Andrew Krasner
Chief Financial OfficerChief Financial Officer at Willis Towers Watson Public
Thanks, Carl. Good morning, everyone. Thanks to all of you for joining us so early in the day. The first quarter saw dramatic macroeconomic and geopolitical changes that required us to navigate rapid and significant shifts in our markets that we expect will continue to evolve throughout the year. High inflation, uncertainty around how long it will last and tight labor supply are impacting our clients' people strategies in a variety of ways. Geopolitical and economic factors are affecting the insurance landscape, with events in Ukraine likely to dampen the short-term moderation in pricing growth. Monetary policy and inflationary forces are expected to translate into remeasured asset values and exposures, ultimately translating into premium growth. We continue to navigate through this complex and dynamic backdrop and have delivered a good start to the year, with most of our businesses contributing to organic revenue growth. Before we turn to our detailed segment results, let me take a moment to touch on our exit from our Russian businesses.
As we previously reported, we made the decision to exit our operations in Russia, which comprised approximately 1% of consolidated WTW revenue for 2021, primarily within our Risk and Broking segment. The lost profits from our Russia operations will create modest margin headwinds for the company in 2022 and beyond. However, we have taken swift action to deploy near-term cost mitigation measures and to identify longer-term offsets, which gives us confidence in achieving our guidance for the year and reaching our 2024 financial goals. Let's turn to our detailed segment results. Note that to provide clear comparability with all periods, all commentary regarding the results of our segments will be on an organic basis, unless specifically stated otherwise. The Health, Wealth and Career, or HWC segment, generated revenue growth of 2% on an organic basis and 3% on a constant currency basis compared to the first quarter of the prior year. Career, which represents our Work & Rewards and Employee Experience businesses, led revenue growth for the segment, increasing 7% in the quarter, following growth of 3% in Q4 of 2021. This growth was driven by strong demand for rewards consulting, pay benchmarking and software.
Health, which is comprised of our Health and Benefits broking and consulting business, delivered strong growth of 6% through a combination of increased retention, new client appointments and project work. Wealth, which represents our Retirement and Investment businesses, had a revenue increase of 1% for the quarter, driven by growth from new clients. In Benefits Delivery & Outsourcing, which encompasses our Benefits Delivery & Administration and benefit plan administration businesses, revenue declined by 2% from the prior year first quarter. The decline was largely driven by individual marketplace and reflected a shift in revenue timing from our B2B Medicare exchange business, which we expect to normalize over the course of 2022, as well as lower growth in Medicare Advantage revenue in our direct-to-consumer business. We continue to see a macro environment that supports growth opportunities for this business. HWC's operating margin expanded 110 basis points to 20.7% in the first quarter, driven primarily by strong operating leverage from our growth. We see HWC's historical industry-leading margins continuing. HWC's market-leading solutions and the tailwinds in its core markets should continue to drive organic growth.
Both our near-term and long-term outlook on HWC remain positive. Now let's look at Risk and Broking, or R&B. R&B's revenue was flat on an organic and constant currency basis as compared to the prior year first quarter. Excluding a headwind from a book of business gain on sale that was recorded in the prior comparable period, Risk and Broking's organic revenue growth was 2%. In the Insurance Consulting and Technology, or ICT business, revenue was up 9% compared to the prior year first quarter, with increased technology solutions sales alongside increased demand for advisory work. Corporate Risk & Broking, or CRB, revenue declined 1%. Excluding the book of business sale I mentioned earlier and Russia-related revenue, CRB increased 3% and, growth across all regions, primarily from new business with notable strength in our FINEX and M&A lines. Excluding headwinds from prior year book of business sales, North America led CRB's growth, where colleague retention rates at senior levels have continued to show significant improvement. Excluding our Russia business, international and Europe also contributed to CRB's growth. Risk and Broking's operating margin was 21.6% for the first quarter compared to 21.9% in the prior year first quarter.
Excluding the headwind from book of business sale in the prior period, the margin increased 130 basis points for the first quarter as a result of top line growth alongside continued cost management. Risk and Broking's organic growth has trailed industry averages, primarily due to elevated colleague departures and reduced hiring during the period when the business combination was pending, two factors that we believe are now behind us. We continue to expect that the actions we have taken will enable us to narrow the growth gap over the course of the year, with pace accelerating in the second half of 2022 as the impacts of our actions build and headwinds subside. Overall, our outlook for Risk and Broking remains positive with mid-single-digit revenue growth expected over the longer term. Now let's turn to the enterprise level results. In Q1, we generated profitable growth with adjusted operating margins increasing 200 basis points to 17.2% from 15.2% in the prior year, a product of our focus on strategic priorities and cost management. We continue to expect margin improvement each year as we work to deliver on our 2024 margin goals.
As Carl mentioned, our transformation initiatives will be a key contributor to that ongoing margin expansion. Our early efforts in this area have been very successful, and we have already surpassed our $30 million annualized run rate savings goal for the year. We are actively seeking further cost transformation opportunities, and we'll update you as those progress. We had free cash flow of negative $10 million for the first quarter of 2022, a $155 million increase from free cash flow of negative $165 million in the prior year. Approximately $50 million of the increase was core free cash flow improvement while the remaining $105 million was driven by onetime items. The onetime items consist primarily of legal settlement paid -- payments made in the prior year, totaling $185 million, partially offset by a net $80 million in other nonrecurring items, such as cash inflows from now divested businesses like Reinsurance, which increased prior year free cash flow, and cash payments related to transaction and transformation costs, which decreased current year free cash flow.
We continue to prioritize returning capital to shareholders and executed aggressively on those commitments. We paid $98 million in dividends for the first quarter of 2022 and repurchased 9.9 million shares for $2.25 billion, achieving the $4 billion near-term share repurchase target we set at Investor Day. At the end of Q1, approximately $1.6 billion remain under our current repurchase authorization. We remain committed to deploying excess capital and free cash flow into our highest return opportunities and continue to believe the return we can achieve from repurchasing shares remains highly attractive, and we expect to continue to deploy free cash flow in this manner. Overall, we're off to a good start in 2022. As we think about the rest of the year, we see macroeconomic challenges that will continue to create demand for our services and opportunities to help clients. We continue to feel positive about the investments we made in talent last year and this year. We are confident those investments will support revenue growth and that we will achieve our targets for the year.
With that, let's open it up for