SPP’s Shannan Corey — “we get to impact individual members’ lives”

Recently, Shannan Corey, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan’s Executive Director, was interviewed by Benefits Canada magazine.

The article speaks to Shannan’s back story — her father was an actuary, the magazine reports, and “after earning her mathematics degree at the University of Saskatchewan, she became an associate actuary, spending a few years in consulting with a focus on pensions,” the article continues.

“What resonated with me from a young age was how you got to impact people’s lives. I saw the impact on individuals and on employers being able to [improve recruitment and retention] by offering a pension and it just felt like a strong connection for me,” Shannan tells Benefits Canada.

After her time as a consultant, Shannan “spent some time working in total rewards in the private sector,” the article notes. She later became a chartered professional in HR, the magazine reports, before a move to the public sector, the article adds — and in 2021 she joined SPP as its Executive Director.

“I feel like I’ve gotten to see many different avenues and I keep gravitating back towards that member perspective. So that’s why I ended up with the Saskatchewan Pension Plan. We get to impact individual members’ lives, not just in Saskatchewan, but for anyone across Canada who can join our plan. That really resonates with my personal value system,” Shannan states in the article.

Her role at SPP involves “overseeing the entire pension program, facilitating digital transformation and keeping the operations teams running,” Benefits Canada reports.

“The SPP is very regulated so there’s a lot of compliance. There’s no other plan like ours in the world, as far as I know, so we have a very unique and complicated governance structure. We spend a lot of time on governance regulations. Thinking about changing our products requires a lengthy foundation setting with the regulators in order to move towards changes. So that’s a big part of what I do,” she states in the Benefits Canada article.

Another key duty for Shannan, the magazine continues, is overseeing “business development and marketing, which is unique department to the SPP because it’s a voluntary plan and it actively recruits members,” the article notes.

Our former Executive Director Katherine Strutt is also quoted in the article.

“I noticed right away Shannan was a quick study, so that allowed her to do what she needed to take over in the brief timeframe,” says Katherine. “She’s very qualified and brings a wealth of experience to the position. And I’m grateful the board chose such a qualified individual to take over the SPP,” states Katherine, who was with SPP since 1990 before retiring a couple of years ago.

The article remarks on the fact that we are seeing more women in leading roles in the pension industry these days than in the “male-dominated” past.

“It certainly wasn’t a traditional field for women when I started out. I was fortunate to have great mentors and I think that’s key. Switch to today, the SPP has a primarily female workforce. I think it’s a great privilege and an important responsibility for me to hopefully continue with mentoring women and all the staff here,” Shannan tells Benefits Canada.

SPP has been helping Canadians save for retirement for more than 35 years. As the article notes, SPP is a voluntary plan — any Canadian with unused registered retirement savings plan room can choose to become a member. And once you do, SPP becomes a do-it-yourself retirement program, offering professional, pooled investing at a very low cost. At retirement, SPP will help turn your savings into income — including the possibility of a lifetime monthly annuity payment. Check out SPP today!

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The Saskatchewan Pension Plan is making its Variable Benefit retirement option – previously available only to Saskatchewan residents – available to all members across the country.

This great news – which delivers more flexibility for retirees – was announced via this media release.

With the Variable Benefit, retiring members can choose to leave their savings with SPP, where they will continue to be invested, and can decide how much money they want to receive from SPP, and when. And as well, members can still consolidate their unlocked savings from other registered retirement savings within SPP even after they select the VB option.

“SPP has always been committed to giving members control of their retirement savings – both

in how they contribute and how they choose to collect once it’s time to retire,” says Shannan

Corey, Executive Director. “Until now, legislation has limited the choices members outside of

Saskatchewan had for collecting their pension funds. We’re excited that we can now extend that freedom of choice to all of our members, regardless of where they choose to live.”

The option has been very popular with Saskatchewan SPP members, says Shannan.

“Members outside of Saskatchewan have been asking for the Variable Benefit for some time,” she says. “Until recently, legislation meant that wasn’t possible. They had to either choose an

SPP Annuity or switch their money to a financial institution. Now, members who live all across

Canada have access to the flexibility of a Variable Benefit.”

The removal of interprovincial barriers for the Variable Benefit is the latest major SPP improvement in recent months. Earlier, SPP removed pre-existing limits on how much members can contribute to SPP each year, and on how much they can transfer into SPP from an unlocked registered plan.

“We’ve made significant changes to SPP this year in order to make the plan as flexible and

beneficial for our members as possible,” Shannan says. “For a plan with almost 40 years of history, we’re constantly searching for ways to evolve to better serve our members. Everyone’s situation is different; how much they’ve saved and how they want to spend their retirement. This is just one more way we can help them live the retired life they’ve always dreamed of.”

For further details about the SPP and the Variable Benefit option, please visit.

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To say that the Saskatchewan Pension Plan’s new Executive Director has deep roots in pensions is certainly no understatement.

Shannan Corey, who grew up in rural Saskatchewan, is the daughter of an actuary, one whose clients included not only pension plans, but chicken farmers. “They used to call my dad the chicken actuary,” she says with a smile.

That prairie upbringing is reflected in her values today. “My parents instilled the importance of community, and establishing roots, from a young age,” she tells Save with SPP. And while still a student, she worked with her dad’s actuarial firm, Alexander and Alexander, now part of the Aon group. She completed a Mathematics degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

Her father did some work on the SPP file many years ago, and she got to meet SPP’s outgoing Executive Director Kathy Strutt way back when. “So I have a very early connection with the plan,” she says.

Over the course of her career as an associate actuary she has consulted “for a broad range of clients of all sizes and types,” has helped shape some of Saskatchewan’s pension laws and regulations, and worked on client communications, retirement planning, and more.

Her more recent roles included broader consulting with Koenig & Associates, where she earned a Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR) designation, and Federated Co-operatives Limited, where she further developed “my passion for member services.” She has also served as a Board member for the CSS Pension Plan– a plan that is, like SPP, a defined contribution plan – and is now looking forward to her new role at SPP.

Corey says that while we have of late been living through the “challenging time” of the pandemic, SPP members can feel secure – and can rely on – their SPP pensions.

She says she expects a positive future for SPP, thanks “the collective experience of the team, and their human touch.”

The group at SPP has been successful in building a solid foundation for the organization, and “the ability to continue to evolve and grow.” Services for members will no doubt continue to grow and expand as SPP moves forward, she says.

The fact that SPP is a voluntary plan – one that members choose to join – is part of the reason it is so unique, she explains. SPP is a plan for the “everyday” people, and a non-profit organization as well. Its features, such as the use of pooling contributions to keep investment costs down, and the new Variable Benefit, show the plan continues to be an innovator.

She praises the SPP team’s “collective experiences,” and say it will be leveraging that talent that will “help the organization grow and thrive.” SPP has a warm feel to its organization, and Corey says she feels “like I’m coming home.”

The organization not only concerns itself with the retirement security of its members, but with their general knowledge about money, she notes. Building financial literacy, she says, not only provides an opportunity to help people, “it also aligns with me personally, and my community and my values.”

We join the entire SPP team in welcoming Shannan Corey to her new role.

When SPP was founded 35 years ago, it was intended to provide the possibility of a pension to farm wives and homemakers who didn’t otherwise have access to retirement benefits. Since then the SPP has opened its doors to anyone who wants to augment their retirement savings via a voluntary defined contribution pension plan. Find out how SPP can help secure your retirement future!

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