Many employees in the non-profit sector dedicate their lives to helping others. In 2008, a new pension plan was launched to help provide them with a lifetime benefit upon retirement. Michel Lizée, now an independent trustee and pension committee secretary for the Régime de retraite des groupes communautaires et de femmes — or the Community […]
The Local Authorities Pension Plan is in an interesting situation. Historically, the president of the Alberta Treasury Board and the minister of finance was the plan’s legal trustee and administrator, but in 2019, the LAPP became independent of government, with its own sponsor board and corporation, which now acts as the plan’s trustee and administrator. […]
For the first time, organizations are publicly endorsing the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance’s stewardship principles. To date, the endorsers include the Alberta Investment Management Corp., the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Canada Post Corp. pension plan, the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, […]
Environmental, social and governance issues are key for many Canadian pension plans, but taking meaningful action is easier said than done, especially at small and mid-sized organizations. With a team of about 30 people, the University of Toronto Asset Management Corp. managed more than $11 billion of the university’s endowment, pension plan and short-term working […]
The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan is well-known for its liability-driven investing strategy, which helped it successfully weather the 2008 financial crisis. During the coronavirus fallout, in an era of historically low interest rates, the HOOPP is working on developing LDI 2.0. “We’re very focused on liabilities, but what you do when interest rates are […]
The Halifax Port ILA/HEA found a way to provide its defined contribution pension plan members with a defined benefit upon retirement — and it’s been doing so successfully for 35 years. As a private sector multi-employer plan, the pension has about 450 active members, 300 retirees and about $210 million in assets. The DB plan […]
While rising government deficits and debt are concerning for many bond owners, they should actually be more concerned that deficits aren’t big enough, said David Bezic, an independent economic consultant, during a session at Benefits Canada and the Canadian Investment Review’s 2020 Plan Sponsor Week in mid-August. Many of the concerns around debt and deficits are founded on […]
While many Canadians likely started the year worried about retirement savings as the markets were ravaged by the coronavirus fallout, some employers continued to introduce new savings offerings to help ensure their employees’ retirement security. In May 2020, the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre officially joined the OPSEU Pension Trust’s OPTrust Select, offering its employees a defined benefit […]
Over the last several years, a small group of faculty members at the University of British Columbia has been calling on its pension plan’s board of trustees to consider divesting from fossil fuels. As support for divestment grew, the board of the UBC faculty pension plan, which is defined contribution, agreed to assess whether there […]
The coronavirus crisis may be a signal for some pension plan sponsors that it’s time to revisit their appetite for risk. A typical asset-liability study involves stochastic modelling to project thousands of future economic scenarios and see how a pension plan would react under those scenarios, says Dean Newell, vice-president at Actuarial Solutions Inc. Particularly, the […]