AAIGF - AIA Group Limited (AAGIY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-04-29 12:54:09 ET
AIA Group Limited (AAGIY)
Q1 2024 Results Conference Call
April 28, 2024 09:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Lance Burbidge - Chief Investor Relations Officer
Lee Yuan Siong - Group Chief Executive and President
Garth Jones - Chief Financial Officer
Jacky Chan - CEO, AIA China
Conference Call Participants
Charles Zhou - UBS Security
Thomas Wang - Goldman Sachs
MW Kim - JPMorgan
Kailesh Mistry - HSBC
Richard Xu - Morgan Stanley
Michael Chang - CGS International Securities
Edwin Liu - CLSA
Michelle Ma - Citi
Presentation
Lance Burbidge
Good morning from AIA Central in Hong Kong. Welcome to our first quarter 2024 update Q&A session. I'm Lance Burbidge, Chief Investor Relations Officer for AIA Group. Together with me today are Lee Yuan Siong, our Group CEO and President; and Garth Jones, our group CFO. We also have other members of the group executive committee either with us in the room or joining us remotely.
Before we start the Q&A, Yuan Siong and Garth will take you through a short presentation on our first quarter new business performance and our new capital management policy. Yuan Siong.
Lee Yuan Siong
Good morning, everyone. Today, I'm very pleased to announce our policy, clearly demonstrating the strength of AIA's business model and our financial discipline. Value of new business for the group grew by 31% in the first quarter of 2024. We delivered AIA's highest ever quarterly new business result, building on our very strong VONB performance in 2023. Our new capital management policy provides greater clarity as to how we will deliver higher annual capital returns to shareholders.
Following this new policy, the Board has approved a further $2 billion buyback, which increases our existing share buyback program to a total of $12 billion. I'm confident that AIA is exceptionally well positioned to capture the highly attractive opportunities available to us across the region.
We continue to focus on driving high-quality profitable new business group that delivers increased future earnings, free surplus generation and greater shareholder value. Let me now take you through the first quarter new business highlights.
VONB was $1.3 billion, a record high for a quarter and up by 31%. We delivered double-digit growth from all our reportable segments with VONB margin increasing by 2.1 percentage points to 54.2%. AIA China was up 38%, driven by very strong double-digit growth from our Premier Agency, supplemented by growth from our highly selective bancassurance partners, where VONB margin increased to around 40%....
AIA Group Limited (AAGIY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript