Vestcor continues to deliver strong results for its clients in 2020 | June 15, 2021

Vestcor Inc. (Vestcor) has released its 2020 Annual Report, continuing its long-term record of success in investment performance and administration service delivery. Vestcor is an independent New Brunswick based, not-for-profit company offering global investment management and pension and benefit administration services to public sector entities.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected people and businesses across the globe, and of course, Vestcor was no exception.

“The health and safety of our employees remains our highest priority, but we realize that there are over 103,300 pension and benefit plan members that depend on us” said John A. Sinclair, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are proud that through our business continuity plan, we have been able to provide uninterrupted investment management and administration services to our clients since the state of emergency order was issued by the Province of New Brunswick on March 19, 2020.”

Assets under Vestcor’s management reached another new all-time high of $19.4 billion in 2020, an increase of approximately $900 million over the previous year. This included a gross overall return from Vestcor investment management activities of 6.96%, or $1.267 billion. Nominal and relative investment performance continues to exceed the long-term targets of their many shared risk / target benefit pension plan clients, with a four-year annualized overall pension client return of 7.13%. These results were achieved while maintaining significantly less risk than a traditional defined benefit pension plan. This risk-managed approach was especially important during the early part of 2020, where pandemic-fueled volatility saw global equity markets at one point experiencing a decline of approximately 30%.

Vestcor’s clients also continued to benefit greatly from their cost-efficient, not-for-profit model with a continued year over year decline in Vestcor’s management expense ratio to approximately 0.11% in 2020.

Vestcor’s pension and benefits administration service teams adapted quickly to the complications arising from the pandemic, moving many of their functions to an online format. Continued process improvements were made in conjunction with a newly implemented pensions and benefits administration system. This allowed the operations and member services teams to efficiently prioritize critical member requirements in the early stages of the state of emergency and return service standards to near client target levels before year end.

About Vestcor

Located in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Vestcor provides global investment management services to nine different public sector client groups representing approximately $19.4 billion in assets under management as at December 31, 2020, and administration services to 11 public sector pension plans and four employee benefit plans.

Vestcor’s team of more than 140 New Brunswick-based service professionals provides innovative, integrated, cost-effective investment management and pension and benefit administration services solutions to public sector entities.  Vestcor currently services the requirements of approximately 103,300 individual plan members and 134 participating employer groups.

Further information about Vestcor including the 2020 Annual Report, is available online at vestcor.org.

MEDIA CONTACT:

John A. Sinclair, president and chief executive officer, 506-453-2296.