Quebecers are more likely to start taking benefits from the Quebec Pension Plan at age 60 than other Canadians with their Canada Pension Plan benefits, according to a new study from the Institute for Research on Public Policy. While deferring benefits is financially advantageous for some, the study found it might be prudent for single people and […]
Coming out of the fastest market crash in history, asset owners are cautiously optimistic heading into a vastly changed investment landscape, according to a new survey by bfinance. Indeed, 82 per cent of surveyed asset owners, including pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds, said they’re satisfied with how their portfolios have performed so far […]
Chief financial officers may be over-confident when it comes to investment forecasts, even when they’ve been proven wrong in the past, according to a new paper by researchers at Duke University and Ohio State University. “Senior financial executives’ beliefs of the mean of the distribution of S&P 500 returns are accurate, but they appear to […]
Ivanhoé Cambridge, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec’s real estate arm, is entering into an agreement with real estate logistics specialist LOGOS Group to acquire a development site in Australia. The organization plans to develop the site, located in one of Melbourne’s key infill northern industrial suburbs, into a $230 million logistics estate […]
While intangible assets like human capital and culture are increasingly at the forefront of employers’ concerns, frameworks to manage these factors are lagging, according to a new paper by Willis Towers Watson and the World Economic Forum. As the world resets to a new reality amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it noted, it will be critical to an […]
Morneau Shepell Ltd. is expanding its clinical network capacity by 25 per cent. The growth, which is intended to increase the organization’s ability to provide immediate mental-health support to Canadians, anticipated a rise in outreach for coronavirus-related concerns, such as anxieties around returning to work and children returning to school and compounding stress about an […]
iA Financial Group is partnering with Homewood Health to provide plan sponsors with access to the latter’s employee assistant program. The EAP, available à la carte, is now offered as part of the insurer’s health and wellness offering, called Well-Balanced. “We are confident that this partnership will provide our clients and their plan members with […]
Toronto-based disease prevention technology company Newtopia Inc. is introducing a product suite aimed at preventing, reversing and slowing the progression of three chronic conditions. Targeting plan members of employer-sponsored health plans, the tools aim to assist users with hypertension, type 2 diabetes and weight management. They combine human interaction, virtual care, digital tools and data science to deliver personalized […]
The Ontario division of the Canadian Mental Health Association is providing a toolkit for employers and employees to help them navigate the complex mental-health realities of physically returning to work as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Developed in partnership with Mental Health Works and BounceBack Ontario, the toolkit seeks to help employers create policies and procedures to […]
Some employees are seeing less value in their benefits and are less confident in their employers’ ability to provide them, according to a new survey by the Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. The survey polled U.S. workers in March 2020 and again in June. In March, 80 per cent of survey respondents said they value […]