Letter from Celine Chiovitti, Executive Vice President & Head of Pensions

It’s hard to believe that the first three months of the year are already behind us, and like many of you, we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of warmer weather, longer days and the opportunity to see each other in person once again. To that end, at OMERS, we made the difficult decision to host our Annual Meeting virtually to ensure that our members and employees remain safe and healthy. We truly hope that we can begin to pivot back to in-person meetings and forums very soon, and we are already planning for live events later this year.

We are also very excited to celebrate OMERS 60th anniversary this spring! Yes, it has been 60 years of proudly serving members across the province of Ontario by providing sustainable, affordable and meaningful defined benefit pensions, and we look forward to serving you for another 60 years and beyond. We know how valuable an OMERS pension is to our members and always look forward to speaking with members when they are making the exciting transition to retirement. There is nothing quite like speaking to a member who is about to retire, after a career spent serving the public. We now also know the important role that defined benefit pensions, like OMERS, have to the Ontario economy. To hear about how we generate value across Ontario, read the report produced by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA).

To learn more about both OMERS 2021 performance and the steps we are taking to better position ourselves against future uncertainties, and to increase the Plan’s strength and resilience, please read OMERS 2021 Annual Report.

You will also hear more about our 2021 performance, financial results and other key updates about the Plan at our upcoming Virtual Annual Meeting on April 11 at 9 a.m. EST.

Register for the Annual Meeting here.

Across the Pensions team, we are all standing by to assist with your OMERS pension. In fact, our "North Star" aspiration is to ‘be the most trusted partner in empowering our members through their pension journey from hire to retire and beyond’. This means we are always striving to be the most service-centric organization across the province.

We take this commitment seriously and in 2021, we had over 192,000 conversations with you and 12,000 of you used live webinars and in-person events to learn more about your pension. We also updated our technology, to make it more user friendly and provide more tools to help you plan for your retirement. This includes our newly enhanced Retirement Planner, a tool that enables you to enter information about your assets, and your other sources of income and expenses, to provide a more holistic view of your financial health in retirement.

We also used automation to get your pension estimates to you faster – something many of you asked for! In addition, we restructured our editorial team to write important news about the Plan and share timely stories about how OMERS is supporting your retirement journey, through a new monthly newsletter sent straight to your inbox every month of the year.

I also wanted to take a moment to reflect on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. To any of our Ukrainian members, those with Ukrainian roots, or anyone with family members directly affected by the war, we stand with you. Our heart is breaking as we witness the loss of human lives and the devastation that is occurring because of this war. OMERS Executive Leadership Team and employees have been making personal donations to the people of Ukraine through vetted organizations such as the Ukrainian Red Cross Society to show our support to the country and our impacted members throughout this crisis.

I want to thank you for taking the time to communicate with us, for investing in your OMERS education and for learning how to make your pension Plan work best for you. We welcome your feedback and I look forward to connecting with you at the Annual Meeting and at other events throughout the year!