Good morning, and welcome to the Voya Financial 2017 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Rod Martin, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's 11:00 A.M. Eastern Time on Thursday, May 25th, 2017. I now call the meeting to order. I'm Rod Martin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Voya Financial. On behalf of our directors, officers, and employees, I thank you for attending our fourth annual meeting. Following the official items of business, I'll provide a brief presentation and then take any questions. Now I will turn it over to our Corporate Secretary, Eileen A. McCarthy, for the formal business of the meeting. Eileen?
Thanks, Rod, and good morning, everyone. I would first like to make a few introductions. We're happy to have with us members of our board of directors. We also have in attendance members of our executive committee and representatives from our auditor, Ernst & Young. Also attending is Philip Meyer, the designated Inspector of Elections. Mr. Meyer has filed with me his oath as inspector and has provided me with his duly executed certificate of quorum . As is our custom, we will answer any questions at the end of the meeting. Please know that stockholders who desire to ask any questions may do so in writing by using the web portal provided. Only stockholders will be permitted to present questions. You must have your control number to do so. With that, we will now begin the official business for this annual meeting.
As indicated in our proxy statement, we're here today to consider the following items: the election of the 10 directors who make up our board of directors, an advisory vote on the approval of executive compensation, and a vote to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young as the company's auditors for 2017. At this time, if you have logged into the meeting with your control number and would like to make a comment or raise a question regarding any of the proposals, please submit your comments or questions through the web portal. We will now declare the polls open. The vote will now be taken on the foregoing three matters. If there are any stockholders logged on who have not already submitted a proxy and wish to vote their shares, you may do so now by clicking on the Vote Here button on your screen.
If you have previously provided your proxy card or voted online, your shares will be voted accordingly. If you wish to change your vote, you may do so now. We will now pause to allow stockholders to vote. The polls for voting on all matters are hereby closed. I have the report from the Inspector of Elections on the votes cast. The preliminary report is as follows. As to the election of directors, each director nominee received over 96% of the votes cast, and as such, each of the 10 director nominees is hereby elected. As to the second matter, over 94% of the votes were cast in favor of approving, on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers. As to the third matter, over 98% of the votes were cast to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young as the company's auditor for 2017.
Full voting results will be reported by the company on a Form 8-K filed with the SEC within the next four business days. Before our Chairman and CEO, Rod Martin, provides a business update and takes your questions, I would like to remind everyone that statements made today which are not historical or current facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements reflect management's current expectations or beliefs. We call to your attention the fact that the company's actual results could differ from these statements. The company has filed with the SEC reports that list some of the factors that may cause results to differ materially from these statements. We assume no duty to update these forward-looking statements. Please also note that we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures.
In particular, all references on this call to ROE, return on equity, ROC, return on capital, or other measures containing those terms are to ongoing business adjusted operating return on equity or return on capital, which are each non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these items to the most comparable GAAP measure, please refer to our most recent investor supplement available on our investor relations website. With that, I turn it back to our Chairman and CEO, Rod Martin.
Thank you, Eileen. Today, I will cover a brief overview of Voya Financial, our achievements over the past few years, and our progress toward reaching our 2018 financial targets. As noted on the slide, I'll be talking about some non-GAAP measures and some forward-looking information. Voya has strong, diversified businesses that enable us to help Americans plan, invest, and protect their savings to get ready to retire better. Our mission is to make a secure financial future possible, one person, one family, and one institution at a time. Our vision is to be America's retirement company. Voya has a broad distribution reach and significant scale. Our businesses hold market-leading positions, making us a top-tier provider in many markets. We have 13.6 million customers, $505 billion in total assets under management and administration, and 6,700 employees.
For the 12 months ended March 31st, 2017, we generated $1.2 billion of operating earnings before income taxes. Not pictured here is our closed block variable annuity segment. Our primary focus for our CBVA segment is to protect regulatory and rating agency capital. We have also successfully reduced the size of and the risk associated with the block. For example, we have accelerated a cumulative runoff of $2.7 billion through four enhanced annuitization offers and an enhanced surrender offer. We have, and continue to, improve our financial performance, drive greater returns in our businesses, and deliver shareholder value. We are executing on specific initiatives to reach our 2018 financial targets. 2017 is off to a very good start, as demonstrated by reaching our ROE to a record 13.2% for the trailing 12 months ended March 31st, and our ROC improved to 10.8%.
Our higher returns over the past 12 months reflect profitable growth in our businesses, improved capital efficiency, and prepayments in alternative investment income above our long-term expectations. Beginning in 2015, we embarked on a $350 million strategic investment program. This effort, which will conclude in 2018, will enable us to consolidate our IT platforms and create an improved customer experience, migrate to a cloud-based environment, which will speed our time to market, and digitize a number of our processes to reduce cost, deliver better outcomes for our customers, and enhance growth. We are also continuing our efforts to simplify and to achieve at least $100 million in cost savings in 2018. We are confident that our strong focus on execution will enable us to achieve our 2018 ROE target of 13.5%-14.5%.
As I noted a moment ago, we're making investments in our business to help us grow and achieve our 2018 financial targets. As you can see, these investments are delivering results as our growth in 2017 has been off to a very good start. Our results reflect our success in expanding distribution and enhancing our product portfolio. We will continue to execute on our plans to grow, as well as improve capital efficiency and margins to achieve our 2018 financial targets. Voya also continues to have tremendous financial strength, including a low debt-to-capital ratio and $949 million of excess capital. Through the first quarter 2017, we continued to return capital to our shareholders. Since 2014, we have returned approximately $3.2 billion through share repurchases and reduced our shares outstanding by roughly 30%. We had $436 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization as of March 31st.
Share buybacks, combined with the investment in Voya's future growth, demonstrate our commitment to driving shareholder value. The actions we have taken over the past several years have enabled us to achieve a number of recognitions for the financial, operational, and cultural improvements we've made. Most recently, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the Ethisphere Institute for the fourth consecutive year. This was the latest recognition that Voya has received. There are many other recognitions noted on the slide that demonstrate our focus on building a strong culture and that acknowledge the strengths within our businesses. Moving ahead, we will maintain our focus on the execution of our plans. We will leverage the improvements we've made and build upon our strong financial foundation, and we'll strive to achieve our vision to be America's retirement company.
With that, I'll turn it back over to Eileen so we can take any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Rod Martin. At this time, we will be happy to answer any questions and address any concerns. We will now pause to see if there are any questions. We see there are no questions. On behalf of the board and management of Voya Financial, I would like to thank you for participating in our annual meeting. The meeting is hereby adjourned.