Like most western countries, the level of pension savings in Canada is a major issue for the government, and increased life longevity is driving concerns about how Canada can provide for its senior citizens in the future.
For employers that are trying to help their employees prepare for retirement, the challenge has always been finding ways to craft a program that is efficient, affordable, sustainable, reliable and attractive to participants.
Watch this video With DC plans, there’s no guarantee that members will end up with a sufficient retirement income at the end, warns Michelle Loder, Canadian DC business leader with Towers Watson Canada Inc. However, monitoring the plan’s performance—not necessarily based on a retirement benefit adequacy promise but rather on how plan members will fare […]
The number of U.S. employees using auto-enrollment features for their benefits plans has more than doubled since 2005, reports the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. According to Guardian’s study, 62% of workers now enrol online for their employee benefits, compared with only 29% in 2005. In the past year alone, the use of online […]
Some insurance companies now provide online claiming for non-drug benefits (electronic adjudication of drug claims has been around for years). But how has this increase in online claiming affected—positively or negatively—group insurance fraud? What impact has this new claiming channel had upon the “misuse, abuse and overuse of benefits?” Unfortunately, fraudulent activities continue to thrive. […]
If you want to reduce benefits costs and get the best ROI from your employee wellness program, implement participation incentives and automation. That’s the finding from a study by bswift, a U.S. software provider for employee benefits administration. The report, 2011 Wellness and Benefits Administration Benchmarking Study, surveyed 150 companies, and found that of those […]
There has been tremendous focus in recent years on advancements in insurer technology in areas such as employee self-service, online reporting, e-claims and Web-based administration systems. For an industry that has historically been slow to embrace technology, there has now been a significant amount of catch-up in the last three to five years. But are […]
American employers are doing more to engage their pension plan members. According to research by U.S.-based financial services provider Charles Schwab, 81% of U.S. employers are now offering 401(k) advice for plan participants, compared to just 42% in 2005. Other significant findings include: 70% of employers include target date funds in their fund line-ups, compared […]
Watch this video A recent trend in DC plans is to go on “auto-pilot,” says Alain Malaket, senior director of pensions and benefits with George Weston Ltd./Loblaw Companies Ltd. Tools such as auto-enrollment, mandatory participation and auto-escalation are becoming increasingly popular. However, Malaket warns that these systems might need a boost from additional programs such […]
Defined contribution (DC) plan members who utilized automatic features such as rebalancing and deferral increase during the recent market downturns realized average account balance increases of 26 percentage points to those who didn’t, according to Mercer. The findings are based on an analysis of Mercer’s database of 1.2 million DC plan participants, excluding any participants […]