Episode 300: Overlooked Opportunities: IG Emerging Markets Debt

 

Stewart: My name's Stewart Foley, I'll be your host. Hey, welcome back. This is the InsuranceAUM.com podcast. I'm Stewart Foley, and this is our Executive Spotlight series, where we're sitting down with leaders shaping the future of insurance asset management. Today's topic is Overlooked Opportunities: Investment Grade Emerging Market Debt. We're joined today by Mark Hughes and Kevin Ritter, both CFA charterholders and the Co-Heads of Emerging Market Debt at PPM America. Mark and Kevin, you bring a lot of experience. You've been at several different places, and now you're leading the emerging market platform at PPM America. And PPM has a long history of their commitment to the insurance industry. We're thrilled to have you both on. Welcome.

Kevin: Thanks, Stewart. Great to be here. And Stewart, I'm glad you mentioned the long history here at PPM. We're actually celebrating our 35th anniversary at PPM this year. You have July 4th, obviously, Independence Day, July 5th, 35 years at PPM.

Stewart: Wow, good for you. Welcome, Mark. Let's just start it off the way we always do, which is where'd you grow up? What was your first job? Not the fancy one, and we've added one lately, which is what was your first concert?

Mark: Well, thanks for sharing the time to be here today, Stewart. I grew up in the East Bay of Bay Area, East of San Francisco. And really, since then, I've moved around a lot. Lived in Oregon, Washington, up and down the East Coast, and have here in Southern California. But my main problem with that is that I'm a Giants fan from growing up, and here I live about nine miles from Dodger Stadium, so I don't make a lot of friends that way.

Stewart: No, I can understand that. What was your first job? Not the fancy one. And what about your first concert?

Mark: Sure. First job, I was a janitor at my local church, so I was doing all sorts of odd jobs, fixing the water heater, mopping the floors, fixing the sprinklers when they broke. And I think from a young age wanted to make some money, wanted to put myself to good use, and it was a hardworking start, but it started me off in my career.

Stewart: Good deal.

Mark: And the first concert would've been Huey Lewis in the news with my dad probably in 1984.

Stewart: Wow. There you go. All right, Kevin, here you go. Where'd you grow up? First job and what was your first concert?

Kevin: Yeah, so I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, originally. Similar to Mark in that I've had a lot of anguish over the past 10, 15 years following the Cincinnati Reds and maybe a little bit better news on the Cincinnati Bengals of late. But obviously, it's been a pretty tough journey for both of my sports teams. As far as first jobs, my first W2, actually similar to Mark in that I worked for the local church, but actually I worked cutting grass at the cemetery. And Stewart, that didn't include the riding mower, I was on the push mower and the edger there around the gravestones.

Stewart: Man, I can relate. I've done the cemetery mowing, I've done the home mowing, I've done the Elks Lodge mowing, all of it. I have not mowed my own grass, I mean in protest, for years as a result of that. So I can relate to that one. What was your first concert?

Kevin: First concert would be Jimmy Buffett, a lot of parrot heads in Cincinnati.

Stewart: There you go.

Kevin: So a big, big parrot head over here too.

Stewart: That's awesome. I really like these questions. I think that one's going to stick. So let's dig in here a little bit. Kevin, I want to start with the big picture here. I mean, how does PPM fit into the landscape of insurance asset management? How does your team's experience with insurers shape your approach to managing EM debt? Can you talk just a little bit about that at a high level?

Kevin: PPM is a Chicago-based investment manager owned by one of the premier annuity players in the United States. And I'd say that managing general account assets is really in our DNA here at PPM. So, over half of our assignments are actually general account assignments, both from our parent company and third-party assignments. We manage strategies across the fixed income spectrum, everything from public securities to private fixed income, below investment grade, investment grade, obviously emerging markets, the topic du jour here, and certainly have strategies in the private equity and also the structured products arena. I would say, too, that being owned by an insurance company, we're certainly going to have the best-in-class process with regards to credit analysis. So anything that goes into the parent company GA goes through a very robust underwriting process. All the holdings here at PPM also have an internal rating and an internal relative value opinion by our analyst team. So certainly not only does our parent company benefit from that, but certainly our third-party clients also enjoy those benefits as well. And as I mentioned prior, certainly an exciting time here at PPM, again with that 35-year anniversary coming up here, which I think marks longevity in the industry and certainly on the insurance side as well. Mark and I, we do have quite a lot of experience in the EM general account space. We've been managing EM general account assignments since 2008, s pre-credit crisis from that perspective.

Stewart: And Mark, I want to kind of go to you. Let's talk about why investors should care about emerging markets right now, right? What's changed over the past decade, and what makes this compelling for general account investors? And it's interesting that I believe that the only thing longer than the sales cycle in insurance is the institutional memory of people in it. And what I often find, and I've been doing this for a minute, is that I have an inaccurate view of an asset class and that view is based on is 10 years old, for example. And I'm not current, and it isn't until I get somebody like you on or you and Kevin on, where I can actually get current. So what would be helpful, I think, is to talk about the opportunity, but also what's changed and what's different about right now than has been historically the case.

Mark: Yeah, it's a really good point, Stewart, and that I think people have had sort of varied experiences in emerging markets over time. And I was actually just speaking with a big asset allocator yesterday, and they were complaining to me about really how EM has underperformed their expectations over time. And I couldn't really argue with them overall, I would say that the emerging markets debt space is generally done well, but certainly if you think about EM equities or EM currencies over time, they were supposed to outgrow developed markets returns and they've really let investors down. So to your point, there's sort of the asset allocation level disappointment in some parts of emerging markets. There are also the ghost stories of how people have lost money in emerging markets over time. And I think we're focused on two things right now. One is that the version of emerging markets that we invest in for our parenting company and for our general account clients is definitely a different flavor.

We're generally talking about investment grade, it's high quality, it's very comparable to US credit as well maybe talk about a little later. And so it's a lot of the negative parts of EM that have in their minds really aren't applicable to what we're talking about. The other thing that is really more timely is that we do feel like there's been a bit of a paradigm shift here and we've been in this era of US exceptionalism, where the US growth has outperformed expectations. It's US’s growth has grown much more than Europe, but also even some emerging markets too. And so over the last five, seven years, the easy trade has been to just buy US assets, buy the S&P 500, buy US credit, and there was no reason to really look further abroad to emerging markets. What you're seeing is in the policy volatility, the tariffs, a lot of investors, both globally and at home here, are rethinking their asset allocation, and they're making a tough decision that they may need to allocate a little bit more out of US right now. And we're really leaning into that. We're having a lot of conversations with clients and we find that as they learn more about investment-grade emerging markets debt, it has characteristics they really like and they think it offers a lot of value.

Stewart: And it's a great point. Emerging markets doesn't mean the same thing as it used to, right? There are some areas that used to be called emerging that probably aren't anymore, and it means different things to different people. Depends on who you ask. So how does PPM define emerging markets, particularly in the context of insurance, general account allocations?

Kevin: Yeah, Stewart, I've been doing this for over 25 years now in the emerging market space specifically, and I think you nailed it in that there's a misunderstanding and a misperception when it comes to emerging markets, right? Because I'm sure that a lot of your listeners on this podcast, when they saw the emerging market title, they probably thought, oh, well this is going to be a presentation about local currency or this is going to have a high risk, high return type slant to it. To the point before, maybe this is about Argentina or you know what, China is certainly an emerging market. There's obviously a lot of friction more recently with the Chinese and the United States with regards to tariffs. I don't want China in the portfolio au contraire. Mark and I are general account nerds, right? So when Mark and I think about emerging markets, we think about single-A rated and triple-B rated dollar-denominated securities, whether they be sovereigns or whether they be corporates that are going to have a very attractive income profile relative to US credit.

And I think from the conversation here, we're going to find out that the same investment grade, emerging market securities actually have pretty attractive risk characteristics as well. SoI think that's certainly something that we're seeing on the emerging market side and find that quite attractive. I would say too, maybe kind of driving to your point before with regards to the evolution of the emerging market asset class, when we first started doing this 25, 30 years ago, again, the concept of emerging markets has changed materially, right? Because if you think back again in the late nineties, the United States was the only game in town. We were by far the most powerful from an economic and military perspective. Of course, all the emerging markets would want to sign up for all the norms and regulations and what have you from a US and international perspective. I think the reality is that there's certainly other power centers, whether it be military or economic. And I would say that these emerging market countries, some of which have been investment grade rated now for the better part of 25, 30 years, although they didn't grow up in quite the same fashion maybe that we had thought in the late nineties. But there's still incredibly vibrant economies, very stable economies, exciting places to invest. And I think to the point before, it's these investment-grade rated countries and private sector issuers therein where we're really finding opportunities in the emerging market landscape.

Stewart: It's interesting you said that you're an insurance GA nerd. I mean it's like, believe it or not, we trademarked, I couldn't believe it was available. We trademarked home of the world's smartest money because I think insurance companies are the world's smartest money. Not that they're crystal balls better, but they have a lot more externalities to deal with. But, unofficially, Kevin, we are also the home of the insurance GA nerd. So you are in very good company, my friend. So Mark, I want to come back to you. How do you compare the opportunity set in the emerging markets to what we've seen in the developed world, and really, how do you think about integrating sovereigns and corporate exposures across these portfolios?

Mark: Sure. So I'm someone who spent a lot of my career both in developed markets credit as well as emerging markets credit. And so I'm sort of a good person to compare and contrast the two. And I'd say that the main thing and how we approach EM differently than a US credit manager might be is that macroeconomic and sovereign level analysis are really important for emerging markets. And so, EM includes this huge spectrum of issuers that can include sovereigns like Peru and Indonesia all the way down to privately owned and run corporates whose fundamentals that you can look at on a much more bottom-up basis. But the history of EM is littered with a bunch of managers who tried to do EM purely bottom-up, purely looking at corporate fundamentals without understanding the bigger picture of what's happening in the country, the politics, the regulatory, all of that side.

And so, at PPM what we try to do is really integrate the sovereign outlook and research as well as the corporate side of things. And so a good example of not doing that well was Brazil in 2014 and 2015, where you had a big surge of issuance on the corporate side leading up to political scandals and bribery scandals there, and you ended up having a number of defaults and credit situations. And people were really surprised by that because they thought they had bought good companies, and it turned out it didn't matter, it was sort of a Brazil problem. Fortunately, PPM has a great history and infrastructure of bottom-up credit research. And so our emerging markets team is able to take both global and macro views as well as sovereign-level research and blend that with PPM’s corporate credit team to really have generated a well-diversified portfolio with risk that really spans the spectrum between sovereigns and corporates.

And I would just add that we do really emerging market corporates and sometimes there's a perception that a company in EM has sort of double the risk, right? Because it has the sovereign risk and it has the corporate risk. And we find actually, if you look at the numbers, EM corporates over time have generated much better risk-adjusted returns or excess returns and often because EM corporates have different characteristics that are unusual and better in some ways than what we see in US credit. And so, we see companies that are sort of national champions, they have big market shares and they're really low on the production cost curve, but at the same time they’re family owned, they're owned or they're affiliated with the government, they have shareholder goals that are different than what you see in the US, where it's really all about returning cash to shareholders. And so in general, EM corporates have less leverage than similarly rated companies in the US and if we're able to go out and find good companies with more spread and less leverage for the same rating, that's the best of our worlds.

Stewart: And Kevin, we know this space is nuanced, but for general account investors, talk about the core benefits of emerging markets. I mean, how should insurers think about income diversification and the portfolio fit?

Kevin: Sure, Stewart. So I think first and foremost, to your point before it's about the added income when you go into emerging markets, and it's like for whether it's in that single-A bucket or in that triple-B rated bucket, insurers can typically expect to pick up anywhere between, call it 50 to a 100 basis points over like rated investment grade credit. I would point out too, it's important to not look at the indices because again, the indices in the emerging markets are flawed. For example, let me bring out China. China has dollar-denominated securities in the major indices. Those Chinese bonds actually have a lower spread or actually trade through that of US Treasuries. So there's no reason whatsoever for anyone other than an ETF or a passive investor to own Chinese dollar-denominated securities that are trading through US Treasuries. Obviously, that's simply not attractive. So again, the income benefit for insurers is actually going to be higher than what the headline yields and the headline spreads on the indices suggest.

And then I would say too, certainly from a diversification perspective, Mark alluded to it before, but you're talking about different business cycles in the emerging markets and certainly we're seeing that here, right? Because of some of the more recent trade and tariff policies here in the United States, the IMF, for example, has forecasted a pretty significant slowdown and US economic activity. On the other hand, there's certainly going to be some losers in the emerging markets but there's also countries that are going to be much more immune to certain trade and regulatory policies here in the United States and even have a chance to benefit as well. From a geographic diversification benefit, there's going to be issuers that stand to be winners as a result of more recent trade policies here at the United States. And then I would say too, maybe just broader portfolio fit, certainly anytime you can combine an asset that has a higher yield for the same cap charge, and again because there's different business cycles, there's going to be different correlations involved here too. So from an efficient frontier perspective, insurers may be able to reach a higher income profile and at the same time perhaps even reduce overall portfolio volatility at the same time.

Stewart: That's super helpful. And Mark, you mentioned risk a moment ago, but I'd kind of like to go back if we could. From a general account perspective, how do you evaluate the risks of an EM allocation? Particularly, what should investors understand about impairments, ratings mitigation, and volatility?

Mark: Sure, and as a longtime credit guy, being good at credit is understanding downside, right? The upside to owning credit is you clip your coupon, right? And downside can be pretty severe. So when we're talking to clients and prospects, we always want to be sort of upfront with them, alright, you may have perception of what the risks are of being in EM, but here's the facts. So we like to sort of talk apples to apples—EM investment grade debt versus US investment grade. And when it comes down to the things that our clients care about, it's as you mentioned, it's ratings migration downward, it's impairments, it's volatility and drawdowns, and things like that. We find that EM is actually pretty comparable to US investment grade. And so when you're getting paid, as Kevin mentioned, 50 basis points plus for of additional spread for something that has the same risk profile when you cut in a bunch of different ways, then that's actually pretty good.

There are things that, as EM specialists, we have to watch out for. One of the things is the sovereign level risk. When you add all the issuers and credits in a country up together and you have to make sure you're managing that, there's certainly ratings migration where a whole country can trend down over time. You have to worry about that. And then there's certainly geopolitics is more of a concern today than it has been historically, but I think both our process and our historical track record of being aware of that sovereign risk has been pretty strong. And the good part again is we're not looking to take a lot of binary risk, geopolitics, sanctions, things like that in an investment-grade EM portfolio. The other thing I mentioned is that some of the criticisms of EM historically has been rule of law, bankruptcy, restructurings, things like that.

And certainly, we acknowledged that the US is the gold standard in terms of Chapter 11 and creditors' rights and things like that. As it turns out, when you actually look at the data, the default rate from any given ratings cohort is pretty comparable in EM. And recoveries are actually comparable as well, too. You'd say, well, how's it possible if there's no rule of law in some EM country that we can have good recoveries? And the answer is twofold. One is that often restructurings in EM end up having to be consensual arrangements with issuers, whether it's on the sovereign side or the corporate side, because those issuers know that they're never going to get access to credit ever again if they don't go through a more consensual restructuring. The other thing is that it's really hard to enforce liens, get security in capital structures, and that it can be a problem at times. But when a company is looking at having to restructure of its debt, it means that everybody in the cap structure is pari passu and you're not going to have some of the problems with waterfalls and low recoveries for subordinated tranches or even the creditor on creditor violence that you see in the US these days.

Stewart: Yeah, Kevin, every insurance company is different, right? It's like snowflakes. If you look at 'em from a distance, they look the same, but when you get up close, they're all different. And so one of the things that is common, though, is that a lot of insurance companies want to know what other insurance companies are doing. So, you are in this market every day. When you look across the insurance landscape and EM allocations, are larger insurers doing something different than smaller ones? Are there differences between life, P&C, and health or annuity providers? What are you seeing in that regard?

Kevin: Yeah, Stewart. I'd say that certainly over the past 15, 17 years managing emerging market dedicated general account assignments, we've certainly seen all shapes and sizes out there, but maybe to your point, maybe just a couple broader trends from our perspective. One, the larger insurance companies, they're already very heavily involved in this investment-grade rated emerging market debt space. Typically, those larger insurance companies will have anywhere between a 2% to 6% allocation of their broader public fixed income book. So they've already been benefiting for the past, again 10-15 years from the increased income profile and benefiting from some of the risk metrics that Mark alluded to before. So there's certainly very well entrenched in this trade already. I would say that the smaller insurance companies, and those are insurance companies, let's call them anywhere between 10 to 25, 30 billion in assets. Those insurers, you're starting to see a bit more of an uptake in acceptance into this emerging market investment-grade space.

And I think some of that has to do with the fact that you have seen fee compression come down across the board, where the pick of 50 to 100 basis points in emerging markets is certainly a lot more attractive as those fees come down relative to US investment grade credit, for example. You certainly are seeing an uptick from those insurance companies as well. I'd say maybe the other trend that we're seeing too is what Mark and I would call “emerging market light” in that you'll talk to some insurance companies and they'll say, well yeah, we do have an emerging market allocation. And then we look at those holdings and it'll be some of the more larger-cap on the run, America Movil, Grupo Bimbo, some of those comps to global US-type players if you will. Again, when Mark and I put those in EM, general account insurance nerd hats on, we're thinking about that  that second and third layer within that emerging market space where again, these are going to be more regional players, more country specific players or smaller issuers where you're really going to find that yield pickup or that income pickup versus US credit.

So that's going to be very much our focus from that perspective. As far as granularity amongst P&C versus Life & Annuity, I'd say general life & annuity, isvery much entrenched in this trade in general. I'd say that our P&C prospects and clients, I think that just given the duration profile of some of the liabilities, they've been looking elsewhere perhaps, but I think that there is some emerging market exposures in those portfolios as well.

Stewart: Yeah, I mean you mentioned the second and third layer there. I mean, that's where the value is, right? And that's where you get paid to roll your sleeves up, which is the name of the game. But Mark, I mean, there's no conversation of late that doesn't need a private market lens. So let's pivot to the private side of emerging markets. What's the current landscape there for EM debt opportunities, and how are insurers thinking about things like structure and enforceability, and maybe deal type?

Mark: Absolutely. So obviously if you're looking at private debt, one of your top reasons is you're trying to enhance yield in your portfolio. And, obviously, that's really important when you're a general account allocator, you need to have competitive yields. So the first thing we do is say if you don't own any public emerging markets, then you should buy some because you're  getting a really nice yield pick versus existing privates, and you don't have to worry about the illiquidity standpoint. So that's the first argument we make. But also, PPM is very experienced in the private debt markets as well. So we see deal flow coming across and certainly every client prospect we talked to is certainly wants to talk about what's available. You brought up enforceability and I talked a little bit about structure earlier, and that's one of the tricky things that will probably continue to make emerging markets private debt different than what you see in US private credit is that again, a lot of the whistles and bells and indentures and covenants and liens and all that stuff that really you benefit from in private credit in the US a lot of that is not, you can try to use it, but it may not be that useful.

And at the end of the day, I'm sure there's a bunch of high-yield companies in EM that would love to borrow unsecured from you, but you're not necessarily going to want to do that either, right? So what that means is for us is that we're looking for higher quality companies where we're not trying to enforce liens on people in Brazil and instead we have good credits that we're getting a little bit of yield pick up because of the private status and really the universe of private debt in EM is pretty broad. And so you have a wide range of issuers from the typical sort of public issuers issuing in private format, just to sort of broaden their investor base. We've seen sovereigns out there who don't want to tap the market and want to do something more on the syndicated loan space, or more even just a private placement loan which we find interesting. There are certainly infrastructure-type deals that always fall into the private debt markets and really, it's a nice intersection between investment-grade part assets and emerging markets that need that sort of development capital. So we're seeing lots of opportunities out there. I think our EM, obviously, there's been such an influx of money into private credit in the US, and we're just in the early stages of EM, but we're excited to be involved.

Stewart: That's awesome. So kind of a question that sometimes we don't get to, which is, and this is for you Kevin, if a general account investor is looking to enter EM, what's the best way to do it? How do you think about ramping exposure seasoning portfolios or maybe incorporating both public and private allocations, but at the end of the day, where do I start?

Kevin: Yeah, Stewart, you're asking buy questions. I love that. So fantastic. I'd say that that's certainly first and foremost, you obviously have to set your risk-return budget, if you will. So I think maybe to pick up a Mark's discussion before, is there going to be a bucket for emerging market private credit? Will there be a bucket for below investment grade emerging markets, whether that's to collect fallen angels or to target rising stars in the portfolio? After that, you have to think about how to position the exposure. I think that when we speak to a lot of our prospects and existing clients, they think about it in the context of their US investment grade allocation and in which case part of that US IG allocation goes to this EM IG allocation and kind of fills up that bucket. And we also have a couple of clients as well that think about it in the context of their private debt allocation that Mark alluded to before, and that in the public space, in public emerging markets, you get a very similar income pickup for the same cap charge as you would as in investment grade rated private credits.

So perhaps it's part of that bucket as well. From there, it's really about identifying managers that do both emerging markets well and general account well, because I would say that from experience doing this, particularly at the onset, there's going to need to be a lot of two-way dialogue between the investment management team and the portfolio management team on that emerging market allocation. There's going to be plenty of questions with regards to political developments, settlement questions, you name it. Again, it's important to kind of work hand in glove, if you will, on that emerging market allocation, very, very close with the client to that regard. And then from there, I would say that our preference is really to ramp up that emerging market exposure over time. We think relative, it's via the new issue calendar, it's via one-off opportunities in the market that are really going to allow for that, really that largest income pickup, if you will, relative to US investment grade. So again, we would advocate averaging into that emerging market trade over the course of a six to 12-month type period.

Stewart: Yeah, it's super helpful. We've gotten a great education on emerging markets today with you and appreciate you being on very much. If you could each give one takeaway from today's podcast that you'd want our listeners to remember, and I'll start with you, Mark, what's your takeaway from today?

Mark: I think that people don't fully understand emerging markets, right? And as you talked about at the beginning, there's a lot of scary headlines you see. And I think that once you really dig in and get to know what the types of bonds that Kevin and I are buying, I think a lot of that fear goes away, and it changes to sort of much more interest we see from prospects and getting more involved in emerging markets.

Stewart: That's great. Kevin, how about you?

Kevin: Yeah, I mean, Mark hit it, right? It's because of the misunderstandings and the misperceptions in emerging markets that allows for this opportunity in the investment grade EM space where we're, again, you're going to pick anywhere between 50 to 100 basis points for that same cap charge, and that's going to have a very similar historical impairment in ratings progression profiles. And again, from our perspective, that's quite attractive.

Stewart: Yeah, that's super helpful. So, a couple of fun ones for you. On the way out the door, when you're adding members to your team at PPM, what are the characteristics that you look for? And the purpose of the question is really to talk about the culture. What characteristics are you looking for when you're interviewing folks to add to the team?

Mark: I think across my career, the people that I've enjoyed interviewing and who ultimately would want to be a member of our team are people who are intellectually curious. And I think that's what Kevin and I and our team enjoy on a daily basis. We're coming in, we're learning new things about markets, sometimes we're losing money in the process, but it's a fascinating job. And if you're not constantly leaning into the information that's being presented to you, being almost entertained by it, it's not for you. And so that's really a critical factor of makes somebody that makes a good investor in my mind.

Stewart: That's very well put. The last one I have is you can have lunch or dinner with you, get to each invite one guest, it's a table of four, and there's two of you. So who would you most like to have dinner with? Alive or dead? I started with you last time, Mark, I'll start with you, Kevin. Who's your person?

Kevin: Can we have Pete Rose, fight it out with one of Mark's Giants Baseball players?

Stewart: Of course. I like it. I like it.

Mark: Well, I'm not inviting Barry Bonds to dinner, but that would be an interesting one. So my one is not from the sports world, but probably one that pops up on a lot of people's lists. But I always think of Winston Churchill as my guy to have dinner with and not because of those obviously amazing things he did during World War II, but more just sort of the trajectory of his life that had a lot of ups and downs. He was involved in really disastrous things that happened in World War I, had to both personally and professionally rebound from that, and yet stayed in the game and was there when Britain needed him. And I think there's a lesson to be learned from that today, where having strong principles and values and sticking to them, not negotiating them away, I think that's really important.

Stewart: That's super helpful. We've gotten a great education from you both. I really want to thank you so much for being on today. We've been joined today by Mark Hughes and Kevin Ritter, both CFA charterholders and Co-Heads of Emerging Market Debt at PPM America. Thanks for being on, guys.

Kevin: Thanks, Stewart.

Mark: Thanks so much, Stewart.

Stewart: Thanks for listening. If you have ideas for podcasts, please shoot me a note at Stewart@insuranceaum.com. Please rate us like us and review us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or our brand new YouTube channel under Insurance AUM Community. Thanks for listening. My name's Stewart Foley. We're the home of the world's smartest money at insuranceaum.com.