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: With the pandemic conditions to evolve, we remain cautiously optimistic and vigilant as the vaccination efforts continue in the face of uncertainty associated with the emerging variants.
I am proud of our response over the last year and our ability to adapt to what has been a very challenging time for everyone, and I continue to pray each day for everyone affected.
Adjusted earnings per diluted share, excluding foreign currency impact, increased 24.2% for the quarter and 24.5% for the year.
While earnings are off to a very strong start for the first half of the year, it's important to bear in mind that they are largely supported by a low benefit ratio associated with the pandemic conditions as well as a better-than-expected return on alternative investments.
At the same time, sales improved year-over-year for the first time during the pandemic in the second quarter in both the United States and Japan.
As part of our strategy, we strive to be where people want to purchase insurance.
That applies to both Japan and the United States.
Face-to-face sales are still the most effective way for us to convey the financial protection only Aflac products provide.
However, the pandemic has clearly demonstrated the need for virtual means.
In other words, non-face-to-face sales that help us reach potential customers and provide them with the protection that they need.
We have continued to invest in tools from a distribution in both countries and to integrate these investments into our operation.
Recognizing the uncertain nature of recovery from the pandemic, we expect a stronger second half of the year in both countries, especially if the communities and businesses continue to open up, which would allow more face-to-face interactions.
I'm addressing our employees in a way that is similar to how I talk to my family, keeping them informed with the medical community by bringing doctors in but also by encouraging them to get COVID-19 vaccinations as I want people to avoid being sick or even worse, becoming a casualty of the virus or variant.
Looking at our operations in Japan, in the second quarter, Aflac Japan generated solid financial growth results as reflected in its profit margin of 26.5%.
This was above the outlook range provided at the 2020 Financial Analyst Briefing.
Aflac Japan also reported strong premium persistency of 94.7%.
Sales improved year-over-year, generating an increase of 38.4% for the quarter and 15.7% for the first six months.
These results reflect easier comps, improved pandemic conditions and a boost from the first quarter launch of our new medical product.
While sales in the first half of 2021 are at approximately 65% of 2019 levels, we continue to navigate evolving pandemic conditions in Japan.
The states of emergency have been in the targeted areas, especially Tokyo and Okinawa.
However, cases have begun increasing in Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan area, and we expect the Japanese government to make a determination soon to expand the declaration of the state of emergency to three other prefectures surrounding Tokyo and Osaka.
But most importantly, these states of emergencies are less restricted and limited in scope and do not represent lockdowns as experienced in other countries.
Japan, post-resumption of proactive sales starting in April, is contributing toward a gradual improvement in Aflac's cancer insurance sales, and we continue to work to strengthen the strategic alliance to create a sustained cycle of growth for both companies.
In June, for example, Aflac and Japan Post Holding, Japan Post Company and Japan Post Insurance, reached agreements to further the strategic alliance in a matter consistent with Japan Post Group's five-year medium-term management plan, which was announced in May.
While we do not expect this to have an immediate impact on sales recovery, it will further position our company for long-term growth as we respond to customers' needs, provide customer-centric services and create shared value of resolving societal and local community issues.
Turning to Aflac U.S., we saw a strong profit margin of 24.4 -- 25.4% and very strong premium persistency of 80.1%.
As expected, we also saw sequential sales improvement and more opportunities for face-to-face activities.
As a result of softer sales a year earlier and more face-to-face opportunities, sales increased 64.1% for the quarter and are at a 73% of the first half of the 2019 levels.
In the U.S., small businesses are still in a recovery mode, which we expect to continue through 2021.
At the same time, larger businesses remain primarily focused on returning employees to the worksite.
As I stated earlier, we will focus on being able to sell and service customers, whether in-person or virtually.
In addition, we continue to build out the U.S. product portfolio with previously acquired businesses, Aflac Network Dental and Vision and Premier Life and Disability.
While these acquisitions have a modest near-term impact on the top line, they better position Aflac for future long-term success in the U.S. Meanwhile, strong persistency, underwriting profits and investment income continue to drive strong pre-tax margins in the United States as they do in Japan.
As always, we place significant importance on continuing to achieve strong capital ratios in the U.S. and in Japan on behalf of our policyholders and investors.
We remain committed to prudent liquidity and capital management.
We treasure our 38-year track record of dividend growth and remain committed to extending it, supported by the strength of the capital and the cash flows.
At the same time, we will continue to tactically repurchase shares, focus on integrating the growth investments that we've made in our platform.
We are well positioned as we work toward achieving long-term growth, while also ensuring we deliver on our promise to our policyholders.
By doing so, we look to emerge from this period in a continued position of strength and leadership and look forward to sharing more about the strategic and financial priorities at our financial analyst briefing on November 16, 2021.
So now I turn the program over to Fred.
I'm going to focus my comments on activities to restore our production platform and progress on growth strategies.
Beginning with Aflac Japan, we are focused on three areas in building back to pre-pandemic levels of production: product development, online or digital assisted sales and specific sales efforts within the Japan Post platform.
With respect to product development, we continue to see positive reception to our revised medical product, EVER Prime.
Medical product sales for the first half of the year are up roughly 48% over the same period in 2020 and have approached pre-pandemic levels down only 4% from the 2019 period.
We are gaining back market share in this highly competitive medical market.
Earlier this year, we launched our first short-term insurance product under a newly formed subsidiary called SUDACHI.
The product is a small amount, substandard medical product targeting customers who do not qualify for traditional medical coverage.
In the second quarter, we have registered close to 600 agencies with SUDACHI and issued about 230 policies.
We are in the very early stages of this initiative, but over time, we anticipate adding additional short-term health and income support products.
We are in the process of developing a new care product aimed at supplemental elderly care coverage provided by the Government of Japan.
We will provide strategic context and timing around this product in the coming months, but we believe this product line will mature into a meaningful driver of future third sector sales, with an aging population and in anticipation of a continued shift in financial burden from the government to individuals.
Turning to distribution, we have technology in place to allow agents to pivot from face-to-face to virtual sales.
On March 26, we launched a national advertising campaign promoting this capability.
In the second quarter, we have processed over 14,000 online applications as compared to nearly 8,000 in the first quarter.
On Japan Post, proposal activity has increased month-to-month as sales training and promotion permeates the 20,000 branches that sell our insurance.
Through the month of June, Aflac Japan has conducted over 35,000 training sessions with Japan Post sales agents nationwide, along with providing contact information on nearly 700,000 existing cancer policyholders to inform on the latest coverage advantages.
Activities in the third quarter include visits with regional office managers in the JP system and post office visits to reinforce the sales process.
Turning to the U.S., our group voluntary platform continues to respond well with sales exceeding 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
Overall, sales recovery is focused on restoring our agent-driven small business franchise hurt by the pandemic.
Critical areas of investment include recruiting, converting recruits to weekly producers and product development.
In terms of recruiting, we have refocused our efforts in the past year on broker recruiting, with new appointments exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
Appointing small business brokers takes time to convert into production but is critical to expanding our reach and gaining traction in the dental and vision markets.
Individual agent recruiting remains under pressure, and we are running at 70% of weekly producers we enjoyed pre-pandemic.
Agent recruiting is impacted by onboarding and training under COVID restrictions, tight labor markets and employment subsidy programs, all of which we expect to subside later in the year.
Our Network Dental product is approved in 43 states and Vision in 42 states, with more states coming online later in the year.
We are completing national training programs and have about 50% of trained agents who have quoted on our new dental and vision product offerings.
It's early, however, we continue to see our volume building each month, and over 50% of our dental and vision cases include voluntary benefit sales.
We believe this supports our strategic intent to increase access in new accounts and deepen relationships in our existing accounts.
As I said last quarter, our 2021 dental and vision strategy can be summed up as a year of launch, learn and adjust.
Our Premier Life and Disability platform continues to support their key client relationships and are building a pipeline of quoted business.
Our service model remains exceptional.
And since closing, we have not lost any notable accounts and have seen early interest among some of our larger voluntary benefit clients.
This awarded business would not have been possible without our recently acquired group capabilities.
With respect to our e-commerce initiative, Aflac Direct, we offer critical illness, accident and cancer and are now approved in 45 states, including California.
As a reminder, this platform is focused on reaching customers outside the traditional work site.
Like most digital sales platforms, we enjoy higher conversion rates when a digital lead is handed to a licensed call center agent.
Currently, most of our leads are funneled to third-party call center platforms, and we are actively building out an Aflac licensed call center.
Our digital platform overall is experiencing a 16% conversion rate on qualified leads and generally consistent with many digital D2C insurance platforms.
Our consumer market strategy also includes digital distribution and product partnerships, and while early in development, are designed to expand access to protection products and increase traffic to our site.
Through six months in 2021, these three platforms, new platforms, have combined for 5% of sales as they are in the early building and development stages.
We continue to forecast a strong second half based on increased activity and expect these three growth initiatives will contribute upwards of 15% to sales in the second half of 2021.
Aflac Global Investments announced last week, an investment partnership with Denham Capital.
Aflac has made a $2 billion multiyear general account commitment to launch a new debt platform focused on investing in the senior secured debt of sustainable infrastructure projects.
Aflac will hold a 24.9% minority interest in a newly created entity Denham Sustainable Infrastructure.
We are also making a $100 million commitment to Denham Equity Fund, focused on sustainable infrastructure investments.
We are pleased to partner with Denham, a recognized and leading investment firm, in the sustainable infrastructure markets.
Under Eric's leadership, this transaction furthers our strategy of partnering with external managers.
We seek alliances with firms that maintain strong track records in specialized asset classes that play an important role in our portfolio.
We then leverage our capital to take a minority stake to further maximize the potential benefits.
When combined with our recent Sound Point capital investment, we advance our ESG efforts by investing in sustainable infrastructure and distressed communities across the U.S. I'll now pass on to Max to discuss our financial performance in more detail.
Let me begin my comments with a review of our Q2 performance, with a focus on our core capital and earnings drivers have developed.
For the second quarter, adjusted earnings per share increased 24.2% to $1.59.
The slightly weaker yen-dollar exchange rate did not have a significant impact on adjusted earnings per diluted share.
This strong performance for the quarter was largely driven by lower claims utilization due to the pandemic, especially in the U.S. In addition, variable investment income ran $112 million above our long-term return expectations.
Adjusted book value per share, including foreign currency translation gains and losses, grew 20.5%.
And the adjusted ROE, excluding foreign currency impact, was a strong 17%, which is a significant spread to our cost of capital.
Starting with our Japan segment, total earned premium for the quarter declined 3.8%, reflecting the impact of first sector policies reaching paid-up status, while earned premium for our third sector products was down 2.3% due to recent low sales volumes.
Japan's total benefit ratio came in at 66.9% for the quarter, down 290 basis points year-over-year.
And the third sector benefit ratio was 56.5%, down 305 basis points year-over-year.
We experienced a slightly higher-than-normal IBNR release in our third sector block as experience continues to come in favorable relative to initial reserving.
This quarter, the IBNR release was primarily due to pandemic conditions, constraining utilization since second quarter of 2020 and year-to-date.
Although claims activity have begun to rebound, it remains below longer-term normalized levels.
Auto claim reporting lags require up to a year to mature the data.
And now with more than a year's worth of pandemic data, our estimates are more refined, which has led to increased IBNR releases.
Persistency was down 10 basis points, yet remained strong at 94.7%.
Our adjusted expense ratio in Japan was 20.8%, up 80 basis points year-over-year.
We continue our technology-related investments to convert Aflac Japan to a paperless company, which also includes higher system maintenance expenses.
Additional telework expenses also added to the higher expense ratio in the quarter.
Adjusted net investment income increased 27.4% in yen terms, primarily driven by favorable returns on our growing alternatives portfolio and lower hedge costs, partially offset by lower reinvestment yield on our fixed rate portfolio.
The pre-tax margin for Japan in the quarter was 26.5%, up 450 basis points year-over-year, which was a very favorable result for the quarter.
This quarter's strong financial results leads us to expect the full year benefit ratio for Japan to be at the lower end of the 3-year guidance range of 68.5% to 71% given at Fab.
And the pre-tax margin to be at the higher end of the 20.5% to 22.5% range.
Turning to U.S. results, net earned premium was down 3.4% due to weaker sales results.
Persistency improved 180 basis points to 80.1%.
63 basis points of the elevated persistency in both the second quarter of this year and the prior year can be explained by emergency orders.
So there was no net impact for the quarter year-over-year.
80 basis points of improved persistency in the quarter is attributed to lower sales, as first year lapse rates are roughly twice total in-force lapse rates.
Another 30 basis points of improved persistency is due to conservation efforts, and the remainder largely comes from improved experience.
Our total benefit ratio came in lower than expected at 43.5% or 80 basis points lower than Q2 2020, which, itself, was heavily impacted by the initial pandemic.
Lower claims utilization impact our estimates for incurred claims as data matures over the course of the year.
As our data matures, we increased our reliance on raw data, and with a year of pandemic data behind us, we reduced our IBNR to reflect the lower utilization.
This quarter, IBNR releases amounted to 5.6 percentage points impact on the benefit ratio, which leads to an underlying benefit ratio, excluding IBNR releases, of 49.1%.
We expect the benefit ratio to increase gradually throughout the remainder of the year, with the resumption of normal activity in our communities and by our policyholders.
For the full year, we now expect our benefit ratio to be in the range of 45% to 48% versus our original guidance of 48% to 51%.
Our expense ratio in the U.S. was 36.9%, up 160 basis points year-over-year but with a lot of moving parts.
Weaker sales performance negatively impacts revenue, however, the impact to our expense ratio is offset by lower DAC and commission expense.
Higher advertising spend increased the expense ratio by 60 basis points.
Our continued buildout of growth initiatives, group life and disability, network dental and vision and direct to consumer contributed to a 170 basis point increase to the ratio.
These strategic growth investments are largely offset by our efforts to lower core operating expenses as we strive toward being the low-cost producer in the voluntary benefits space.
Net-net, despite a lot of moving parts, Q2 expenses are tracking according to plan.
In the quarter, we also incurred $5.5 million of integration and transition expenses not included in adjusted earnings associated with recent acquisitions.
Adjusted net investment income in the U.S. was up 9.9%, mainly driven by favorable variable investment income in the quarter.
Profitability in the U.S. segment was very strong with a pre-tax margin of 25.4%, with a low benefit ratio as the core driver.
With the first half now in the books, we are increasing our pre-tax margin expectation for the full year.
Initial expectations were for us to be toward the low end of 16% to 19%.
We now expect to end up slightly above the range indicated at fab.
In our Corporate segment, we recorded a pre-tax loss of $76 million, as adjusted net investment income was $45 million lower than last year due to low interest rates at the short end of the yield curve and amortization of certain tax credit investments, which amounted to $30 million this quarter held at the corporate level.
Under U.S. GAAP, we recognized a negative impact to corporate NII, but this is offset by a lower effective tax rate for the enterprise.
This results in a level of reported volatility to our Corporate segment, but the economic returns on these investments are above our cost of equity capital.
To date, these investments are performing well and in line with expectations.
Our capital position remains strong, and we ended the quarter with an SMR above 900% in Japan and an RBC of approximately 600% in Aflac Columbus.
Unencumbered holding company liquidity stood at $4.4 billion, which was $2 billion above our minimum balance, excluding the $400 million proceeds from the sustainability bond that we issued in March that reinforced our ESG initiatives and believe that sustainable investments are also good long-term investments.
Leverage, which includes our sustainability bond, remains at a comfortable 22.8%, in the middle of our leverage corridor of 20% to 25%.
In the quarter, we repurchased $500 million of our own stock and paid dividends of $223 million, offering good relative IRR on these capital deployments.
We will continue to be flexible and tactical in how we manage the balance sheet and deploy capital to drive the strong risk-adjusted ROE, with a meaningful spread to our cost of capital.
With that, I'll hand it over to David to begin the Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] Andrea, we will take our first question, please.

user
q2 adjusted earnings per share $1.59.
q2 revenue $5.6 billion.
aflac- with respect to q2 sales results in u.s. and japan, we continued to see improvement and expect a stronger second half of year in both countries.

assistant