Voya Financial CEO: "Higher Rates Will Be A Very Good Outcome For A Company Like Ours And Certainly Our Customers Too"

Investment firm Voya Financial Inc VOYA declared mixed first-quarter results on Wednesday. EPS for the quarter came at $0.77, compared to $0.98 in the same quarter last year.

Rod Martin, Voya Financial chairman and CEO, was on CNBC recently to weigh in on the company’s results.

Progress

“We had a very solid quarter in all of our businesses,” Martin said. “Continuing the momentum that we have had, [as] you may recall we have just celebrated our second anniversary as a public company. We laid out a 4-year plan, we have accomplished that in two years. Our stock is up 120 percent, we have raised guidance on a forward basis.”

Independence

Martin revealed that from the first-quarter of 2015 Voya Financial is fully independent from its parent company ING Group

He was asked what the independence from the parent company has allowed Voya to do. Martin replied, “We have been active in our share buyback. We have been active in the growth of our retirement and investment business and very solid results in our insurance business.”

He continued, “We have really been an ROE improvement story. Our ROE has improved 400-basis points in 2 years. We laid out a 4-year plan, we accomplished it in two years. We raised our guidance and again the market has reacted well.”

Higher-Yield

On higher yields being good for Voya, Martin said, “Higher yields are good for us, higher yields are good for our customers and certainly when we went public, it was in a low interest rate environment."

“We have had to perform during that period and higher rates will be a very good outcome for a company like ours and certainly our customers too,” Martin concluded.