At the end of last year, there were no surprises. Everyone expected that their pension plan’s financial status would be bad, and their expectations were met. However, this year will be different. Through the end of September, Canadian equity returns were 30%, and all other asset classes had positive returns, even with the appreciation of […]
Some thoughts on the final report of the Ontario Expert Commission on Pensions The Ontario Expert Commission on Pensions (OECP) final report, A Fine Balance: Safe Pensions, Affordable Plans, Fair Rules recommends some much needed reforms to the rules governing pension funding, plan restructuring, plan failure and risk to benefit security due to bankruptcy or […]
The current regime for funding DB pension plans is not working. It doesn’t achieve the goals of either plan participants or plan sponsors. Plan participants want early funding of liabilities in order to enhance the security of their promised benefits. Plan sponsors want to have a smooth pattern of pension contributions. The current regime works […]
This is the fifth and final article in a series that has revisited the design of hybrid pension plans—plans that deliver the better of a defined benefit (DB) promise and a defined contribution (DC) account balance. I will wrap up this series by addressing the issue of employee communications, which in my mind includes the […]
This is the fourth article in a series that has revisited the design of hybrid pension plans—plans that deliver the better of a defined benefit(DB)promise and a defined contribution(DC)account balance. This article will focus on the question of investment policy from the perspective of the plan sponsor. A future article will address the combined issues […]
In prior articles in this series, I have revisited the design of hybrid pension plans—plans that deliver the better of a defined benefit(DB)promise and a defined contribution(DC)account balance. In this article, I will focus on the question of whether the funding of such a plan might produce very volatile employer contributions, and if so, how […]
In my article published here in May, I presented an overview of hybrid plans—plans that deliver the better of a defined benefit(DB)promise and a defined contribution(DC)account balance. The focus of this article will be to provide a little more detail about the design of hybrid plans by looking at an example. In addition, I will […]
As the saying goes, if you stay around long enough, old ideas will return. While we can only hope this does not happen with disco music, perhaps it is time to reconsider some ideas from the past in the pension context. In a discussion with Colin Carlton, a consultant in the industry whom I have […]
© Copyright 2007 Rogers Publishing Ltd. The following article first appeared in the March 2007 edition of BENEFITS CANADA magazine. Solving solvency Whether it’s Letters of Credit or new commissions, the debate on how plan sponsors can deal with solvency is in full swing. By Steve Bonnar Equity markets have been kind to institutional […]