Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the CNO Financial Group Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jennifer Childe, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on CNO Financial Group's Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's presentation will include remarks from Gary Bhojwani, Chief Executive Officer; and Paul McDonough, Chief Financial Officer. Following the presentation, we will also have other business leaders available for the question-and-answer period. During this conference call we will be referring to information contained in yesterday's press release. You can obtain the release by visiting the media section of our website at cnoinc.com. This morning's presentation is also available in the Investors Section of our website and was filed in a Form 8-K yesterday. We expect to file our Form 10-K and post it on our website on or before February 26. Let me remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are subject to a number of factors which may cause actual results to be materially different than those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Today's presentations contain a number of non-GAAP measures, which should not be considered as substitutes for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. You'll find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures in the appendix. Throughout the presentations we will be making performance comparisons and unless otherwise specified, any comparisons made will be referring to changes between fourth quarter 2019 and fourth quarter 2020. And with that I'll turn the call over to Gary.

Thanks, Jennifer. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. I'm going to start with a discussion of the DirectPath acquisition, we announced last night. I'll then provide brief commentary on our fourth quarter and full year performance, before turning it over to Paul to discuss our financial results and outlook in more detail. I'll finish with a few closing remarks before opening it up to your questions. Turning to Slide 4. We are very excited about this transaction and the enhanced Worksite capabilities it brings to CNO. The transformation that we announced last year created a Worksite division dedicated to this market. Growing our Worksite business is the next step in our strategy. We are significantly expanding our Worksite business to position CNO as a full-service provider of Worksite solutions. DirectPath is a leading national provider of employee benefits management services to employers and employees. It brings three primary new revenue sources to CNO; employee education services, employee advocacy and transparency services and employee benefits communications and compliance services. DirectPath operates directly nationwide through approximately 7,000 benefit broker partners. It serves 400 employers of all sizes from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies, which reflects a covered employee base of more than 2.5 million individuals. Prior to COVID, Worksite was one of the fastest growing higher multiple businesses for us and in the industry. We expect that dynamic to resume over the next year or so. DirectPath builds out our capabilities and gets us deeper into the employer value chain. It will also create extensive cross-selling and referral opportunities for us. Through its fee-based structure, DirectPath will diversify our Worksite revenue base. It adds to our existing high-return fee-based businesses that will help drive expansion in our overall ROE. The purchase price of $50 million was funded out…

Thanks, Gary, and good morning, everyone. Turning to the financial highlights on slide 12. Operating earnings per share were up 17% in the fourth quarter, and up 21% excluding significant items. Benefiting from favorable health insurance product margins, driven by continued customer deferral of care related to COVID and by strong net investment income resulting from significant outperformance of our alternative investments. Earnings per share also benefited from our share repurchases, which reduced our fourth quarter weighted average share count by 7%. We deployed $100 million of excess capital on share repurchases in the fourth quarter and $263 million for the full year, partially offsetting the increase in insurance product margin and investment income in the quarter was an increase in expenses and a decrease in fee income, both driven by our decision to fast track spending on growth initiatives in the second half of 2020 in the context of accelerating trends relating to all things virtual and digital and supported by strong earnings in the period. These initiatives included spending related to myHealthPolicy.com, which flows through as an expense in our fee income line as it relates to activities supporting our fee revenue. Other examples of growth initiatives in the period include spending on virtual sales and service capabilities, market access, data analytics and various initiatives designed to improve our policyholder customer experience. All of these investments flowed through our income statement on the expenses allocated to products line. In the 12 months ended December 31, 2020, we generated operating return on equity excluding significant items of 12%, which compares to 10.4% in the prior year period. As referenced in our earnings press release, we completed our annual GAAP actuarial assumption review in the fourth quarter, which had a net favorable impact of $11.8 million in operating earnings, which…

Thanks Paul. Turning to slide 20 -- to slide 19. 2020 was an incredibly challenging year on many fronts. Our pandemic response and financial results demonstrated the resilience of our organization and proved that we can emerge from the crisis even stronger while continuing to support our associates, agents, customers, and communities. There's no question that difficult and uncertain conditions remain. In many respects, we have less visibility into 2021 than we had in 2020. The lack of short-term clarity should not detract from the long-term view of our prospects. Our franchise remains strong and our financial position is robust. Longer term I couldn't be more optimistic about the future of this company and our ability to capitalize on the opportunity before us. Please continue to stay healthy and safe. Thank you for your interest in and support of CNO Financial Group. We will now open it up for questions. Operator?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ryan Krueger with KBW. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Couple of questions. First, can you just provide more quantification on the impact to free cash flow from fully utilizing the life NOL?

Sure. Hey Ryan, it's Paul. Thanks for the question. What I would say to you is that having exhausted the life NOLs last year, we are now limited to the non-life NOLs, which will continue to offset 35% of our life income and 100% of our non-life income through at least 2023. And in your model you'll have to compare that to where we've been in the last few years which is available life NOLs offsetting 100% of our life income.

Do you know maybe what the life NOL benefit was in 2020 for a perspective?

Well from a cash tax perspective, while we exhausted the life NOLs partway through. So that complicates the analysis a bit. But from a cash tax perspective to keep it simple most of our life income in 2020 was offset by the NOLs as compared to going forward 35% of it. And in terms of the mix that gets a bit complicated, but roughly speaking 75% to 80% or so of our income life versus non-life?

Got it. Thank you. And then a question on expenses. Was your comment that -- I know you commented that expenses would likely be down some in the second half of 2021. Did I -- did you also say that you thought full year expenses for 2021 would be somewhat lower than 2020?

Yes. So the guidance and I recognize that this is directional and I'm sure you'd prefer that we provide more specificity. But directionally we are committed to full year 2021 expenses lower than full year 2020 with most of that coming in the second half particularly in the fourth quarter. And just to provide a little bit more context Ryan, the balance that we're trying to strike here is to be very disciplined in capturing efficiencies in how we operate. And we've had some examples of that in the last 12 months to 15 months that you're familiar with. But I think it's probably worth referencing them. Number one, the technology partnership that we announced in November of 2019 that will translate to roughly $20 million of expense save over a five year period. And the transformation that we announced in January of 2020 that we didn't do for expense reasons, but it translates to roughly $11 million of expense savings. Another big opportunity that we have going forward is rethinking how we utilize office space. That won't translate to any material savings in 2021. In fact might go the other way as we spend to, sort of, reposition. We had a little bit of that in 2020 also. But longer term our expectation is that we'll need roughly half the space that we used to need that will translate to some meaningful savings. We're also always looking for opportunities to tighten our belts. And that's why we were able to reduce expenses in 2020 through the first three quarters versus 2019, while still making growth investments. In the fourth quarter of this year, obviously, that tune changed a little bit as we alluded to in our prepared remarks, we took the opportunity to accelerate a number of growth initiatives in order to take advantage of accelerating trends and frankly to take advantage of a period where earnings were exceptionally strong driven by strong underlying fundamentals, but also by net favorable impact from COVID and very strong performance on investments. So sorry for the long-winded answer, but I just want to reinforce that we remained very focused on expense discipline and trying to balance that with appropriate investments to grow the franchise.

Thanks, Paul. It’s helpful. Appreciate it.

Our next question comes from the line of John Barnidge with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Can you talk about the earn-out associated with DirectPath, what it is, over what period? And maybe some of the metrics?

Yes. Hey, John, this is Gary. Thanks for calling in and thanks for the question. To be blunt, we're not providing a lot of detail on the earn-out. I will tell you that it's not going to be significant and we would be thrilled to pay it. The performance conditions are such that if they hit the earn-out conditions, we would be very happy to pay it.

Okay. No, I appreciate your bluntness. Your -- and then the follow-up, your fixed rate annuity block, it's essentially in a runoff. FIA is clearly a growing business for you. The market has been constructed to block transactions with fixed really being the low-hanging fruit. Can you talk about maybe how much capital is associated with that? And is there anything structurally or from a distribution perspective that would really prevent you selling your fixed interest annuity block?

I'm going to make a couple of general comments and then I'll hand it over to Paul to give you a little bit more detailed color. So, first of all, we've obviously been watching in the marketplace some of the transactions that have taken place. And I would just offer a few general comments before Paul gives you a little bit more specifics. First, please recall that we don't sell and never have variable annuities and some of the other products that have really been the most common subject of some of these transactions. As a respect to fixed index annuities, it's true, we sell those and it's true, there have been some block transactions on those. However, when you dive deep into the structure of our products, we simply don't have the richness of guarantees and some of the other things. And so, maybe a simpler way of saying that, they're very well-performing financial products for us. We like the way they work, we like the way they perform. And I believe that our job is to remain open to anything that will maximize shareholder value. So if we got a compelling offer we would absolutely consider it and look at it. But I also want to be clear that, I just don't see that happening because of the nature of the products. We simply don't have some of those exposures that would make it a worthwhile trade for us and for the buyer. But we're wide open to it. Paul, I don't know, if you want to add any further color?

No, nothing to add. Thanks.

Thank you for your answers.

Our next question comes from Erik Bass with Autonomous Research. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thank you. I was hoping you could elaborate a little bit on your outlook for health claims and margins over the next few quarters. And am I interpreting your guidance correctly that you expect to still have some level of favorability for the full year in 2021, that will offset some elevated life mortality, but essentially you expect to be back to normal or slightly elevated claims levels in the second half of the year?

Hey, Erik, it's Paul. Thanks for the question. Yes. So what I would say is that, the health product margins, ex-COVID, have been reasonably stable and we would expect that to continue. With respect to COVID, yes, consistent with the outlook, our expectation is that the net impact of mortality and morbidity in the first half of the year will be modestly favorable. So continuation of favorable COVID impact in our health products. And in the back half of the year as that diminishes, we expect it will diminish over the course of the year. At some point, we crossed the line where there's not enough health product morbidity offset to get to net positive and we end up net modestly negative in the back half of the year.

Got it. But the health margins in isolation for the year would be kind of in line or slightly favorable to your normal expectations?

I would say, in line. Again, I think that they've been relatively stable in our actual results and our expectation is that continues.

Got it. And then, maybe if you could just turn to buybacks, I think in the presentation you note having capacity to exceed the level of share repurchases done in 2020, if conditions permit. So can you just talk about what you mean by this? Is that a comment on the stock valuation potential for other opportunities to deploy capital, or something else, or are you -- I know you don't want to give a specific number but is -- are you pointing at kind of 2020 level being the base case or higher?

Yes. Thanks for the question. This is Gary. As you know, we've philosophically taken the view that we don't want to provide absolute guidance. I would just make a couple of comments. So first, in response to your questions, yes, you're correct. There are a number of different factors. Two of the very significant factors are where the stock is trading and what the alternatives are. Now, all of that said, we recognize that we have -- we're fortunate to have a business that has a very strong cash flow and we've got to deploy that cash flow. If you take a look at the incentives of the management team, we don't have any incentive to hold on to the cash, quite the contrary. Our incentive is to deploy it. And the question is, how to deploy it and deploy it smartly. I would also just point out, this is my 13th quarter as CEO and if memory serves correctly in 12 of those 13, we have bought back shares. And the only time we didn't was when we were prepping for reinsurance transaction. So, we recognize what our shareholders look for. We recognize the opportunity that it presents. And we've stopped short of providing specific guidance, but we've been in a place for the last several quarters, where our stock has been a really compelling value. We continue to believe that the value of the company is beyond what's reflected in book value. And we'll factor all that in, as we look at alternatives to deploy the cash.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Our next question comes from Humphrey Lee with Dowling & Partners. Your line is now open.

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. My first question is related to kind of the outlook, especially the comment about lower insurance margins in 2021, given the lower sales in '20. How should we think about the level of kind of earnings degradation? Based on your comment just now, health margin likely to be stable. So, I would assume most of that is coming from the life side. But how should we think about that?

Good morning, Humphrey, it's Paul. So we're just pointing out something that maybe that is a need to be pointed out because, it's fairly obvious. But the simple observation is that with the decline in sales in 2020 driven by COVID, all else equal, we're going to have fewer in force policies in 2021 and forward. And we just simply want to call that out. I don't want to put a number on it. There's obviously there are a number of moving parts there, but we just wanted to call that out directionally as a headwind, again all else equal.

Humphrey, this is Gary. Just one thing I would add to it and I've had this conversation with other investors as well just to think about it in a real simple way. Every policy that we sell, we expect to derive future profits from it. So, when we sell fewer policies, if we sold five instead of eight policies in a given year, then in the future years we would just have fewer policies delivering a profit. And I think, all that I am trying to say is, we sold fewer so we're going to have less profit dollars in the immediate terms following.

Okay. Regarding the DirectPath acquisition, I guess how should we think about the platform and how does it fit into kind of your overall offering? And is there any kind of -- does it complement WBD in any formal way? And how should we think about kind of the longer-term aspiration in this area?

Okay. So Humphrey thanks for the question. I'm really glad you asked it. I'd like to respond from two perspectives. First, I'd like to share the perspective directly to the way you asked the question and then maybe give it a little broader perspective from an overall CNO view. So first of all, in terms of the way you asked the question directly in exactly how does DirectPath fit. If you think about our worksite offerings, there's really three overall dimensions to how we want to go to market. So when we sit down and talk to an employer, we want to first talk to them about the insurance products and we've been doing that for several years. Think of that as our Washington National Piece. Second, we needed to talk to them about the administration technology, the platform, where those employers interface with their employees. That was the rationale behind the Web Benefits acquisition a little over a year ago. The third piece that we've just added with DirectPath is being able to talk to our employer, clients about benefits management services. So if you think about it first insurance, then technology and now services. So this DirectPath acquisition fills that services offering. And within services there's education, there's advocacy and then there's employer recommendations in education. So that's how it fits into it. But there's a broader perspective, I would ask our investors to think about when they're looking at what CNO has done over these last several years. And what I've got in my head is something that; Buffett wrote in his - I believe it was his 2001 shareholder letter where he talked about the Noah rule. And basically, I'm going to get that quote wrong, but it's roughly along the lines of predicting rain doesn't…

No, I appreciate the color. I think that make sense. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Cullen Johnson with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.

This is Randy Binner from B. Riley. I think we got our names mixed up on that. Can you all hear me?

Yes. Randy.

Good morning. Gary I was interested in your comment around kind of building a direct-to-consumer health business. And yes, I think it's definitely a logical extension of your distribution franchise. So just curious kind of what that will look like? And if you can tie in kind of what changes with the new administration Medicare Advantage may bring into that. I'd just be curious kind of what your vision is there.

Okay. So Randy thanks for the question. So first of all, we've had a secular shift that we've been watching happen from Med Supp to Med Advantage. And a way overly simplified explanation is, think of Med Advantage like an HMO plan where it's got specific conditions, but lower costs and Med Supp as a richer health insurance plan. And we've seen consumers migrate increasingly to this lower cost, more efficient but more restrictive structure. And we can have lots of discussions about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or whether it's smart or not, but the reality is that's what the consumer has been doing. It's been a very compelling value for them. So we've watched that happen. We've thought about it internally and we've come to the conclusion, it doesn't make sense for us to try and build up the ability to manufacture a Med Advantage offer. We're better off being a distributor. So we're going to continue to do that. You've seen us do that and there's some side benefits in terms of accounting treatment and so on for fee income. So we like doing that. I would love to rather sell something that we manufacture and distribute because we get both pools of margin, in this case we only get one pool of margin but that's still better than nothing. It does the most important thing which is get us into the household, so that we can sell life and short-term care and annuities and so on and so forth. So we're going to continue doing that. Now in terms of the online offering, one of the things that I want to be really clear about. We're not trying to compete with some of these online players that are out there. There's a…

All right. Well, that's really helpful. So a couple of follow-ups. One, on the Bankers and Colonial Penn synergies, I think at some point you were kind of quantifying cross-sell, or other metric around that. Is that – can you remind us of that? If there's an updated version or if that got messed up with COVID I'd just be curious like what the quantification was of the success of Bankers and Colonial Penn in that regard?

Yeah. I think we might have touched on the script. I'm going to look at Paul and Jennifer. I'm not remembering the number. I think we did disclose how much percentage-wise was cross-sell.

Yeah. So the critical data points that, I'd point you to Randy are D2C life sales up 10% in the quarter. Field life sales up 26% in the quarter and there's – I don't know that there's a third sort of cross-selling metric that we've shared. But the important point is that, we're sharing leads from B2C to the field. And that's supporting field sales. And we're also referring from the field back to telesales agents and/or to web digital. So we're creating a business model that is optimizing across D2C and face-to-face. And we're finding in our productivity metrics that more holistic approach drives much better productivity in terms of lead conversion and just overall productivity.

Paul, internally I know I've seen the data for how many of our face-to-face life sales emanated from that D2C lead sharing. I can't remember, if we've disclosed it publicly or not. But Randy, again, we are now tracking it. It's been a very impressive figure which is why we're doubling down on it and building out similar capabilities in health. We – demand be able to bring together this notion of face-to-face and direct-to-consumer and make it feel seamless.

Okay. That's perfect. You’ve kind of covered my follow-up in that explanation. So I’ll leave it there. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from John Barnidge with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Worksite sales year-over-year have consistently improved since the second quarter. January is now on the books. Can you talk about January from maybe a year-over-year perspective, just trying to get a sense to the degree to which that improvement is so far in this year?

So John, it's Paul. We obviously have the number. We've decided not to share our January sales metrics to try to get back to our former cadence of just sharing quarterly. We had been selling the -- or sharing rather the initial month of the quarter the last two quarters in the context of COVID and its impact on our sales dynamics. What I will tell you though is that the January sales data help inform our overall sales outlook, and it's certainly consistent with the outlook that we provided, which is the momentum in the second half of 2020 carrying into 2021.

Okay. That's fantastic. And then somewhat relatedly, Super Bowl ratings were down a ton, how does this changing dynamic and how people consume frankly entertainment change, how you're thinking about advertising within Colonial Penn for 2021?

Yeah. John thanks for the question. I think it's a very astute observation. We -- for a long time we've tracked, but we've not disclosed publicly, because we regard it as a competitive issue. We've tracked our marketing cost to NAP to our new annualized premium. And I've been amazed, even though I'm a 30-year career insurance person -- I've been amazed at how tightly that range can predict our sales. I remember being a part of the business floor where when we move up marketing costs I can tell you within 5% to 10% what the sales are going to be. I mean it's just such a tight indicator. So we track it very religiously. We've got a lot of systems, and I think virtual property in place to do that. We're bringing that same discipline and those same set of skills to our online marketing efforts. You're absolutely correct that the efficacy of television is changing simply, because the viewership is changing. And we are pushing continuously to have more and more of those leads generated from sources other than television. I will tell you one thing though that we're still kind of watching and learning from because we've only been doing it for about four quarters now. Since we brought closer together, the face-to-face and the direct-to-consumer marketing, meaning Colonial Penn and Bankers Life. Since we brought those closer together each dollar of marketing spend is yielding more, which is to say we can afford to continue to spend a similar amount of dollars, because the yield is higher meaning we have a better close rate. That's what we're learning. So we're continuing to modify that. But the salient point you're making, which is the television is becoming less and less fruitful, meaning the yield is lower because fewer people watch it. So, that's absolutely correct. Television advertising rates are changing and our yield is changing. So it's not just a one variable thing. But because of all of that, we're pushing more into online and we're bringing the same discipline into our online analysis and marketing spend.

Thank you very much.

There are no further questions in queue at this time. I'll turn the call back over to the presenters for closing comments.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to apologize for the technical difficulties experienced earlier in the call and the fact that Gary's earlier remarks -- earliest remarks were missed. A full recording of the call will be available on our website this afternoon. And thank you all for joining.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.