2021 Annual Report Highlights

This Annual Report is addressed to our members, employers, sponsors, unions, associations, and the many others who are interested in OMERS 2021 performance, and in our progress in making OMERS a sustainable, affordable and meaningful defined benefit Plan.

Introduction

As the pandemic continues, community remains of paramount importance as we all strive to stay connected, safe and well. OMERS active and retired members and their employers continue to support and build our communities across Ontario, and we would like to sincerely acknowledge and thank you for your leadership and dedication through these turbulent times.

Serving our members and supporting their employers is at the heart of who we are and drives everything we do. We are committed to delivering strong results and excellent service. In 2021, we earned a 15.7% net investment return, well above the benchmark we set at the start of the year. We also served our 541,000 members, who span five generations, exceptionally well, achieving a 93% member satisfaction rating based on your feedback.

OMERS has now grown to $121 billion in assets and our long-term returns were bolstered by our 2021 results.

As we build for tomorrow, we also set the important goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions for our global and diverse portfolio by 2050. This expands on our goal of a 20% carbon intensity reduction for the portfolio by 2025. Most importantly, it advances our efforts to make your Plan more environmentally sustainable and responsible for the generations to come.

This past year also brought OMERS to the cusp of a milestone, as we prepare this spring to mark our 60th anniversary. For six decades we have been serving our members, consistently paying pensions. As we look to the future, the Plan faces some challenges. At a 97% smoothed funded status, the OMERS Plan is not fully funded. There is a growing number of retired members for each active member, and people are living longer, so pensions are paid over a longer period. The benefits we pay already exceed the contributions we receive, and the gap is expected to grow. This increases our reliance on investment returns.

Addressing these challenges will require a continued focus on ensuring that we have the right assets and the right talent. It will also require a keen focus on the future and ongoing efforts to improve the Plan's long-term resilience by building sufficient reserves. Our commitment to providing sustainable, affordable and meaningful pensions to our members is our purpose and our privilege, and the reason we come to work every day.

More detail on all of these topics will follow in this Annual Report.

Recognizing this range, we offer our members a variety of ways to connect with us. We know that nothing replaces the important relationships and discussions that OMERS members have with our personable and professional teams. Our member experience team had close to 192,000 conversations with our members in 2021. Members rated their experience highly, resulting in a 93% satisfaction rate. In addition, our pension education team had the opportunity to connect with more than 12,000 members through live webinars and in-person events.

We also heard valuable feedback on where we can do even better, so we’re innovating and adapting.

We’re expecting a dramatic increase in the number of members retiring in the coming years: today, 81,000 members are eligible to retire but are still working and contributing to the OMERS Plan. We’re getting ready for this retirement cohort by continuing to modernize our platforms.

In 2021, we:

• released the first iteration of our new core pension system, and made significant changes to our legacy systems, that set the foundation for greater flexibility in the future;

• introduced a pilot for chat functionality, including back-end automation, in order to expand the channels through which our members receive service;

• built an enhanced Retirement Planner for members’ use in preparation for their retirement. This tool enables members to enter information about their assets, other sources of income, and expenses, to provide a more holistic view of their financial health in retirement; and

• created efficiencies in the pension estimates process through automation, resulting in more members having quicker access to their pension estimates. This is especially relevant as more and more members request these estimates.

Each of these activities is aimed at improving our members’ experience, through any channel they wish to use to engage with us.

For employers, we launched two new resources in 2021. We completed the redesign and development of a new portal, e-access, that will enable us to stay better connected and we launched OMERS Learning Experience, the new learning platform for employers. These initiatives allow our employers to service our members more quickly, efficiently and accurately.

We continue to assess both the impact and the risk of climate change on our portfolio, as well as the opportunities presented by the transition to a low-carbon economy. In 2021, OMERS made a commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions across our portfolio by 2050. This long-term goal complements the short-term goal we announced last year of reducing our portfolio’s carbon intensity by 20% by 2025.

We continue to look for ways to prudently shift our portfolio towards a lower-carbon economy, seeking opportunities across all asset classes. Our real estate arm, Oxford Properties, has reduced its carbon footprint by 35% since 2015, and is developing its first zero carbon office building in Vancouver, while our infrastructure team is building its expertise with the addition of a new leader for its ESG program. Many of our investee companies are also on this same journey. For example, healthcare provider Aledade is already “carbon neutral”, and the Ontario-based nuclear power plant Bruce Power has committed to “net zero” by 2027.

The Right Talent

Serving our members is our core purpose. OMERS teams, across functions and geographies, are dedicated to you, to your future and to Building Tomorrow Together.

Our Values

1. Inclusion

   We believe and invest in each other. We know that inclusion, and the diversity it nurtures, drives innovation, global perspective, a successful platform and exceptional long-term outcomes. 

2. Integrity

   United by our purpose and fortified by trust, we work in an open and honest way to deliver on our commitments and secure the results that safeguard futures.

3. Humility

   We know our members, our markets and our team — we also deeply respect the value that comes from listening, learning and engaging. Through collaboration, insight and strong partnerships, we build bright tomorrows for our members.

4. Excellence

   Extremely proud of what we do and whom we do it for, we set our own bar high. We are fiercely competitive in everything we do and approach each day with the drive to outperform.

The challenges created by the pandemic fueled our determination to keep our people safe and well, so they could keep up their service to you. This included programs aimed at enhancing the overall wellness and mental health, inclusion, as well as growth and career development, while providing the technology enhancements needed to keep us working and teaming seamlessly, even while remote. We continued to feel connected to one another, and committed to our members, despite another year that at many times kept us physically apart.

As we continue our journey, we have made some significant progress on our People Strategy in 2021 that includes:

• An expanded leadership team that brings diversity of experience and global perspective. Under this new leadership, we enhanced our focus on inclusion, expanded operational capabilities and created new opportunities, including for growth and succession.

• An 81% engagement rating, three points above the external best-in-class benchmark, in our newly launched Employee Experience Survey. All employees were invited to participate in this survey, which measured their pride, motivation and willingness to recommend OMERS as a workplace of choice. Leaders across OMERS have used their teams’ feedback to develop specific action plans.

• A continued focus on deliberate and proactive expansion of recruitment pipelines and career development opportunities for women. In particular, the Women in Leadership Program, aimed at retaining and developing high-performing women at senior levels, contributed to our achievement of an 87% Inclusion Index score drawn from the Employee Experience Survey, 4 points above the best-in-class benchmark.

• Impactful conscious inclusion sessions held for our global leaders, building on an enterprise-wide education program the year before.

• Achieved certification as one of Canada’s Great Places to Work and selected as a Greater Toronto Area Top 100 Employer, based on factors including our work atmosphere, benefits, training and skills development, and community involvement.

Managing the Risks that We Face

The OMERS Plan is the collective responsibility of deeply committed executive teams and experienced Boards of Directors at the Sponsors Corporation (SC) and Administration Corporation (AC).

As part of our responsibility to manage the Plan, we regularly evaluate and assess the likelihood and impact of risks to the Plan, along with potential options to mitigate them.

We are making progress on the priority to lower our discount rate over time, as another key component of strengthening Plan resiliency. This will be done incrementally, to balance our long-term financial health with benefit and contribution rate stability.

Through informed decision-making and leading governance practices, our overriding objective is to ensure the Plan remains sustainable, affordable and meaningful in our complex and fast-changing world. The SC has sole responsibility for determining the Plan’s benefit levels and contribution rates.

In 2020, “shared risk indexing” (SRI) was introduced as an optional tool that could be invoked to assist with improving Plan resilience by reducing future inflation increases on benefits earned after December 31, 2022, based on an annual assessment of the Plan’s financial health. Shared risk indexing would allow risk to be more equitably spread across all generations of active and retired members. For more information on shared risk indexing, please refer to the MD&A in the full Annual Report.

As we continue to assess the Plan’s long-term financial sustainability, we are focused on strengthening and protecting its resilience against the potential risks on the horizon. Members, employers, sponsors and stakeholders are an important part of the OMERS community, and we will continue to prioritize keeping them informed as we focus on ensuring that the Plan serves the needs of all members now and for decades to come.