AON — Q2 2026 Financial Report Analysis

Headline: 5% organic growth and wider margins, but reported earnings fell on a missing prior-year gain and a much higher tax rate

Aon plc — one of the world's largest insurance brokers and human-capital advisers — reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $4,246 million, up 2% from $4,155 million a year earlier. That modest headline masks a considerably better underlying quarter: organic revenue growth was 5%, and the reported figure was held down by a 4-percentage-point drag from businesses Aon has sold.

"Organic revenue growth" is the measure brokers are judged on. It strips out currency moves, acquisitions, divestitures, and interest earned on client money held in trust, leaving only growth from winning and keeping business. Aon's reported 2% breaks down as: 5% organic, plus 1% from favorable foreign currency translation, less 4% from divestitures — chiefly the sales of the NFP Wealth business and Stroz Friedberg.

Reported (GAAP) diluted earnings per share fell 3% to $2.58, while adjusted EPS — which excludes intangible amortization, restructuring charges and similar items — rose 9% to $3.81. That gap is the quarter's most important thing to understand, and it is almost entirely explained by two items discussed below, neither of which reflects the operating business getting worse.

Key metrics

Operating margin is the share of revenue left after the costs of running the business, before interest and tax. Aon's rose 80 basis points (0.80 of a percentage point) to 21.5% on a reported basis and 70 basis points to 28.9% on an adjusted basis — the latter squarely inside the 70–80 basis points of full-year expansion management has guided to.

Why reported earnings fell while operating income rose

Operating income grew $56 million, or 7%. Everything below the operating line worked against the comparison:

• A prior-year gain that did not repeat. Other income swung from +$56 million in Q2 2025 to −$17 million expense in Q2 2026. The filing attributes this "primarily due to the absence of deferred consideration recognized in the prior-year period related to the 2017 sale of our outsourcing business" — an $88 million gain from Blackstone affiliates booked in last year's quarter and excluded from adjusted results. On a like-for-like adjusted basis, other expense actually improved, from $32 million to $17 million, helped by currency remeasurement and lower non-cash pension expense.
• A sharply higher tax rate. The effective tax rate went from 15.5% to 22.0%; the adjusted rate from 16.5% to 20.1%. Aon attributes this to "changes to the geographical distribution of income and an unfavorable impact from discrete items compared to a favorable impact in the prior-year period." Discrete items are one-off tax events that land in a single quarter rather than being spread across the year — last year's happened to help, this year's hurt.

Working the other way: interest expense fell $33 million to $179 million on lower total debt, interest income added $5 million, and the share count fell 2%, which is why EPS fell only 3% against a 5% decline in net income.

Segments: Risk Capital carried the quarter, Human Capital's optics are distorted by a disposal

Every one of the four solution lines grew 5% organically — an unusually uniform quarter.

Commercial Risk Solutions (helping companies buy insurance) grew on "growth in EMEA and North America, driven by net new business and ongoing strong retention," with "strong growth in U.S. core P&C and double-digit growth in construction." Net market impact — the effect of insurance pricing, since brokers are typically paid a percentage of premium — was "modestly positive."

Reinsurance Solutions (placing insurance for insurers) also grew 5% organically despite an unfavorable net market impact, on treaty placements plus "double-digit increases in facultative placements and our Strategy and Technology Group." Growing through a softening reinsurance pricing cycle on new business rather than price is the more durable of the two ways to get there.

Wealth Solutions is where the reported figures mislead most: revenue fell 18%, but that is a 24-point divestiture drag from the NFP Wealth sale sitting on top of 5% organic growth, itself driven by "continued demand for advisory work in the UK and EMEA related to the ongoing impact of regulatory change." Human Capital's segment operating income rose from $117 million to $167 million and its adjusted margin expanded 240 basis points to 21.5% — selling a lower-margin business flatters this comparison and should be read as mix, not as a step-change in execution.

Costs and the restructuring program

Total operating expenses rose just 1% to $3,331 million. The composition matters more than the total:

• Compensation and benefits fell $89 million (−4%), on the NFP Wealth sale and restructuring savings.
• Information technology rose $26 million (+19%) on Aon Business Services technology initiatives — a deliberate investment line, not cost leakage.
• Amortization and impairment of intangibles fell $27 million (−13%) as NFP Wealth intangibles left the balance sheet.
• Other general expense rose $121 million (+32%), "due primarily to non-recurring gains including sales of portfolios in the prior-year period." This is a comparison effect — last year's quarter contained gains that reduced the expense line — not a new cost.

The Accelerating Aon United Program, a three-year restructuring effort begun in Q3 2023, cost $96 million in the quarter ($188 million year to date) and delivered $25 million of net restructuring savings in Q2. Cumulative expected Program cost is $1.3 billion. It is in its final quarters, so the savings are largely banked while the charges taper — a modest tailwind to 2027 margins.

Cash and capital returns

Quarterly free cash flow fell 34% to $483 million, but the six-month figure — the more meaningful one for a business with seasonal working capital — was up 4%. Management points to "the cash tax payment related to NFP Wealth and impact of working capital" offsetting adjusted operating income growth. Receivables rose from $4,209 million at year-end to $5,348 million, consistent with a seasonal build rather than collection problems.

Aon returned $775 million to shareholders in the quarter: $600 million of buybacks (1.9 million shares) and $175 million of dividends. Year-to-date repurchases have already passed the full-year objective of at least $1 billion, and in June 2026 the board added $7.5 billion to the authorization, leaving roughly $7.7 billion available. Total debt fell to about $15.0 billion from $15.2 billion at year-end, and the falling interest expense confirms deleveraging after the NFP acquisition is real.

Takeaway: The 3% decline in reported EPS is an artifact of a non-repeating $88 million prior-year gain and a 650-basis-point jump in the tax rate — not deterioration. What actually happened is 5% organic growth in all four solution lines with margins up 70 basis points, achieved while reinsurance pricing was a headwind. The one genuine soft spot is fiduciary investment income, which fell from $66 million to $58 million and is excluded from the organic figure Aon leads with.

The interest-rate detail worth watching

Brokers hold client premium money in trust between collection and payment to insurers, and earn interest on it. This fiduciary investment income fell to $58 million from $66 million a year ago ($113 million versus $133 million for the half). Fiduciary assets grew to $20.7 billion from $17.9 billion at year-end, so the decline is a rate effect, not a volume one. It is excluded from organic revenue growth, which means the headline 5% overstates the revenue actually reaching the income statement by a small amount — and if short-term rates fall further, this line keeps shrinking. Aon flags this directly: "A decrease in global short-term interest rates adversely affects our fiduciary investment income."

Outlook

Management reaffirmed full-year 2026 guidance:

• Mid-single-digit or greater organic revenue growth
• 70–80 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion
• Strong adjusted EPS growth
• Double-digit free cash flow growth

On currency, Aon expects a de minimis impact on adjusted EPS in Q3 2026 and a favorable impact of approximately $0.42 per share for the full year if rates hold at current levels — a tailwind worth about 4% of adjusted EPS that is worth mentally separating from operating performance.

Our read: the guidance looks achievable rather than stretched. H1 adjusted operating margin expansion is already 80 basis points, at the top of the full-year range, and the restructuring program's savings arrive ahead of its remaining charges. The divestiture drag on reported revenue should fade as the NFP Wealth and Stroz Friedberg sales lap, which will make 2027's reported growth look materially better without anything changing operationally.

Three things constrain the story. First, the tax rate: at 20.1% adjusted versus 16.5% last year, roughly 3.6 points of pre-tax growth is being absorbed before it reaches EPS, and Aon's own risk disclosures name the OECD's Pillar Two global minimum-tax regime — now applied by Ireland, the UK, Singapore and much of the EU — as a source of volatility for a Dublin-domiciled company. Second, softening reinsurance pricing turns net market impact into a persistent headwind that new business has to outrun; it already did so this quarter, but the margin for error narrows if the cycle softens further. Third, the Vesttoo litigation remains open — the bankruptcy estate's trust filed its opposition to Aon's motion to dismiss on June 23, 2026, and while the Clear Blue suit was dismissed with prejudice in September 2025, the remaining claims are unresolved and unquantified.

None of these threaten the compounding model: 5% organic growth, a modest annual margin step-up, and a 2% reduction in share count is a high-single-digit to low-double-digit adjusted EPS algorithm that this quarter delivered on.

Source: Aon plc Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2026 (filed July 29, 2026, accession 0001628280-26-050610) and the earnings release furnished as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K filed July 29, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-050367).