Welcome to the Third Quarter 2011 Earnings Call. My name is Sandra and I will be your operator for today’s call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Ms. Alicia Charity. Ms. Charity, you may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to the Ameriprise Financial Third Quarter Earnings Call. With me on the call today are Jim Cracchiolo, Chairman and CEO, and Walter Berman, Chief Financial Officer. Following their remarks, we’ll be happy to take your questions. During the call, you will hear references to various non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide insight into the underlying performance of the company’s operations. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP numbers to the respective GAAP numbers can be found in today’s materials available on our website. Some of the statements that we make on this call may be forward-looking statements, reflecting management’s expectations about future events and operating plans and performance. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today’s date and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. A sample list of factors and risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from forward-looking statements can be found in today’s earnings release, our 2010 annual report to shareholders or our 2010 10-K report. We undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise these forward-looking statements. And with that, I’d like to turn the call over to Jim.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us for our third quarter earnings discussion. I’ll begin with an overview of our performance and then Walter will discuss our financial results in more detail. Overall, we generated another solid quarter despite very challenging market conditions and we continue to demonstrate the strength of our diversified business model. In our Advisory business, earnings were up nicely and our advisors remained highly productive. In Asset Management, our net outflows increased primarily due to the equity market weakness and volatility. However, the business still produced solid earnings. At the same time, our Insurance and Annuity businesses generated solid underlying performance despite significant market impacts, the related DAC unlocking and some catastrophic losses in Auto and Home. Our strong financial foundation continues to serve us well. We’re maintaining more than $2 billion in excess capital. We’re continuing our investments for future growth and we’ve accelerated our share repurchases. During the quarter, we bought back nearly 10 million shares, returning $447 million to shareholders. In fact, so far this year we returned $1.4 billion or nearly 150% of our operating earnings through buybacks and dividends. I’d like to briefly discuss the markets and their effect on our business and then I’ll provide some commentary on our underlying performance. Both the equity markets and the interest rate environment worked against us in the quarter. As you know, the S&P 500 was down 14% and the markets were quite volatile. The drop in equities affected our DAC muni reversion and the market conditions also drove an industry-wide pull back in equity investing which affected our flows in Asset Management and wrap accounts. Our overall assets were down as well which reduced our fees. At the same time, long-term rates fell substantially because of the Fed’s Twist action and shorter rates…

Thank you, Jim. Our reported earnings in the third quarter clearly reflected the challenging environment we’ve been operating in. The S&P was down 14% sequentially, point to point and 7% on average. The 10-year Treasury declined 125 basis points to about 1.9% and corporate spreads widened. And we had some pretty severe weather which impacted Auto & Home claims. The most pronounced impact on our earnings was in the annual and quarterly changes in DAC amortization which resulted from negative market movements. With this as a backdrop, core business trends were solid with earnings growth in Advice & Wealth Management. Underlying results in Asset Management, Annuities & Protection were all within our expectations. Our balance sheet remained very strong and we will continue to shift to low capital-intensive businesses. On slide 4, you’ll see a break out of the different items that impacted results in the quarter, particularly given some of the large year-over-year changes. First, there were two different DAC impacts in the quarter, one from our regular mean reversion that captures equity market movements. The other is our annual DAC unlocking which factors in our other assumptions like interest spreads and policyholder behavior. As you can see, the combined impact of the DAC items reduced year-over-year earnings by $0.42. The mean reversion in the quarter was a negative $0.17 compared to a positive $0.10 last year, reflecting declines in the equity markets. The DAC unlocking was a negative $0.10 compared to a positive $0.05 last year. The annual DAC unlocking was primarily driven by lower interest spreads offset partially by continued strong persistency. Excluding DAC impacts, there were a few unusual items in the quarter that were largely offset and aggregate to about $0.01 per share benefit. Now let’s look more deeply at the drivers for Ameriprise in…

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) The first question is from Suneet Kamath from Sanford Bernstein. Please go ahead. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: Thank you and good morning. I guess I have a couple of questions. First on the RBC ratio and the excess capital of $2 billion, and the RBC ratio of over 600%, my understanding is some of the improvement from last quarter came from the increase in value of the hedges that you have on the books, for your variable annuity business. So if that’s the case, and markets rise, obviously, in the fourth quarter then some of that benefit will unwind. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is how much of this excess capital that you’re talking about is really sort of redeployable or cash that you’re comfortable taking out of the life subs to support redeployment going forward? Thanks.

It’s actually totally because the hedges actually just offset the basic liability that we had and so they act in unison with it so it actually provided the protection we needed and so it is totally available for distribution. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: Okay. So just to be clear, the increase in the RBC ratio from last quarter to this quarter was not driven by the change in value of the hedges because that change in value is offset by something else?

That’s correct. They go in lockstep. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: Okay. Got it. And then moving onto the share repurchases, obviously, you were more opportunistic in the third quarter. How are you thinking about the pace of buybacks going forward? And does this 09-G impact which obviously is not a statutory event but it will change things like debt-to-capital on a GAAP basis, will that influence the pace of redeployment?

I do not believe it will. We have discussed this and reviewed this with the rating agencies and as again, it is a non-cash event and on that basis they’ve viewed it and they feel that we’re within the ranges that could allow us to continue on the repurchasing. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: And would you say that kind of current pace is about what you’re thinking?

Suneet, we’ll continue to review the opportunity for repurchase as well as other forms of redeployment. What we would say is that we’re trading way below our intrinsic value so we saw it is a good opportunity in the third quarter and we’ll continue to review it appropriately as we move forward. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: Okay. Great. And then my last question is just on interest rates. I appreciate the earnings discussion in Walter’s presentation but I was a little curious that the equity allocated to long-term care, as one example, actually fell in the quarter by a fair amount. So I was curious about some details in terms of that especially given the low long-term rate environment. But I guess the bigger question is, how are you guys thinking about when the rate environment, if it persists, sort of moves from an earnings drag issue, which you sort of quantified, to something that might be a little bit more serious in terms of either statutory reserves or DAC or anything like that. That would be helpful. Thanks.

On the long-term care, that was a reserve adjustment based upon actuaries evaluating it, they made a statutory reserve adjustment and that was something that has been evaluated and was implemented in the third quarter. On the interest, we are continuing evaluating that, and obviously, we do not see it having a significant impact as the schedules indicated and we will then have to evaluate it if it does continue beyond the two years that we discussed, ‘12 and ‘13. But we certainly feel our capital and our earnings capacity, we’ll be able to deal with it in the near-term and then we’ll have to evaluate what changes have to be post that. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: Okay. Just quick follow-up on the long-term care statutory reserve release, was there a GAAP earnings benefit from that in the quarter?

No, there was not. It was strictly statutory. Suneet Kamath – Sanford Bernstein: Okay. All right. Terrific. Thank you.

Thank you, Suneet.

(Operator Instructions) The next question is from John Nadel from Sterne Agee. Please go ahead. John Nadel – Sterne Agee: Hey, good morning. Two questions for you, if I could. In Asset Management, can you help me with the distribution fees and distribution expenses? If I look at distribution fees, they fell 12% quarter-over-quarter, I’m looking at 3Q versus 2Q and that’s about what I was expecting, but distribution expenses remained flat and I thought there was supposed to be a relationship there where there was almost a direct function of distribution fees. But that clearly wasn’t the case. Can you help me understand what happened there?

I think it is that while certain of the parts certainly fluctuate with it, there are elements that don’t as it relates to some are tied to account fees, some are tied to wholesaling and other factors. So it will eventually, you get the timing differentials so we anticipate that timing differential will adjust itself, and as you saw, the net change was about $13 million when you take the distribution revenue minus the distribution expense, we had an additional $13 million. We don’t see an issue with that; it will adjust itself. John Nadel – Sterne Agee: So that will come back to you and how quickly does that happen, Walter?

It will come back in next – it depends on what happens to the markets and other things of that nature, but it will – it’s more of a timing – I don’t have the exact elements of it, but certainly it will be driven by the market and it will happen obviously depending on how markets move, because it’s not a perfect correlation. John Nadel – Sterne Agee: Okay. Maybe I’ll just follow up off-line on that one.

No problem. John Nadel – Sterne Agee: And then just thinking about the asset – again on Asset Management, just where you guys are on integration, gross and net saves. I think you made the comment about $130 million on target for that for this year. Can you just reset for us where you guys were coming out of this quarter, how much you have incrementally and what we should be expecting in 2012?

Yeah, as I indicated, the bulk of the synergies will hit the $130 million range as we talked about for 2011. With the delay on the reengineering, that will carry over into 2012 as we implement the one-time charge activities and we do complete the final integration and we are on track to be through 2012 in the $140 million range on our synergies. John Nadel – Sterne Agee: Are they one-time costs? I forget what that was originally expected to be, but given the timing and the push out on the system side, are you expecting that the one-time costs related to the integration process are going to be a bit higher?

Yes, they are. Obviously, take a look through the third quarters, about $182 million and they will be higher and we are assessing that right now. John Nadel – Sterne Agee: Okay. Thank you very much.

You’re quite welcome.

Thank you. The next question is from John Hall from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. John Hall – Wells Fargo: Good morning, everyone. I have a few different questions. The first one has to do with the dividend that you indicated you’re going to pay out of the Life companies in the fourth quarter, that $850 million. Is that encumbered in any fashion or is that free and available?

Well, I think we get – the majority of it is not encumbered. We will get permission from the Superintendent of Insurance and we are in the process of doing that. We do not see an issue with that. John Hall – Wells Fargo: Okay. On the DAC write-off, just wondering if you could comment because we’ve been seeing a number of other companies report similar types of things, and at this juncture the size of your write-off relative to your DAC balances on the higher-end of things, I was just wondering if you could comment on what it is about either your book of business or perhaps your DAC policies that would lead to that result?

Sure. First and foremost, it is totally appropriate the level that we’re doing, write down from that standpoint and it primarily focuses on the nature of the business and written through the inside channel, and certainly if you look at the components, if you look at the comp component and then the selling rate as it relates to the DAC that you would have in those two components, the impact relates to an inside channel. Those elements under the new rules of being a successful sale are more subject to reversal from that standpoint of the policy that was in effect prior. So since we have the bulk of our activity through the inside channel, that’s where the impact is coming on the reversal of that DAC; whereas if you sold in an outside channel, most of that is absorbed through the comp rate and which is again tied to a successful sale, so therefore it does not get reversed. So we’ve been through this, we’ve reviewed it, we’ve reviewed it with our auditors and certainly have been evaluated it and we feel it’s totally appropriate based upon the type of business and the focus in the channel that it evolved from. John Hall – Wells Fargo: Great. And then just moving on to fund flows, Jim, I was wondering if you could just comment on the momentum that Threadneedle is showing in the Middle East. Is that – what’s all of a sudden driving that or is it not that sudden and is there sustainability around it?

Yes. As you are aware, we had mentioned over the last few quarters that we’ve been expanding our distribution with Threadneedle to the other regions of the world and one of the ones that we started to really develop last year was the Middle East, and over the course of the year we’ve been winning mandates coming from the Middle East. We’ve also expanded recently to Asia and we think that, that will start also come to bear some fruit as we move to the next number of quarters as well. So we do believe that it is something sustainable. Threadneedle has excellent product. As you know, based on what we’ve experienced in Europe and the sovereign debt crisis, we experienced some lumpiness in redemptions et cetera, because of what has occurred, but that come back quickly again as we saw previously when that picked up again as an issue in Europe earlier in the year. So we do feel like the pipeline for Threadneedle is good, it’s strong, and we can continue to win good mandates. Their investment performance over the cycle has been quite good and they have really good product. And so we think that that will continue. John Hall – Wells Fargo: Great. Thank you very much.

At this time we have no further questions. Mr. Cracchiolo, I will turn the call back over to you for closing remarks.

Thank you. We appreciate you listening in this morning. As I opened the call, even though we’ve experienced another impact from the market environment, stock market being down a lot in the quarter, we do feel like the fundamentals of our business remain quite solid. And as we look across the businesses, we feel very comfortable with the position and the hand that we have. We feel good that if this environment continues, we can navigate even stronger than we did the first time out and in addition to that, we do believe that as markets continue to repair and stabilize, the foundation we have in place, the investments we continue to make and the traction we’re gaining including with the Asset Management businesses as we have really integrated and stabilized them, will bear fruit as we move forward. We have derisked the business, we feel very good about our capital position, volatility is lower, we really have an excellent book in our Annuity business and we have, even though there are the normal exposures from market declines et cetera, on a relative size and scale, it’s very manageable for the size and scope of our business and the diversity of our business and the capital position. So we will update you even further as we talk at our financial community meeting which is November 16 at 8:00 a.m. at the New York Stock Exchange and we look forward to having a very good conversation with you and outlining how we’ll continue to make progress as we move forward and also to discuss any of what you might think as issues or concerns in the environment so that we can actually quantify that for you and qualitatively give you how we think about it so that you can make informed decisions. So we appreciate your time, and thank you very much, and look forward to speaking to you further.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.