An article on the Ontario government’s review of preferred pharmacy networks was the most-read story on BenefitsCanada.com this past week. Here are the top five human resources, benefits, pension and investment stories of the last week: 1. Ontario reviewing impact of preferred pharmacy networks on plan members’ costs, accessibility 2. Canadian employers focusing on workers’ emotional well-being in […]
U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves met with some of Canada’s biggest public sector pension plans this month, as the country looks to reform its public pension system, according to a report by the Financial Times. Reeves is pursuing the creation of a pension model that would allow the U.K.’s local government pension scheme — worth about […]
U.S. institutional investors paid $1.5 billion in management fees in 2022, according to a new report by investment consulting firm Callan. The report, which analyzed mandates by more than 300 investment firms and more than 180 institutional investors, found 98 per cent of the total fees paid in 2022 went to active managers, up one per cent […]
Saskatchewan’s Public Employees Benefits Agency is transitioning to a not-for-profit corporation. The PEBA began pursuing the transition in 2021 at the request of the trustees of the two largest pension plans it administers — the Public Employees Pension Plan and the Municipal Employees Pension Plan. The not-for-profit will begin operations on Jan. 1, 2024 under the […]
The world’s 500 largest asset managers’ total discretionary assets under management increased by 10.2 per cent in 2021, reaching US$131.7 trillion, according to a new report by WTW’s Thinking Ahead Institute. It found North American AUM accounted for more than half (59.9 per cent) of AUM in the top 500 managers, garnering $78.9 trillion by […]
Almost two-thirds (62 per cent) of U.S. defined benefit plan sponsors are seeking to exit their plans, while 33 per cent are looking to achieve self-sufficiency and just five per cent are planning to keep their plans open, according to a survey by State Street Corp. Among DB plan sponsors eyeing an exit, the survey […]
Nearly half (44 per cent) of pension plan sponsors in the U.S. said they intend to review and/or renegotiate their plan’s management fees over the next one to two years, whether it’s custody fees (27 per cent) or investment management fees (17 per cent), according to a survey by consulting firm Callan. The survey, which […]
Anyone flipping through a prospectus for an employer’s defined contribution pension plan or group registered retirement savings plan will notice a recurring theme when it comes to statements on investment fees: “Better than retail!” they might as well scream. It’s a familiar refrain from both capital accumulation plan sponsors and providers trumpeting the lower rates […]
My last column, in April, talked about how Canadian target-date fund suites behaved differently during the first quarter of this year, where markets were reacting to the coronavirus crisis. The disparity of year-to-date returns continued in the following months. For some capital accumulation plan sponsors, the behaviour of their plans’ TDFs over recent volatile market […]
The current market environment has the potential for long-term effects on the defined benefit pension investment industry, according to a new report by Cerulli Associates. Broadly, investment consultants said they’ve been preparing their DB pension plan sponsor clients for a potential downturn for up to two years, noted the report. And, as plans have begun […]