You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Actual results could differ materially from expected results.
I hope you are all remaining safe and staying healthy.
The loss and anxiety caused by the pandemic is extraordinary.
And on behalf of everyone at RGA, I would like to express profound depreciation for those on the front lines in the fight against the pandemic and offer our deepest sympathies to those who have lost loved ones.
Through these tough times, I remained incredibly proud of the role that RGA has played in an industry that helps to safeguard the financial futures of millions of families from the unforeseen tragedies of life.
Our purpose has never been made clear during this past year.
Let me now move to our results.
Last night we reported adjusted operating earnings per share of $1.19, which we consider another solid quarter in the context of the pandemic.
In this quarter, we were able to absorb estimated total COVID-19 related claim costs of $300 million globally and delivered profitable earnings due to the underlying strength in many of our businesses.
These include our Asia business, our US group and individual health operations and our US asset-intensive business.
Additionally, excluding the impact of claims attributed to COVID-19.
Our US individual mortality experience was again favorable this quarter.
Reported premium growth was strong, driven by results in EMEA and Asia.
We completed a number of transactions in the quarter and deployed approximately $100 million of capital.
The transaction pipeline is very good overall and includes opportunities in all our regions.
Our investment portfolio held up well, and we ended the year with a strong balance sheet, an excess capital of $1.3 billion.
Our approach to capital deployment during this crisis remains prudent, disciplined and balanced.
As I step back and consider our full year results, we reported adjusted operating earnings per share of $7.54.
This includes absorbing estimated total COVID-19 related claim costs of $720 million globally.
And when adjusted for COVID-19 related offsets, including longevity and reduced expenses, we estimate the full year impact of COVID-19 to be roughly $6.80 on adjusted operating EPS.
I'm encouraged by the fact that our underlying fundamental performance and client relationships remained strong.
This speaks to the resilience of our global franchise, the benefits of our diversified business and to the success of our client-focused strategy.
As we look forward, it is clear that COVID-19 remains both the global health and economic challenge.
And we expect to see a meaningful level claims in the first half of 2021.
But we believe that the impact will be manageable, given our strong balance sheet and our underlying earnings engine.
We are optimistic that we will begin to see the benefits from the global vaccination programs as we move into the rest of the year, after which we expect to see some normalization of results.
In the meantime, we will continue to remain focused on protecting our employees, serving our clients and supporting the industry and our communities.
The quality, strength and resilience of our business give us confidence that we will emerge from the pandemic, position to take advantage of the opportunities ahead and continue to build on our long track record of value creation.
And I hope you all continue to remain safe and well.
Beginning with consolidated premiums.
For the quarter, we reported premium growth of approximately 9%, somewhat higher than recent quarters as we saw good business growth in some areas in addition to some client catch-ups have benefited the reported premiums.
The effective tax rate on pre-tax adjusted operating income was 18.3% for the quarter.
Below the expected range of 23% to 24%, as a result of utilizing foreign tax credits and tax benefits associated with differences in bases and foreign jurisdictions.
The US and Latin America Traditional segment reported pre-tax adjusted operating loss of $89 million in the quarter.
Our individual mortality experience for the quarter, excluding the estimated COVID-19 claim cost were favorable.
Let me provide a little more detail.
Approximately $230 million of claims are attributed to COVID-19, including $100 million of IBNR claims.
The approach is to attribute COVID-19 claims is consistent with that used in the second and third quarter, which continues to track quite well.
We also continue to see excess mortality in the quarter consistent with CDC, reporting a significant levels in the general population.
Although, we believe a portion of this is likely related to COVID-19, we have chosen not to include it in our estimated COVID-19 claim costs.
Overall, when we simply adjust for 2019 specific death, our experience this quarter would have been favorable, primarily due to lower large claims.
I would also note that our 1999 to 2004 business, excluding COVID-19 continues to perform in line with our mortality expectations as we set back in 2015.
Also our Group and Individual Health business performed well in the quarter.
Our Asset-Intensive business reported a good result for the fourth quarter, benefiting from higher variable investment income and strong equity markets.
US Capital Solutions reported fourth quarter pre-tax adjusted operating results that were better than our expectations, albeit the decrease against the strong prior-year period.
The Traditional segment fourth quarter results were in line with our expectations and reflected modestly unfavorable individual mortality experience, primarily due to the impact from COVID-19, offset by favorable underwriting experience in other lines of business.
Our Financial Solutions segment performed well in the quarter, reflecting favorable longevity experience.
In the Europe, Middle East and Africa segment our Traditional business fourth quarter results reflected unfavorable mortality experience, partially explained by COVID-19.
The COVID-19 claims are concentrated in South Africa and the UK.
Additionally, as we've seen in the US, there's significant level of excess mortality experience in the population in South Africa, over and above reported COVID-19.
EMEA Financial Solutions business fourth quarter results reflected modestly unfavorable longevity experience.
Turning to our Asia Pacific Traditional business.
In the fourth quarter, Asia had a favorable underwriting experience across most of the region.
While we did see some COVID-19 related impacts, these were offset by favorable non-COVID experience as well as some data catch-ups on client reporting.
Australia experienced a loss of approximately $26 million.
This reflects a number of one-off, including an increase in reserves to reflect our recently updated industry table and in IBNR for estimated COVID-19 claims.
Without these one-off, we would have been near breakeven for the quarter.
For the year, we saw a much improved result over 2019 and when excluding the Q4 one-offs, would have reported a small profit this year.
While there remains some uncertainty in the Australian market, we saw progress in 2020 and we continue to be prudent about new business and focused on actions to improve results.
Our Asia Pacific Financial Solutions business continued to produce good results in the fourth quarter, benefiting from the growth of business in Asia.
The Corporate and Other segment reported a pre-tax adjusted operating loss of $24 million, relatively in line with the average run rate.
The nonspread portfolio yield for the quarter was 4.2%, a significant improvement relative to that in the third quarter, primarily due to above average run rate for variable investment income as we experienced a high level of commercial mortgage prepayments and some realizations in our various private partnerships.
We believe our portfolio will defensively positioned coming into the crisis, credit performance continues to benefit from diligent security selection as well as economic reopening and policy responses.
Our portfolio average quality of A was maintained and credit impairments were minimal in the quarter.
RGA's leverage ratios remained stable at the end of the year, following the second quarter senior debt issuance and our liquidity remains strong with cash and cash equivalents of $3.4 billion.
Looking forward, we expect to see some level of ongoing COVID-19 impacts that will negatively affect our earnings until this crisis is resolved.
However, we continue to view this as manageable and believe that our strong balance sheet, the power of our earnings engine and the benefits of our global franchise positions us to emerge from the pandemic in good shape to continue to produce attractive returns to our shareholders over time.
I'd also like to comment on Slide 13 of the earnings materials.
As you know, we are very proud of our track record of book value per share growth over the years.
And while 2020 was a difficult year as a result of the pandemic, we have every confidence that we will continue creating value for our shareholders.
I also want to comment on the topic of financial guidance.
We have historically provided intermediate-term financial guidance in conjunction with our fourth quarter results.
However, given the near-term uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided not to provide guidance at this time.
COVID-19 mortality claim costs for Q4 continue to be toward the lower end of our model expectations relative to general population reported COVID-19 deaths and we continue to see lower insured mortality relative to the general population.
The US still accounts for the majority of our estimated COVID-19 claim costs.
Our ongoing mortality model updates did not result any material changes in the quarter.
So we are reiterating our mortality rules of thumb for our major markets as shown on Slide 14.
Overall longevity experience was modestly favorable in the quarter, but less than the prior quarter run rate.
This lower offset was expected due to lower longevity -- sorry, due to longer longevity reporting lives and differences in country specific mortality rates over the period.
We expect elevated claim cost to continue in the first half of 2021 based on the level of ongoing COVID-19 death in the general population.
Although, uncertainty exists and the ultimate impact of new COVID-19 variance, it is good to see some recent positive signs as well.
Many countries are experiencing decreases in new case counts and deaths from the peak of the holiday season waves and the preliminary data from the global rollout of vaccines looks promising.
We expect the vaccines will have a material beneficial impact on general population mortality in particular as those that are most vulnerable to severe outcomes are vaccinated.
We continue to closely monitor all of these developments, and we'd expect to update our views if needed, as new data emerges.
Let me now hand it back to Todd.

user
q4 adjusted operating earnings per share $1.19.
global estimated covid-19 claim costs of approximately $300 million for q4.
q4 and full-year results were negatively impacted by a significant level of covid-19 mortality claim costs.

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