, where the competitor in Maine, it was, I guess, a financial exam that they went through. And I guess I'm just wondering when was the last time TLIC underwent a financial exam in Iowa.

Okay. Thanks for your question. So on the potential impact of COVID-19, yes, we're doing some internal scenario testing on this one. But at this point, we're not giving any guidance to the market. On the main question, yes, so the last time Transamerica Life Insurance Company went through an audit by the state. I think that they do it every 5 years. So I think we're just starting now a new one, so a new quinquennial audit. But as I mentioned before, we're not getting any specific questions on the long-term care book at this point. Yes, on the legal entity merger, I'm going to, yes, I think -- so maybe just a couple of points on this one. We expect that it will -- that it will happen in the second half of the year. It will have a beneficial impact on the, say, cash flow testing adequacy results. It's a bit unrelated to the sale of the pyramid. So this is one that we'll definitely -- this is one that will definitely go through. I don't have in front of me an impact on the ratio for this one.

Great. And if I could just follow-up on the financial exam in Iowa. So that's just started. Is there any sense for when that will conclude?

These things take a while. I'm not -- I'm going to let IR come back to you, but it's going to be something like -- these are like year exams.

We will now take our next question from Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Two questions on my side. So the first one will be on the U.S. solvency ratio. I'm going to think a bit worse case there. But in an event, you will kind of get close or eat the 350% level. I was wondering how we have to think about remittances. Obviously, we don't get to this level every day. So do we have to think about a gradual decrease of potential remittances as you get close to the 350%? Or will remittances kind of drop to 0 when you eat the 350%? I'm just wondering how it works in practice when you get close to the 350% level in terms of kind of speed of the decrease there of the remittances. On rating migration, that's number two, so you've said, okay, we have a big uncertainty and nobody knows how much rating downgrades will get eventually. But do you plan at this stage to potentially take some prudence in terms of cash remittance from the U.S. just because of the kind of big elephant in the room, which is rating migration probably taking place, by the way, early next year. So just wondering how you plan to take that into account in your capital planning?

Thanks, Benoit. So maybe on just specifically on the capital management policy that we follow, the bottom end of the target range for the U.S. is 350%. And according to our own internal policy, as long as you're at or above 350%, and we would expect your sort of fully planned remittance. And then if you dip below that, that's when we would expect lower remittances, lower remittances. We're not in that place yet. We're sitting there, as I said, right now, between 390% and 400%. And I think I mentioned that on the -- in the presentation itself, that we would expect to get the first remittance or the first half of their annual remittance in June of this year, barring really unforeseen circumstances. But that also allows us to take a bit of time, right? So we don't know exactly how deep and how long this is going to be. So we need to see this play a bit out in the markets. So the next time that they would pay a dividend would be in December. So if we get into December and we see credit markets have really deteriorated or really low solvency ratios or something like that, then we would take a prudent decision there. But it is simply too early to tell about the second half. We're good with the first half that sort of teed up. But the second half, let's wait until we see how this plays out a bit. And that sort of plays into the rating migration point. There is going to be rating migration. There are going to be increased defaults. It's probably going to take some time to work through the system. One thing that we have seen is that rating agencies have been much quicker this time to downgrade and to do those actions. But for right now, we're not seeing it so much even through the April results. But it's coming. Credit migration and default is going to be coming, and we want to take it step-by-step and make those decisions according to our capital management policies, looking at the best information that we have at this point in time. But it's hard to project forward not knowing what that path is going to be like. All I can tell you is that we are taking management actions internally to preserve the economic value of the balance sheet. We will be taking expense actions. And we were, like I said, pretty good shape as we entered into the crisis with the balance sheet. To begin with, we already had many of these capital management actions teed up like the TLIC/TPLIC merger. But yes, I would say it really is too early to -- it really is too early to tell.

We will now take our next question from Andrew Baker from Citi.

Just one quick one last from me. Has there been any impact on the TCS project migrations or timing or costs associated with that project? Have you seen any operational issues since the crisis has begun with TCS specifically?

I would say small operational issues, but they were pretty quickly taken care of. So just the availability of laptops for the TCS employees to be able to work from home was a short-term issue that got solved. There had been some delays in the implementation of that bank's system. But now that has been -- we just implemented the first variable annuity product as of May 1. So there -- yes, so that one, I think I mentioned in the presentation, we look at those outsourcing relationships pretty closely here. But so far, we're being able to operate in a controlled environment. And I mean -- sort of as a testament, I mean, just think about it, we normally report half year results. Here, we're doing a 1Q update. The whole thing was done from home. So our controls from a financial standpoint and operations standpoint have really hung in there. So it's actually been better than what anybody could have expected from an operational standpoint.

That concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back to the host for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you for your continued interest. This concludes today's call.