A Discussion With HOOPP CEO Jeff Wendling on His Retirement and More

On Wednesday, HOOPP's president and CEO Jeff Wendling announced his retirement: 

TORONTO (September 25, 2024) – Jeff Wendling, President & CEO of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), announced today that he will be retiring in 2025 after more than a quarter of a century with the organization.

Jeff was appointed President & CEO in April 2020. He will remain in the position until HOOPP’s Board of Trustees appoints a successor in 2025 and will work closely with the Board to ensure a smooth transition.

“One of the things that first drew me to HOOPP, when I joined in 1998, was that I saw an organization with a lot of potential to become even more successful than it was at the time,” Jeff said in a message to staff on Wednesday. “After 26 years, together, we have proved that to be the case. Working toward our mission, delivering on the pension promise for Ontario’s healthcare workers, has been at the core of what we do.”

Jeff became President & CEO just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to impact the global economy. Under his leadership, HOOPP grew both its membership and assets under management ($112.6 billion at the end of 2023). HOOPP’s funded status remains very strong at 115%, meaning that for every dollar owed in pensions, the Plan has $1.15 in assets. HOOPP has been selected as one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers for four years in a row and has been commended for its focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).

Dan Anderson, Chair of the Board of Trustees for HOOPP, and Gerry Rocchi, Board Vice Chair, praised Jeff’s leadership during his time as President & CEO.

“Jeff helped HOOPP solidify its place as one of the top-performing pension plans in the world and keep us fully funded through some of the most challenging market conditions in history. The resulting Plan strength has also allowed us to keep member and employer contribution rates unchanged since 2004 and at least until the end of 2026, and provide members with three benefit improvements since 2020.”

Prior to being appointed as President & CEO, Jeff was HOOPP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer (CIO). He joined HOOPP in 1998 as a Senior Portfolio Manager on the Public Equities team.

About the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan

HOOPP serves Ontario’s hospital and community-based healthcare sector, with more than 670 participating employers. Its membership includes nurses, medical technicians, food services staff, housekeeping staff, and many others who provide valued healthcare services. In total, HOOPP has more than 460,000 active, deferred and retired members.

HOOPP is fully funded and manages a highly diversified portfolio of more than $112 billion in assets that span multiple geographies and asset classes. Over $60 billion of HOOPP’s assets are invested in Canada and HOOPP is one of the biggest investors in Canadian bonds, with over $40 billion in total government bond holdings. HOOPP is also a major contributor to the Canadian economy, paying more than $3 billion in pension benefits to Ontario healthcare workers annually.

HOOPP operates as a private independent trust, and is governed by a Board of Trustees with a sole fiduciary duty to deliver the pension promise. The Board is jointly governed by the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) and four unions: the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union (OPSEU), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This governance model provides representation from both management and workers in support of the long-term interests of the Plan.

Jeff also posted a message to members on HOOPP's website:

Twenty-six years ago, I started working at HOOPP. First, as a senior portfolio manager in public equities and then in a number of other roles before becoming Chief Investment Officer and then President and Chief Executive Officer. As HOOPP grew, I grew along with it, both personally and professionally.

After careful consideration, I have decided to retire. Now is the time to begin the next chapter in my life. HOOPP’s Board of Trustees has begun the search to find my successor and, while my retirement date has not been finalized, it will be sometime in 2025.

Working toward our mission of delivering on the pension promise for you, HOOPP’s members, has been a privilege. Our focus on this mission has made HOOPP one of the top-performing pension plans in the world and kept the Plan fully funded through some of the most challenging market conditions in history. The resulting Plan strength has also allowed us to provide members with three pension benefit improvements since 2020, while keeping member and employer contribution rates unchanged since 2004, through at least the end of 2026.

As I prepare to depart HOOPP, I am confident in the overall strength of our Plan and the incredible team behind it all. Their continued dedication and unwavering support of our pension promise will keep HOOPP on a path to many more successful years ahead.

Thank you for everything you do to serve our communities. It has been a great honour and pleasure to serve you over all these years, especially the last five years as HOOPP’s President & CEO.

Earlier today, I had a chance to talk with Jeff to go over this latest announcement.

I want to begin by thanking him for taking the time to talk to me and also thank Scott White and Jackie Emick for setting up the call.

Given I had 20 minutes, I sent Jeff seven questions prior to our call:

1. What led you to HOOPP and how did you end up as CIO and CEO?
2. You led the organization through the pandemic, did this profoundly affect you?
3. What are you most proud of at HOOPP?
4. What made you decide to retire at this point and time? Are you confident HOOPP can continue to deliver on its pension promise?
5. What advice do you have for your successor?
6. Unlike you and other HOOPP employees that take part in HOOPP’s pension plan and have a secure DB pension, most Canadians don’t have a secure pension to fall back on when they retire. What advice do you have for them?
7. What are you most looking forward to in retirement and how will you spend your time?

So let me get to his answers below:

1. What led you to HOOPP and how did you end up as CIO and CEO?

If you want to go way back, I was working in a financial role at a company in Toronto and that company got bought out by ING during the global insurance consolidation of the late 90s. They offered me a position but it wasn't what I wanted so I started looking pretty aggressively for a job and I ended up getting an offer at a mutual fund company and then I found out about HOOPP and they were looking for a senior portfolio manager on the Canadian equity side and I thought the pension fund industry was a good industry to go in, it was on the upswing. And HOOPP in particular had room to perform even better than it had been. 

So, it's a good industry and its orientation has a lot of potential, maybe it's not realized yet and just serving health care workers, there was a good feeling about that as well, there is a purpose there.

I got here and in those days, there was a HOOPP pension fund and HOOPP Investment Management Limited which ran the assets and they both had a CEO. In 1998, both those CEOs retired and the two groups were combined into one and we had our fist HOOPP CEO overall and he appointed a CIO. And that person who came in was a fella called John Crocker, he became our first CIO, and I've been there a few months and he massively restructured our investment positions.

I had not been there long and he eventually gave me the key role of heading Public Equities. John brought in Jim Keohane to develop our derivatives capabilities and some other folks and we all joined around three or four months of each other and that team stayed together. John eventually became CEO and he retired in 2011. Jim became CEO but Jim, John and I worked together for 20 years, and over that time, we made some great calls. We did pretty well coming out of the tech wreck (2000-2002) compared to many. We did very well coming out of the global financial crisis (2008) and we maintained a well funded position all the way along. 

The success of our investment division, the success of our LDI approach, stability and strength of our funded ratio and some of the great calls we made over that time, that's why ultimately Jim became CEO and then I became CEO because of the success you saw there.

Jeff brought back a flood of memories, the Nortel days and how they structured derivatives positions around that, the GFC and how bonds saved them back then and I told him that HOOPP has a track record for mitigating the downside risks at key turning points which is critically important.

Jeff added this: 

What we also did , Leo, was seize opportunities big time at what ended up being extreme lows, so coming out the GFC, we slapped on a ton of equity exposure through some derivatives strategies and even as recently as Covid when the market sold off hard, we were in there buying. So we've done well being fully invested over the long term and as you say, protect ourselves during key turning points and also really buy well. When you get these big moves that happen once every ten years, you can see them and do very well.

That led me to my second question.

2. You led this organization through the pandemic, did this profoundly affect you?

It was a tough time. I officially became CEO two weeks after our office closed for Covid. It was strange, I was working at my house, seeing nobody but with technology, we didn't miss a beat, had regular meetings and it worked well.

I was able to provide very steady input and part of that reason was because I've been around for a while. When I started in the business, it was right around the time of the 1987 crash. I saw that, I looked through the tech wreck, Jim and I were in charge to protect this fund as best as we could then, the GFC, I had experience in these kind of crisis situations. It's always different but I had enough experience to keep my eye on the long term as well and to try to keep the organization and investment people in particular, steady and focused as well and mot panicking.

Great advice right there for any aspiring CEO/ CIO. I told Jeff, if only I can go back to the pandemic, I'd shove all my money in the QQQs at the bottom and ride them till now (hindsight is 20/20).

3. What are you most proud of at HOOPP?

There's a number of things but I guess one thing I'd come back to is Jim and I and John were partners all along and other folks too. I think what I most proud of is stewarding the fund through some pretty tumultuous times. LDI certainly helped us as well to limit the risk to our surplus.

But we basically stewarded this fund through some very challenging times and it allowed us to make sure we deliver on that pension promise. It allowed us HOOPP to make benefit increases, it allowed us to not change our pricing, our contribution rate hasn't changed since 2004. We were ultimately able to deliver the pension promise to our members so that's what I most proud of, stewarding the fund for 26 years.

But there's a lot of other things too. In my roles as head of Public equities and CIO, I helped bring a lot of people into this organization, I helped develop a lot of people. I'm very proud of the people and the calibre of the people in this organization. I think it's second to none. So I'm very proud of that.

I told Jeff he should be and Michael Wissell came to my mind, the current CIO who he brought over from OTPP but others as well.

I moved on to then next question.

4. What made you decide to retire now? Are you confident HOOPP can continue to deliver on its pension promise?

I'm a 100% confident HOOPP can continue to deliver on the pension promise. First and foremost, the quality of the people we have here. That includes the board as well, we have a lot of engaged, smart people focused on this plan so I'm a 100% confident we are going to be good for the long term.

And on what made him decide to retire at this time, I noted it's typically 5-year contracts and maybe he didn't want to stick around another five years. Jeff replied:

The reality is I got this job three months before I turned 60 and it's a 5-year contract. That works pretty well. I've been here 26 years and it's just time at his point of my life to maybe do some other things. It's been an honour and pleasure to work for this organization all the way along and it's absolutely first class.

It most certainly is and that led me to my fifth question.

5. What advice do you have for your successor?

That's a good question. I started by saying we have so many great people in this organization. I think we have built an incredible platform here for success longer term. This is not a rebuilding situation, this isn't blowing it up and starting all over again. I think it's taking what we have and making it work better, taking it to the next level. There's always room to do that. We have a great team and a great platform here. Just getting it work as well as it can, that's one main thing I'd like to pass on to the successor.

I agree, the foundation at HOOPP is there and once you have the foundation and platform, all you need to do is improve upon them.

I then moved on to my sixth question noting HOOPP has done a lot of great advocacy work on defined-benefit plans which really took off under Jim Keohane , the previous CEO and continues today under Jeff's leadership. I told Jeff I see a big problem in Canada and the US.

6. Unlike you and other HOOPP employees that take part in HOOPP’s pension plan and have a secure DB pension, most Canadians don’t have a secure pension to fall back on when they retire. What advice do you have for them?

 It's difficult. You mention Jim, he was a huge advocate of encouraging the expansion of DB plans instead of the contraction that we've seen. That's why we do the advocacy work because we think more Canadians should have the benefit of being in a plan like HOOPP and that's why we have our advicacy efforts.

Right now, Leo, we are thinking about how we can open HOOPP up to other parts of health care that we don't serve currently. We are trying to make sure more people can have a great pension plan like we have.

On that last point, I was under the impression that HOOPP covers the entire health care sector in Ontario except for medical practitioners (physicians) who are still stuck with crappy RRSPs (all my doctor friends, many of whom are well to do, wish they had a DB plan).

Jeff added:

We have over 470,000  members and we cover most of the health care in Ontario. We have over 700 employers across the health care spectrum. As health care evolves, we continue to serve it as it evolves. 

But medical practitioners/ physicians, that's one right there that you identified, there's work going on there. You can also think about home care, long-term care and other areas. So we are looking to create a path for other parts of health care to join HOOPP if they choose to.

It goes without saying that if HOOPP is able to bring physicians into its plan, assets will explode up. The banks won't be happy (losing RRSP assets) but physicians sure will, especially if they see the value of a good pension.

For me, being the son of a physician and knowing so many doctors across many specialties, it's time that all of Canada's doctors sign up to a large, well-governed DB plan.

Jeff noted the lack of retirement savings is a "huge societal issue as is the decline in preponderance of defined-benefit plans".

I said that good pension policy is inked ot the long-term health of an economy, especially as more and more people retire.

Jeff added:

We have a pension payroll over $3 billion now, annually, so you think about how much money is going to communities across this province. That's a big payroll and it's getting bigger. This is helping communities across the province and that's also true of OMERS and Teachers' and other big plans.

And my last question where I noted I took the liberty on LinkedIn yesterday to note he will join Jim on the golf course without even knowing if he's even a golfer:

7. What are you most looking forward to in retirement and how will you spend your time?

Not much of one (golfer). First, I don't have a fixed date yet, it's some time in 2025. I think to step away and get a break is going to be one thing. My wife and I and even are two adult children, travelling will be part of what we are going to do. We have a cottage, I want to spend more time up there. 

And then I think at some point, I will look at helping other organizations, how can I contribute to helping this industry down the road.

I totally agree and noted just like Jim Keohane who sits on the board of TCC and AIMCo, Jeff would be a great board member at any pension plan/ fund but right now he should focus on travelling with his wife and kids.

I told him I remember when Jim retired, he told me he had mixed emotions stepping away after so many years but one of the reasons he wanted to retire was to be able to travel with his wife when he's still relatively healthy.

Jeff told me:

Jim is a good friend and that it's been and honour and a privilege to be part of this organization and I've been so engaged, that's going to be a huge adjustment. And providing pensions for health care workers in Ontario, that's a huge purpose in life. That's going to be a huge adjustment for sure and that's why at some point, I'll think about how I can give something back and be engaged again in this industry.

I told Jeff if he and his wife ever make to Montreal, I'd love to meet him personally and also let him know if he ever wants to write a comment for my blog, I'll provide this platform for him.

Once again, I thank Jeff for a wonderful discussion.

He, Jim and John Crocker are part of the great CIOs/ CEOs in this industry and it's not just their tremendous experience and investment acumen, they are first-class people in all respects.

Alright, let me wrap it up there but before I do, I know there will be a lot of speculation on who will take over the helm after Jeff Wendling.

There are three obvious choices in my head. First, internally, CIO Michael Wissell who has been groomed for the position. Second, Marlene Puffer who just exited AIMCo where she was CIO. She was former CEO of CN Investment Division and knows HOOPP very well as she was formerly the vice-chair there. And third, Eduard van Gelderen, the now former CIO of PSP Investments who was former CEO of APG.

All three of these candidates have outstanding qualifications to lead this organization. As Jeff stated, the people, the foundations and platforms are all first-class so they're inheriting something great which can always be improved.

Below, an older interview (2020) where HOOPP's former CEO Jim Keohane outlined what he sees as the 5 retirement value drivers: saving, investment discipline, fiduciary governance, risk pooling, and minimizing fees. 

Jim also explained to Ed Harrison why HOOPP’s lock-in contributions are so vital to building a nest-egg because they are automatic. He also discussed the balance on the board of HOOPP between management and unions – what he calls a “nice mix” – is so crucial to its sustained success.