The Ontario Medical Association is partnering with Common Wealth to offer its physician members and their spouses access to a retirement plan. The Advantages Retirement Plan, which will be rolled out later this year, is the result of more than two years of research on physician retirement readiness and input from OMA members. A survey conduced […]
Fee compression is putting pressure on providers that are seeking to be more innovative in launching new target-date funds, prompting managers to consider more customization, according to new research by Cerulli Associates. The fee compression challenge is bolstering certain trends among target-date managers, including blending passive and active strategies, as well as the push towards […]
The outsourced chief investment officer market is growing with low barriers to entry contributing to the number of players of all sizes in the space, according to research by U.S.-based institutional investment consulting firm Callan. In evaluating the work of an OCIO, plan sponsors and other institutional investors should go well beyond simply looking at investment results, noted the research. “While […]
Strong governance allowed the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan to find success in private markets, according to Julie Cays, the plan’s chief investment officer. Before the CAAT plan hired its first CIO in 2004, it was using an outsourced chief investment officer-type model — although it didn’t use this term at the […]
No risk, no reward. Like many things in life, investing inertia and fear are common, but they come with a cost. In the investment world, risk has a specific meaning: the probability of losses relative to the expected return on an investment. The key in this definition are the words ‘expected return.’ When it comes […]
Even 10 years after the financial crisis, many Canadian investors still don’t feel secure, according to a new survey by Natixis Investment Managers. More than half (59 per cent) of Canadian investors said they blame market volatility for undermining their ability to reach their savings and retirement goals. This compared to 53 per cent of U.S. respondents and 62 per […]
The basic advantages of passive investing are clear: it typically leads to lower fees, it reduces the chance of serious underperformance and investments are normally quite liquid, said Kurt Umbarger at the 2018 Defined Contribution Investment Forum in September. Of course, there are potential disadvantages, he acknowledged during his presentation at the event in Toronto. […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System are expressing their support for the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s proposal for a transaction fee pilot. In a letter to the SEC indicating their support, along with the support of several other Canadian and U.S. public plans, the funds argued that technical advancements and regulatory changes […]
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board posted a net annual return of 11.6 per cent as the end of its fiscal year on March 31, 2018. Adding $39.4 billion to its overall holdings, the fund now boasts $356.1 billion in assets under management. The increase included a $36.7-billion return after all expenses and $2.7 billion in […]
Whether plan sponsors expect a bear or a bull market in 2018, if they’re in a position to de-risk their pension plan, they should do it now, according to two investment consultants who spoke at an event in Toronto on Thursday. “From our perspective, if you look at the world over the last six years, […]