The median Canadian defined benefit pension plan returned 2.8 per cent during the last quarter of 2022 after facing losses of 12.8 per cent over the course of the year, according to a new report by Northern Trust Canada. The report draws from the Northern Trust Canada universe, which tracks the performance of Canadian DB plans. […]
Consensus expectations for U.S. inflation and interest rates in 2023 are overly optimistic, said Robert Forsyth, head of SPDR exchange-traded funds strategy and research at State Street Global Advisors SPDR, during a session at the Canadian Investment Review‘s 2022 Defined Benefit Investment Forum. “Our view is that the futures market is still pricing in an […]
The European Central Bank is expected to raise interest rates for the first time since 2011. In a statement, the bank said it plans to raise interest rates by 25 points on July 21, from negative 0.5 per cent to negative 0.25 per cent. The decision comes in response to inflationary pressures, which hit 8.1 […]
The U.S. Federal Reserve is launching a high-risk effort to tame inflation, raising its benchmark short-term interest rate and signaling up to seven rate hikes. The central bank raised its key rate by a quarter-point hike, which it had pinned near zero since March 2020. In early March 2022, the Bank of Canada announced it […]
The second year of the coronavirus pandemic offered defined benefit pension plan sponsors a reprieve from the chaos sown in financial markets during its first year. “A lot of pension plans ended up roughly where they started in 2020, but it was a very bumpy road,” says Gavin Benjamin, a retirement and financial solutions partner […]
Central banks slowing their quantitative easing policies and economic improvements off the back of wide-scale vaccination efforts should both provide bond yields with a modest boost in 2021. But that won’t give defined benefit pension plan sponsors much relief. “You hear the phrase ‘low for long’ and I would agree we’re in an extended period […]
The impact of powerful trends, including aging populations and growing debt levels in the world’s largest economies, has been somewhat mitigated in recent years by the ongoing involvement of central banks in markets and declining interest rates. However, with rates at historic lows, this is not something that can be relied on over the next […]
The head of the International Monetary Fund says that the global economy has started on a long climb to stronger growth with prospects looking a little better than four months ago. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Tuesday that global economic activity suffered an unprecedented fall in the spring when 85 per cent of the […]
The funded positions of Canadian defined benefit pension plans continued to recover in the third quarter of 2020, but major risks lie ahead, according to both Mercer Canada’s latest pension health index and Aon’s latest median solvency ratio survey. Mercer’s index, which represents the solvency ratio of a hypothetical DB pension plan, increased from 101 […]
The Bank of Canada sought Wednesday to temper economic excitement about a sharper-than-expected rebound from the depths of the coronavirus crisis, pointing to worrying trends that signal all is still not well. In a statement, the central bank’s governing council said the bounce-back activity in the third quarter looks to be faster than it anticipated […]