When Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for public sector pension plan obligations, these institutions must spell that out clearly in their financial reporting, according to a new paper by the C.D. Howe Institute. “Reporting of pension costs as they accrue and net obligations at a point in time is tricky,” wrote William Robson, the organization’s chief […]
Brink’s Canada Ltd. is the latest employer to join the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan’s DBplus offering. Represented by Unifor, 582 full- and part-time workers from Ontario and 175 from British Columbia officially became part of the plan on July 1, 2020. “We are delighted to welcome Brink’s and its employees from Ontario […]
The Halifax Port ILA/HEA pension plan has appointed Blair Richards as its chief investment officer. After more than 20 years as chief executive officer, he started the new role on July 1 and is under contract until Dec. 31, 2023. David Cranston, an internal hire, took over as CEO. Richards began working on the Halifax […]
Firefighters, administrative and infrastructure maintenance personnel at the Saint John Airport are among the newest members to join the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan’s DBplus. As part of a new collective agreement that was ratified earlier this year, the employees, who are represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada, have joined […]
Canada’s 11 largest pension funds should be able to maintain their current credit ratings through ongoing market turmoil, according to Fitch Ratings Inc. Nevertheless, return expectations are under significant pressure from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, said the ratings agency in a new report. “Fund performance will depend on asset mix, which is largely […]
The coronavirus crisis may be a signal for some pension plan sponsors that it’s time to revisit their appetite for risk. A typical asset-liability study involves stochastic modelling to project thousands of future economic scenarios and see how a pension plan would react under those scenarios, says Dean Newell, vice-president at Actuarial Solutions Inc. Particularly, the […]
As private equity investments become all the more commonplace in pension fund portfolios, is the asset class really worth it? According to a paper by Ludovic Phalippou, professor of financial economics at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, private equity funds have failed to outperform equities over a 10-year period. But the real catch is […]
New draft regulations from the federal government would allow registered pension plans to borrow money and extend the deadline to retroactively credit pensionable service under a defined benefit plan in a bid to help plan sponsors maintain their pensions through the coronavirus pandemic. As part of the government’s coronavirus economic response plan, the regulations would apply to employers […]
In the second quarter of 2020, the funded positions of defined benefit plans recovered almost half of the losses incurred during the coronavirus crash of the first quarter, according to Mercer’s pension health index. The index, which represents the solvency ratio of a hypothetical DB pension plan, increased to 101 per cent at the end […]
Nova Scotia’s Public Service Superannuation Plan reported a 98.5 per cent funded status as of Dec. 31, 2019 and said it will halt cost-of-living adjustments for retirees for the next five years. According to the plan’s 2020 funded health review, its funding policy prohibits indexing when the PSSP’s funded status is below 100 per cent. However, the Public Service Superannuation […]