Pension plans administrators in Alberta’s private sector will have another year to put a governance policy in place.
Under Bill 10, published in 2012, the provincial government set out a number of changes that would allow plan administrators to more easily develop pension plans that meet the needs of employers and employees. As part of the legislation, private sector pension plan administrators had to put a governance policy in place by Dec. 31. 2016, but the deadline has been extended to Dec. 31, 2017, to put it in line with Alberta and British Columbia’s triennial plan assessment review.
Read: Time for B.C., Alberta pension administrators to prepare for new triennial assessments
This year, both Alberta and British Columbia published clarifications on the timing of triennial administrative assessments. Both provinces agreed that, for private sector pension plans with a calendar year-end, administrators should undertake the first assessment with an effective date of Dec. 31, 2016, with a written one completed by Dec. 31, 2017. Administrators are to repeat the exercise triennially thereafter.
Another reason for the extension, according to a spokesperson from Alberta’s office of the superintendent of pensions, is the province will be making substantive changes to one of its guidelines soon. ”The reason we took this step was feedback from the industry,” said the spokesperson. “We thought it would be better to give people a delay of a year so that we would be able to revise some of our communications to give people a better handle on what we expect, both from the governance policy and from the triennial assessment. So we really see the two of them as linked.”
Read: New bill addresses Alberta private sector pensions