Nearly three-quarters (71 per cent) of Canadian employees feel their mental health has interfered with their ability to work in the past year, according to a new survey commissioned by Manulife Financial Corp. and conducted by Edelman DXI. The survey, which polled more than 1,500 Canadians, found four-fifths of employees said they’re worried about their […]
Alcoa Corp. is de-risking roughly $315 million (US$235 million) in Canadian defined benefit pension obligations and assets with an annuity transfer. The group annuity contracts will be executed by Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc., which will assume payments for roughly 500 participants in September, according to a press release. Read: Alcoa entering $1BN […]
Recent amendments to the Quebec Pension Plan to encourage people to work past age 65 offer more flexibility on contributions and retirement age, says Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of financial security research for the National Institute on Ageing at Toronto Metropolitan University. “If people are accumulating a pension, working longer could potentially increase their pension,” says MacDonald, who […]
The rules governing registered retirement income funds and similar retirement vehicles are stuck in the past and need revamping or removal, according to a new report by the C.D. Howe Institute. With the current rules, the purchasing power of minimum RRIF withdrawals could fall to half their initial value by the time a retiree reaches […]
The Saskatchewan Pension Plan is removing its annual contribution and transfer-in limits. Starting on April 13, 2023, as long as plan members have room in their registered retirement savings plans, they can contribute as much as they want to the SPP, within RRSP limits. In addition, if they have other unlocked investments they’d like to […]
Millennial workers who rent for their entire careers must save 50 per cent more than homeowners in order to have a sufficient monthly income in retirement, according to a new report by Mercer Canada. The report, which analyzed findings from Mercer’s database, found millennials who rent need to save eight-times their annual salaries to retire […]
What’s in a name? A pension by any other name would smell as sweet — or would it? I started writing this month’s Pension Feature as an exercise to sift through some of the terms used by the pension industry to describe the different types of plans, but also to answer the question: Does the […]
Defined benefit. Defined contribution. Target benefit. Shared risk. Collective. Multi-employer. Pooled. Canada’s pension and retirement landscape is littered with lingo that can often be confusing for the people who participate in these plans and count on them for their retirement income. As pension plans evolve and the terms describing them expand, does the industry have […]
As world markets contend with supply chain issues stemming from climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, environmental, social and governance considerations are slowly taking a more prominent role in pension funds’ risk assessments. In particular, Canadian pension funds are taking a progressive approach to ESG investing. Many have become signatories of […]
More than 54 per cent of 401(k) plan sponsors say they prefer to keep their retired members’ assets in their plan, a notable increase from 26 per cent in 2019, according to a new survey by Cerulli Associates. Looking specifically at pension plans intermediated by institutional investment consultants, 35 per cent of respondents said they […]