Introducing OPB’s inaugural Environmental, Social and Governance Report

OPB is committed to advancing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues both within our operations and within our investments because we believe it is important to our long-term success.

Over the past few years, we have worked closely with our investment manager, the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO), to advance ESG within our investment portfolio and we have also focused on improving our communications and transparency with members around our progress.

In 2022, we invited our members to complete our ESG feedback survey designed to help us better understand what ESG-related issues and topics matter most to our members and how our members would like us to communicate our progress with them. In that survey, 73% of our members told us they felt ESG was an important consideration within our investments. Investment returns were also very important to our members with 50% of members sharing that considering ESG and investment returns are both important, 27% of members shared that investment returns should be the priority and 23% of members shared that ESG should be the primary focus within investments.

We want our members to know that we believe integrating ESG into the investment process is what best positions us to improve returns over the longer term, which in turn helps the pension plan and members.

In early spring, we will be releasing our inaugural ESG report. The report will discuss our progress on ESG and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), as well as how we worked with IMCO to advance ESG within our investment portfolio for 2022 and part of 2023. The report will share information about our ESG policies, commitments, and educational content on key ESG topics to explain how our goal of sustainably managing the Plan will reduce our exposure to risk and continue protecting the pension promise for years to come.