Welcome everybody. This is Brian Meredith. I am the Senior North American Insurance Analyst with UBS, and I want to welcome you to our Fireside Chat right now with Voya Insurance Group. Also joining me from UBS is Mike Ward, who partners with me in following Voya and the rest of the life insurance group. With us today from Voya, we have got Rod Martin, the CEO, Rob Grubka, the President of Employee Benefits, and Michael Katz, who's the SVP of Investor Relations. For the audience, if you've got a question you'd like to ask during this Fireside Chat, please, you can email me. It should be at the bottom of your screen right now, my email address. For those of you who can't see it, my email address is Brian, B-R-I-A-N, .Meredith, M-E-R-E-D-I-T-H, @ubs.com.
Feel free to email me a question. I'll do my best to ask it during our chat here today. Rod, Rob, and Michael, I want to thank you for participating today in our virtual conference. What I thought we could do is just quickly start off with Rod giving us a quick recap of Voya's kind of recent results and his perspective on the current environment for the life and asset management industry. Then we can get into some more detailed questions. With that, Rod, why don't I give it to you?
Thank you. Good morning. We appreciate the opportunity to participate. Brian, as you just summarized, we just reported earnings in the last week or so. We had a very solid first quarter. Had about a 26% increase in adjusted operating earnings. Particularly notable were the flows and results from the businesses, and Rob is with me, so I'll let him get into more detail on that as we toggle back and forth. We had record earnings with and from our Employee Benefit business. I remind our listeners that the majority of our business is a one-one enrollment process, fundamentally, much of our annual cycle was completed well prior to the COVID phase. We came into the year 2020 with some great momentum from 2019, some fantastic pipelines that really served us well.
You see that revealed both in, by way of example, the flows in retirement, which were positive, and the flows in asset management, which were particularly constructive, over $2.2 billion. We also have talked about in some subsequent meetings. It really begins to pivot to what's the world beginning to reveal in terms of the momentum. Again, we'll follow your questions, just as an example, we funded one of our largest, in our asset management business, one of our largest insurance-based mandates in our history. We now do business with over 40 different insurance companies offering these specialized product categories. We funded something in mid-April that was a little north of $6 billion singularly. A case that we've been working on for some period of time. I think it speaks well to that business is functioning.
I'll give you another example that in the month of April, in our retirement business, we had over 6,000 Zoom meetings, which was more than double the amount we had done in the prior three months, simply because we're fundamentally a B2B business is continuing. We can talk about some other anecdotes that we've had with it for our retirement business. I'm really proud of our ability to move to a virtual environment. We, like most companies that you'll be talking to, are operating about 98% virtually. It has been remarkably smooth. We've been very effective.
In fact, we've been encouraging, as many companies have, that our employees frankly need to create boundaries because our commute from our bedroom to the corner of our living room or dining room table or corner of our basement or study or whatever you may have available to you, isn't very long, the days are long. People know where you are, we're being very efficient and very available to a whole host of constituencies, not just using this as an example with investors, but with clients and customers and advisors. We're encouraging our folks to obviously do all those things, but also create boundaries. Look, people now moving at home have to deal with childcare, have to deal with tutoring, have to deal with online learning, have to go out and take a walk, and we're really encouraging that balance.
I'm unbelievably pleased with how quickly we adapted and adjusted. I'm incredibly impressed with the team's ability, Rob can speak to how he's done that within his businesses, but how we've adapted to the environment in continuing to open and close cases. We did give some outlook on 2Q in terms of the things that we could see. Look, there's a lot of clouds out there. There's a lot of fog or whatever the right analogy is. We try to give forward guidance on the things that we could see, and we pause on guidance on things that we can't. We entered the year, and I'll end on this and throw it back to you to ask further questions, we entered the year with a balance sheet that was in fantastic shape, $900 million of excess capital.
We closed the quarter with 600 and a little of excess capital. We bought back $4.06 billion of shares. We've been positioning Voya through the transformation and now the closing of the life sale in the third quarter, to be really fit for a different kind of environment. No one wanted this thing to emerge, but we really are focused on retirement asset management and employee benefits. Think about workplace and financial institutions, capital light, 85%-95% free cash flow. Frankly, we are fully engaged and encouraged on closing the life transaction in 3Q, I don't think we could be in better shape than we are given the macro environment. I'll throw it back to you.
That's great. Great summary. Thank you, appreciate that. My first question here I want to kick off with here, both for you, Rod and Rob, is let's kind of put ourselves 12 months from now, and let's look back on the impact of COVID-19 and these macroeconomic challenges that are currently facing the life industry, the group benefits industry, all of the industries. Just what will the long-term implications be, do you think, as a result of what's going on right now? Then how is Voya Financial positioned to actually respond and take advantage of that situation?
I'll start and then throw it to Rob, and give him a few minutes to think here. Look, 12 months from now, we will have closed the life transaction, which is going to generate a billion and a half dollars of capital on top of the $600 million of excess capital we carry into 2Q. We generate 85%-95% free cash flow. Whether you have a defensive posture as a point of view of the macroeconomic environment or frankly, you're sensing or potentially seeing offensive opportunities, either way, we could not be better positioned. I'm an optimist by nature. I think opportunities will reveal themselves, and that could be in the form of further investing in our business, adding capabilities. It could be in the form of some limited M&A work.
Frankly, it could be also just continuing to be very aggressive purchasers of our stock and thinking about our capital management from a dividend perspective. I'd remind everyone that we have returned $6.4 billion of capital to shareholders since we've been public. We did $406 million in the first four months of this year. I think that track record speaks for itself in terms of our being good stewards of that capital. If you're from a school or a mindset that it's going to get really bad before it gets better, we've never been in better shape from a balance sheet and a liquidity position. If you think it's somewhere in the middle, milder in the middle, or more V-like or swoosh-like, depending on the analogy one wants to use, it's an opportunity for us to lean in.
I draw the analogy, we were born in the financial crisis, and went public seven years ago May. We know what that feels like and looks like. We were not playing offense at that. We were fighting for our life and fighting for the opportunity to be an independent public company. Exceedingly proud of what the team has done to do so. We're different today. We've chosen these businesses. We've exited the businesses with tail liabilities that operate less effectively in a low interest rate environment. We no longer have VA retail annuity. We will be out of the life insurance business, and we've never had long-term care, and we reinsure 100% of our long-term disability. I think we're purpose-fit for an environment that is much like we are in today. With that, I'll throw it to Rob.
Great. Thanks, Rod. Maybe I'll start with the 12 months from now. I think back to just 12 days ago in this environment, that feels like a long time, so 12 months feels like it may be a stretch too far a little bit. Sort of Rod's point, I think, I may use this chance to just talk a little bit about the EB and just as he's made very explicit decisions on what businesses to be in and where to double down versus get out. My business is a little bit different than your typical group benefit carrier. We're really focused in on the stop-loss business. Think, self-funded medical plans tend to be larger employer space that we play in.
Voluntary benefits, which is all about filling deductible gaps that occur with high deductible health plans, and then a life business, and then as Rod said, I'll just underscore it, we reinsure our disability block for the most part. I'm not talking about 12 other products that are very common for other carriers to have. For us, it has been the story of focus as well within the business. As we think about, again, that 12 months from now, the demand and what we do, I think just the need, is only going to be more so and even maybe more understood than it's been. How we deliver things and, ultimately how customers use the benefits we sell, I think is going to change and evolve.
This is an environment where we, even coming into it was commonly talked about having $400 of disposable funds to pay for whatever, whether it was medical or just have savings on hand. If this environment doesn't get people thinking different about how they save, how they spend, what they insure versus haven't had insurance for, I think we're going to do a lot of learning over the coming months, and we'll be well-positioned, demand's going to be in a good place. At a high level, I think I like those dynamics. Not it's easy sort of getting from here to there, I think that will serve us well.
The one other thing I'd just bring up, when you think about what's the lasting impact I think maybe one of the biggest issues that we see is just the furlough employment picture and how that plays itself out over the coming months, how long does a recovery take? It's something that you can't hide from, right? Even if you were really thoughtful and had this in your mindset as you were right in business. We've got a few thousand groups, we're going to be touched in some way. I think regional issues and different things, again, the pace of recovery, those are dynamics we're just going to fight through them. Those are things that we can fight through, and I'm very confident about that.
Great. Thank you. Mike?
Hey, thanks guys. Maybe while we're just on the topic of the current environment, just a question for probably both of you. We'd be curious on your thoughts on distribution of your products overall, and maybe any commentary on how they could be trending in 2Q to date to the extent that you're able. If there's any pressure, if it's demand-driven pressure, or is it the lack of personal interaction that we're all going through?
Yeah. I'll start, and then Rob will cover the group benefit business. Again, remind our listeners and watchers that we're fundamentally a B2B business. Think about, again, the retirement investment management and group benefit business. I mentioned when we began that in the month of April, we doubled the number of Zoom meetings that we had done in the previous three months to 6,000. It's been fabulous to observe and watch the adaptability both of our team, but frankly, the advisors and consultants and employers' willingness to conduct business in that way. We gave an outlook in 2Q as an example, and Mike, check me on this, Mike Katz, of recurring deposits in our retirement business of about $3 billion. Is that correct? We feel very comfortable with the guidance we gave on our earnings call as an example.
In terms of the new activity, RFP activity clearly has gone down. We talked about that on the earnings call. I would reaffirm that here. Interestingly, even though the number of RFPs have gone down, there is an amazing amount of new business activity in all market segments at this point, and something that is a bit surprising to us. We're very pleased with the outcome, but we wouldn't have anticipated it necessarily just given if you just wake up in the morning and watch whatever rotation of channels you would want to watch, you wouldn't necessarily have that conclusion. We've seen an increase in activity, just an example in our small mid space that has been candidly more than we saw in the same period last year.
Charlie mentioned on the earnings call, we had, and again, this is a data point and only a data point, so I'm not trying to overstate it, but we had more startup 401 plans in the early part of this year than we did a year ago, smack in the environment. We've certainly seen those trends continue. RFP numbers in aggregate have gone down. Some of that, and this is anecdotal, but some of that we think are if the advisor's trying to just kind of make a market or frankly, testing a market, maybe some of that has gone away. Many cases have plan requirements that mandate that they come to market on a periodic basis.
Those are happening, and we see that reflected both in the very largest of cases in multiple market segments, as well as across our small and middle markets. Rob, I'll throw it to you to speak to your piece. I'm sorry, and the same thing with investment management. I mentioned we just funded the largest single mandate, insurance-based mandate that we've ever had. We've continued to have a very robust. We did a CLO, European CLO in the first quarter. We've got a number of other funds that are funding in 2Q that would be a little counter to what perhaps people are thinking is happening in the marketplace. Rob?
Yeah. Thanks, Rod. I'll carry on the thematic part of this, I think, is we saw, and Rod mentioned this, the first part of the year is 80-ish% of our sales. On the one hand, you go, "Phew, that's good. I'm glad that was behind us and sort of on the books before things got too crazy." The flip side of it is, it still means there was $100 million+ to go get and find and continue to sell. As we think about the year and what we've seen thus far, activity coming in is, again, was really good. As we step through second quarter, we're ahead of the pace from a year ago from both a sales perspective, and then again, at this point in time, even RFPs are hanging in well.
I just remind the audience again, we tend to be a middle-market and up company. Think employers that have 500 employees and up. They're going to obviously be less disrupted, still disrupted, but less so than the downmarket side of things. The products we sell are group in nature. As you may hear from different competitors who have different distribution models and different product sets, where there's still a fair amount of belly button to belly button activity that they're trying to figure out their way through, via technology now, they're just more naturally going to get bigger disruption to deal with and work through. Again, kind of across the product set that we have, stop-loss is a business that goes to market every year.
It also is going to help in a time like this, continue to have people come into market and doing RFPs and those sorts of things. I feel pretty good about our pace of play there and how that will carry us forward, as we look at things and what we're seeing right now. On the voluntary benefit side, again, that's been a product that's really been on a strong growth path for us. We continue to see that as a long-term story that will play itself out, but it's going to be a relatively high growth part of the marketplace as more and more consumers, again, back to my point, they're going to understand they've got deductibles to pay and how do these products help fit in and provide an answer to that.
On the life and disability side, we've always talked about that as sort of a GDP-ish sort of business from a growth perspective. We're not trying to over club it. That's a business we like from a balance perspective, and we get to engage with a couple million, few million consumers every year, and an opportunity to broaden out the products that we sell from a cross-sell perspective. As we look at it, again, to Rod's point , we feel good about what we're seeing right now. There's a bunch of chapters to be written between now and then, but we're in a good place.
I think there's another theme, this is not new because of COVID, but I think it's going to be underscored as a result of COVID. Look, particularly in our retirement business and I think our other businesses, there's been generally a flight to quality. What I mean by that is who are the serious long-term players? Because the majority of our business is driven by advisors and consultants that are going to be, from their point of view as well as the financial institutions' point of view or the corporate entity point of view, one of the four, five, or six significant players committed to that segment in this industry and all of the required things that are necessary, the technology, the data security, et cetera, et cetera.
We have been benefiting from that for a period of time, and I think this kind of environment simply underscores that. We're not alone, and I want to be clear about that, but we are a net beneficiary, in terms of market share, one from both the top 10 as well as the bottom 50 in retirement as an example.
That's great. Thank you. Thank you very much, guys. Rob, just continuing on employee benefits for a second. Just thinking about kind of the outlook for claims as we're going forward. I know, you've mentioned kind of a normalization heading into the second quarter. Curious, what you would characterize as the drivers of that and maybe anything you can comment on some kind of sensitivities in a recession scenario and maybe, kind of what we should know about your business that makes it different than others in that kind of environment.
Yeah, sure. There's a lot in there, so if I miss pieces of it, you'll have to call me out on it. One of the things that we were trying to, I think, just appropriately thread the needle on is, and it's been alluded to here, some things we can see pretty clearly and the claims side of things is going to be a bit bigger unknown to us. We tried to frame out, assuming 100,000 at best, how does that sort of impact our book of business given our mix is again, different with life insurance being the biggest driver and then the voluntary benefits a driver but not nearly as excuse me, as material just because the claim sizes of those benefits and products is relatively tiny. So it's sort of a frequency question, but the claims are not large.
It's just going to have a tighter range to it. As we thought about it, and we sort of sizes a $25 million-$55 million impact over a 12-month period of time, which isn't implying all that stuff happens this year. It's a 12-month sort of period of time that we were looking through. Then we tried to, excuse me, give our better guidance on what we thought would happen for the second quarter. We came in, first quarter was tremendously strong from a loss ratio perspective. Obviously, that was before things really heated up around COVID. We saw really good results across all our products. Generally in life insurance, you'd sort of see a hot first quarter, and then it would moderate from here. We actually had a really strong life quarter as well.
As we look at what happened, our view of what happens, I mean, it's noise to get through, but it's no capital event for the company. We'll come through it. We'll work through it. The market will calibrate to what we're seeing. Again, long term, these are products that we get to think about repricing and looking at the risk and what we've experienced for sure. Then with stop-loss, I just sort of knock onto that product. You may think, well, okay, medical related product, it's going to have noise there. We, again, play in the larger end of the marketplace, so we have higher deductibles at the individual participant level than a lot of companies might.
We don't play down market, so the deductibles are going to be more like $200,000, $300,000. They may get hit here and there from a COVID perspective, but it's going to really be on the edges of that business that we would see impact and noise. Net-net, we feel good about it. What we've seen thus far, we alluded to, I think Mike answered the question on the call, as we looked at what happened at first quarter and where we were at the point of the call, we've literally had $1 million of claims related to COVID. It's nothing to ignore, but it's also nothing that we worry about the long-term impact. We'll see how it plays out from here. As we sit here right now, we think our product positioning is good.
Juxtaposed to other companies, you're going to see this play itself out from big disability players, both from a claim perspective, but also just, again, we alluded to the interest rate environment and where rates are at now. Obviously, you're going to think about using a lower rate than you were before, and that's going to have an impact both on a pricing perspective and case retention perspective. Those things, again, they'll play out over time. That would be one area where I think there's more to unfold. Behavior is a big part of the disability business, and obviously people have had a lot of things change on them, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as we move forward.
Hey, Rob. We do not retain any long-term disability exposure.
Yeah.
That's great.
As Rob just talked about, it still is early. Even though the deaths in aggregate in the U.S. are climbing, our numbers are still relatively small, which again, doesn't mean that's a trend. That's part of why we gave that guidance and part of why we said we need to just measure this and see what emerges. Both in Rob's business, as you just summarized, but co-equally in our life business, it's been relatively small to date, and that's why we said, "Here are the numbers, here's what you can model, and stay tuned because we just need to see how that reveals itself in our particular book of business, in the geographies we do business with, and frankly, who our insureds happen to be or not be as it relates to some of those tragic outcomes.
Yeah. Hey, Rob, this is Brian. Just quickly follow on that. Is there perhaps a benefit here you actually see in the near term on some of the medical stop-loss, just from the perspective that you were hearing that procedures and other things are actually being pushed off here to focus more on some of the COVID-19 stuff? Having covered the P&C industry, some of that COVID-19 could actually be workers' comp claims and other things that wouldn't necessarily hit a medical stop-loss program. Are you seeing any slowdown in frequency, at least in the interim?
No, that's a great question. This a little bit morbid topic, but we even just think about organ replacements, and people are out driving less, accidents happening less, all those sorts of things. There's kind of a supply thing that is going on. Again, a morbid topic here for the morning. There may be, but, just to put context around it, if we think about 1,000 life group, and again, we play higher deductible part of the marketplace, we may have five realized claims within that 1,000 lives.
Is there one more? Is there one less? It matters. It tends to be a bit of a barbell business where cases run extremely well, and then you're going to have a few that run extremely poorly. It's about the balance of the book of business. Any one case or even any one segment or part of the country, you can have noise, and you got 800 other cases that may be running extremely well. We think really hard about the aspect of running the block, and how we manage that business and focus on the renewals. I think for us, it's been a great story over the last few years because we've been moving the pricing in the ways that we wanted to see it.
Back to your question, though, again, there could be things on the edges, but it'll be a story that plays out over time.
If I could just follow up on that in terms of your, I think in the way that you asked the question in terms of opportunity, we touched on it earlier, but just to underscore something. The voluntary benefits has been one of our fastest growing segments for us and others. We've been doing particularly well. Half of the new coverage that we put in place last year, as an example, was brand-new coverage to the marketplace, and this was both in the Fortune 50 as well as all through the various segments that we do business in. This is a moment where the utilization of those products, and again, there's limited exposure that one has, but they do serve an absolutely critically important purpose.
We are looking for ways to make sure people that have the cover with us understand and receive the benefits that they should and need to receive in a very timely fashion, because the awareness of this and the fact that they see that it's been utilized and they have a benefit from that, there's going to be a residual benefit that's huge. If I can just go back a decade in my experience through another pandemic, which was SARS, in another geography, which was Asia, exactly the same thing happened.
Sure.
Although not perfect analogies, the awareness of the product from a consumer perspective, in this case, the employee perspective in terms of voluntary benefits, I think there's a heightened opportunity for those that are in this business in a way as well.
Makes sense. Let me hit one other one here. Rod, you mentioned that there's a flight to quality going on in the industry right now. Clearly, you're a beneficiary here as other companies. I'm wondering if that presents some interesting opportunities for M&A. You've got some cash coming in here pretty soon. What can we think about as far as, are there areas that you would be interested in and kind of bolt-ons, areas you could potentially grow through inorganic activities?
Yeah. We're going to answer this very consistently as we have previously. When we've been asked the M&A question, we've given some examples of things that we would consider, and then I would point you to what we covered at our last Investor Day. We have a pretty high threshold of, it needs to be in very similar ZIP code to our share buyback from a return perspective. In terms of what that might be, the examples we've given across a couple of the different business groups that we're in retirement, think of if a block of business became available, would we consider looking at that block of business to add to our scale? We would do that. We have done that in the past. We haven't bought one. Would we do that? If it made economic sense, we would consider that.
We've talked about extending our distribution reach with some of the existing capabilities within our investment management firm. We've begun to do, not simply because of this current environment, over the last three or four years, a significant amount of business with the existing domestic strategies in Asia, specifically in Japan, Korea. If we could cobble together, which is much more easily said than done, a distribution arrangement that could help accelerate that would be a consideration. Then again, in the employee benefit business, I think anything adjacent, we see our focus on workplace and financial institutions. Things that fit that description would be something that we would absolutely consider. That might be adding capabilities from a technology perspective. It could be adding lift and move teams that could be useful. It could be, again, a block of business.
Makes sense. Thanks. Mike?
Stay tuned.
Thanks, guys. I was curious if we could touch on some of your kind of ESG-oriented programs and special needs-focused programs. I didn't fully appreciate it personally until you and the team explained it in a little bit more detail. I thought it could be helpful for some clients who may not understand the actual benefits of fully integrating this strategy into your business and culture. Because my understanding is, in some cases, it can be a differentiating factor that maybe gets you a business win, and just maybe if that's helping in this environment, too.
It has been helping, I think it's even going to underscore maybe more vividly through this environment. Let me share a couple of different ways. Thank you for asking the question. Just on the ESG piece. Barron's is one of the firms that kind of rates and ranks over the last three years the top 100 in the U.S. Just by way of example, three years ago, which was the first time they did it, we were 46th. We were pleased. Two years ago, we were sixth and the highest-ranked financial services company in the U.S., and this last year, third, and again, the highest-ranked financial services company. Now, this has been a very purposeful decision that didn't happen overnight.
When we went public, among other things, in terms of vision, value, culture that we wanted to create, we knew this would emerge, and it has, through the RFP activity, increasingly as things that are important to customers and, meaning the institutional customer and frankly, the individual participant. It's been that way in a more aggressive way in Europe, in certain parts of Asia, but it has arrived in the U.S. One of the things that you hear is we've screened well with this, and it's not something that is just a check-the-box activity. I mean, this is an ever-increasing bar. We are aspiring to make sure we're continuing to develop this, I would say this is very much part of our both aspiration and DNA as we go forward to do this. Here's how it manifests itself.
I mean, look, when you narrow down and whether it's Rob's business or our investment management business or retirement, you're going to start with four or five very fine carriers, and ultimately you get down to two, and they're going to be awfully close in many things that are just necessary things to compete. Think about data and digital. Think about data privacy and security. Brand matters. At some point you want to, at least in our view, we want to start to de-commoditize that decision. Remember, you're presenting to a committee of advisors and frankly, typically a committee of folks within the business. We talk about a number of things, one of which is ESG. Another one is special needs. I mean, this was something we did very, very early on, and we first focused just on our own company, meaning our own employees.
Most of you know, one in five families in the U.S. has someone with a special need or a part of a caregiving group. We had a big, bold aspiration when we went public to be recognized over time as America's retirement company. Well, it became very self-evident that if we were going to focus on being that authentically, we couldn't just focus on the four of the five families that didn't have those issues. Most of our industry, it's just a candid statement, and Voya was similar prior to our focus on this Simply don't serve that community as well as we could or should. We started focus being a resource. People just unintentionally filling out a beneficiary arrangement incorrectly could disqualify their family from benefits that are otherwise provided. Candidly, the federal and state governments don't make it easy.
What we've tried to do is be a resource for that. When you start to share these things, whether it's our focus on special needs or ESG or diversity and inclusion, we had an aspiration when we went public as ING Group sold their interest down, and we could begin to appoint our independent board, that we wanted to get to parity on our board, men and women, as fast as we could. We did that in two and a half years, and we've been at parity for some period of time. We've got an eight-person independent board, four men and four women. Three of the five committees of our board are chaired by women, and that has cascaded down through our organization. Here's what you start to see.
You start to see people starting to nod, and one never knows fully, are they nodding on the special needs issue? Are they nodding on the ESG issue? Are they nodding on the Voya Cares issue? They're all human, and most of them can relate to these issues, and they're more or less important depending on their facts and circumstances. What we're finding increasingly is this is what is helping break the tie. Because you get down to two really good companies. You can't make a bad choice. How the heck do you differentiate from there? We're finding that this is something that's accelerating. With this, I'll throw it to Rob to add any dimension to it.
No, I think Rod gave you a lot there of the story behind it. I think when you look at the different businesses and how does that play out in decision making, look, you're trying to connect with people that are making a decision, right? Some of that is going to be math and decimal points, and some of that's going to be how do they feel? How do you make them feel? I think you can look across all the business segments, and see that Voya's done a good job creating a space in the marketplace and a brand that in a relatively short amount of time, even though you hear retirement a lot, the folks in my business see a different reception in the marketplace now just to the Voya name and how people think about us as a company.
Those things aren't easily won, but they can be easily lost. Certainly through Rod's leadership and the board's leadership, we're living what we're talking about here every day, and it shows up in the market.
I'll give you one other just very tangible example, and I'll do this briefly because I know there's a lot we want to get through. It was about a year ago, Mike, but check me on this, that we did a program at the stock exchange, and it was with Accenture, ourselves, the stock exchange, and I think NDSS, but focused on the special needs community, or Disability:IN, I think was the group. One of the things that he said at the meeting was that he was intending to, and subsequently has, written a letter to the top 50 companies in the U.S. that want access to the New York State pension system. And what he said was, "Here's what we expect prospectively.
That you're focused on and have a diverse and inclusive culture and company. That you're focused on people with special needs and with disabilities. And it's okay if you don't, you just won't have access to our pension assets." This is gaining momentum. DiNapoli, we were fortunate enough to be there. DiNapoli was actually using Voya as an example of what good looks like. I'm not saying we're the only one. That isn't my point. Since then, the Comptroller of Connecticut has done this and others, and I think you're going to see an increasing momentum where the bar is simply set higher. So it's one thing to say you're doing this, it's another thing to measure it. Candidly, if those are assets that you're seeking and this is the attitude they have, which I think will increasingly be there, it's important.
It needs to be authentic, and it's something we're heavily leaning into and have been for some period of time. Back to you.
That's great.
Yeah. That's great. We just have one final question here. Wrapping it up, Voya's been one of the better performing stocks in the sector in 2019 and even through 2020 so far, despite the environment. Just curious where you may think of what you might think of doing next once this all settles down. I know it's taken a lot of time and effort to make some of the changes to strategy and dispositions, but maybe just longer term strategy thinking, what you're thinking.
We introduced our most recent strategy and three-year plan on the Investor Day, November of 2018. We're exactly halfway through that three-year plan. It won't surprise those on the call that not only are we focused keenly on executing what we said we would do in 2019, 2020, and 2021. By the way, we hit all of those targets in 2019. We are coequally leaning into the next iteration, which would be the 2022, 2023, and 2024 plan. Rob Grubka and Mike Katz and Blake Smith and our entire team are very much leaning into that, and we're literally working on that as we speak. We're as close to introducing the next version as we are right now from a time and calendar perspective as we were from when we did the last one. Time flies. Stay tuned.
We are working on it. It may or may not surprise you all that even in this environment, we're spending a considerable amount of time on that activity, which is why we're so bullish about our future. In fact, the board meeting we just ended a week ago, which was our first virtual board meeting, half of the board meeting was dedicated to the early thinking of what 2022, 2023, and 2024 look like. I can tell you, it's something about leaning in and playing offense versus simply surviving through this period. Not that that's an unimportant activity. We're focused on doing that naturally. I would go back to the enviable position that we entered the year from a capital perspective, from the decisions we've made on the portfolio, and how we're executing against that.
Great. Thank you, Rod, Rob, Mike. Thank you so much for participating this day. Some great discussion here. With that, I think we're going to wrap it up here and stay safe, stay healthy, everybody.
Thank you, everyone. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Thank you.