Greg Case
Chief Executive Officer at AON
Thanks, Rob, and good morning everyone. Welcome to our second quarter conference call. I'm joined by Christa Davies, our CFO, and Eric Andersen, our President. As in previous quarters, for your reference, we posted a detailed financial presentation on our website. We're pleased to report that our global team delivered another strong quarter performance, results and momentum. And we begin the call today by thanking our colleagues for everything they do to help our clients address the immediate and long-term demand around the risk and people.
Aon United, delivered by our colleagues, gives us the ability to meet this demand and balance across our portfolio, capitalizing on innovation and momentum, and investing to meet demand. This ensures we win more, retain more, and do more with our clients. There is now almost universal agreement to client demand to address risk and human capital has never been greater. For example, our Catastrophe Interim report estimated global economic losses from natural disasters in the first half of 2023 for $194 billion, notably above the 21st century average of $128 billion and fifth highest on record. Even more profound, in addition to economic costs, we know these disasters have tragic human costs that reinforces the high-value and building resiliency in protection in advance of disaster.
To this end, we recently announced the placement of a Parametric Insurance program for the Government of Puerto Rico. It's the single largest program of its kind that the US Commonwealth has ever placed. This program was designed by our Reinsurance and Commercial risk teams. And in the event of a sizable earthquake or hurricane, Puerto Rico will quickly receive liquidity, enabling its government to focus on rapid recovery and reconstruction. This placement was the result of Aon's data, analytics and capabilities from across our firm, cemented by our deep understanding of public entity demand, risk capital and reinsurance markets and really, really great work by our team.
Turning to financial performance. In the second quarter, we delivered strong organic revenue growth across our solution line, including 10% growth in health solutions and 9% growth in reinsurance solutions, contributing to 6% overall organic growth in the quarter and 7% in the first half. In health solutions, revenue growth of 10% on top of 11% last year was driven by strength in the core. Our team has done terrific work, helping clients navigate the demands of their talent agendas, balancing optimal benefits for their people with inflationary cost pressures, while also taking steps to deliver on their people strategy at a time when bringing total rewards, health and wealth benefits together as human capital are more important than ever.
In reinsurance solutions, our team delivered another very strong quarter at 9% organic growth on top of 9% last year, driven by strong net new business generation, our teams continue to help clients navigate a challenging and complex market and are already preparing data, analytics and insight as we help our clients understand and address ongoing volatility and capital considerations. We're also seeing capital come into the market, particularly in cat bonds as our team has placed over $5 billion across 21 deals year-to-date.
In wealth solutions, we delivered 2% organic growth driven by ongoing trends in demand we've seen in project work around market volatility and regulatory changes, as well as the ongoing trend of pension derisking, which we expect to continue in the quarters coming ahead, given the market conditions. We continue to see opportunity to help clients react and prepare for regulatory changes, and market volatility with our data analytics and expertise. And finally, commercial risk solutions delivered 5% organic growth in the quarter.
Globally, we saw strong growth across most major geographies with double-digit growth in Asia and the Pacific. In the U.S., we saw strength in core retail brokerage, including from property, casualty, and construction. As we've communicated previously, results were pressured by the impact of external M&A and IPO markets on M&A services, a headwind we now expect to continue in the back half of the year, given ongoing external conditions.
Overall, in the quarter, our strong performance was driven by the strength of our Aon United strategy and Al Business Services platform. In Q2, we translated 6% organic revenue growth into 110 basis points of operating margin expansion, net of ongoing investment in the business for long-term growth. These results contributed to first half financial performance of 7% organic revenue growth and 90 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, and we remain very well positioned to maintain this momentum and to deliver on our ongoing financial guidance of mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth, margin expansion and double-digit free cash flow growth for 2023 and the long term.
This financial performance is ultimately the product of our ability to address client needs to Aon United. And this strength is foundational in supporting our ability to evolve in response to changing client demand, fully demonstrated by our move to risk capital and human capital. This focus is bringing our four solution lines more closely together to better address client needs and is already yielding meaningful client impact. Take human capital, our clients are changing how they're thinking about their colleagues. We're facing an increasingly complex external environment with pressures around cost, growth, remote and hybrid work and workforce composition. On their own internal environment, their people strategies are increasingly complex, considering traditional total rewards and health benefits and newer additions around future skills and well-being.
Our connectivity across health, wealth and talent, enables us to bring data, analytics and solutions to address this need. In one great example, our team developed a diagnostic tool for clients that produces a human sustainability index, or HSI. This tool combines individual and team assessments with peer data and analytics-based benchmarking to enable our clients to directly connect people strategy goals to execution. The measurable results encompassing eight wellness pathways such as physical, emotional and financial aspects, supports individuals and teams to assess exactly what's working and for whom, along key metrics, so our clients can adjust or change their tactics to drive their people strategy and ultimately, their bottom line.
In many respects, this work represents bringing next level data science into talent development and leadership. Ultimately, the HSI solution identifies gaps and what our clients offer to their people, encompassing health, wealth, rewards, and other wellness programs, and it provides a trackable plan to strengthen the company's talent strategy on their most significant, often external commitments at a time when these commitments are more important than ever.
In summary, our strong performance is a direct result of our ability to help clients better understand their challenges and opportunities and to take actions to protect their business and improve their performance. Further, our recently announced enhanced focus on risk capital and human capital is already driving benefits and strengthening this capability. Our strong year-to-date financial results, including 7% organic revenue growth and 90 basis points of margin expansion, are the direct outcome of the strategy and position us very well to continue delivering in 2023 and over the long term.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Christa for her thoughts on our financial results and long-term outlook for continued shareholder value creation. Christa?
