While a national pharmacare program is yet to be revealed by the federal government, any future plan should contain provisions for all costly treatments and not just rare diseases, says Jennifer Schmidt, a principal at Mercer Canada. Read: Federal budget highlights national childcare system, extension of pandemic subsidies This week’s federal budget announcement contained only […]
As Canada’s pension landscape has evolved over the past 45 years, Michel St-Germain has been helping plan sponsors navigate it all. St-Germain, who is currently president of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, retired as a partner from Mercer in June 2020 after first joining the organization on Jan. 1, 1975. When looking back at his […]
The funded positions of Canadian defined benefit pension plans continued to recover in the third quarter of 2020, but major risks lie ahead, according to both Mercer Canada’s latest pension health index and Aon’s latest median solvency ratio survey. Mercer’s index, which represents the solvency ratio of a hypothetical DB pension plan, increased from 101 […]
While factor behaviour tends to be consistent in market crashes and corrections, individual factor performance varies over the medium term. As such, institutional investors should maintain diversified exposure across key equity factors including value, quality, momentum, size and low volatility, according to a new paper by Mercer. The paper explored the past three financial crises: […]
With a rough 2020 year-to-date, value investing’s recent poor performance follows over a decade of underperformance, leaving many to ask if it’s still relevant, according to a new white paper by Mercer. Between 1927 and 2008, the average annual value premium was 5.5 per cent, but since then results have been lacklustre. In the 2010s, […]
West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. isn’t annuitizing multiple defined benefit plans to get out of the pension business. In fact, the British Columbia-based integrated wood products company is committed to DB. “We believe we get tremendous value out of our DB plans around recruitment and definitely around retention of our employees,” says Elaine Jensen, the […]
Mercer Canada has appointed Rachel Volynsky as its new chief investment officer. In the new role, Volynsky will be leading Mercer’s outsourced chief investment officer team in Canada. With more than 20 years of capital allocation experience, she has held several senior roles with major investment firms in Canada and the United States, including SEI […]
Mercer Canada has appointed Bernard Mercier as partner and wealth business leader for its Vancouver division. He’ll be responsible for service offerings as well as leading the pension and investment team. With more than 30 years’ experience in retirement consulting, business development and leadership, Mercier has expertise directing plan and corporate mergers, acquisitions and divestitures […]
In the age old question of whether passive or active investing is the best course, a new paper from Mercer proposed a simple answer: it depends. Specifically, it depends on what an investors’ goals and priorities actually are, the paper said. The popularity of passive strategies can, in part, be attributed to their continued success. […]
Mercer report shows good news - but can it last?