An article on the Canada Revenue Agency’s guidance for how employers must determine the province of employment for remote workers was the most-read story on BenefitsCanada.com. Here are the top five human resources, benefits, pension and investment stories of the week: 1. CRA clarifying how employers must determine province of employment for remote workers 2. Quebec’s amendment […]
The Quebec government’s removal of the maximum annual amount that can be paid to people aged 55 and older with a variable benefit account tied to a defined contribution pension plan or with a life income fund is part of a broader push to provide retirees with more flexibility to draw on their locked-in retirement savings […]
While Blair Richards understands why the industry is moving away from defined benefit pension plans, he worries about what may be lost in the process. When Richards — the chief investment officer at the Halifax Port ILA/HEA pension plan — joined the institutional investor 40 years ago, DB plans were an attractive hiring and retention […]
While the term decumulation may sound very technical and often leads to confusion among pension plan members, it’s actually quite simple — effectively, it’s the opposite of accumulation. These two terms make up the typical retirement savings journey — the accumulation phase is the working years when capital accumulation plan members put away their nest […]
While McGill University has factored decumulation into its pension plan for decades, the plan sponsor is continually fine tuning these strategies for members, said John D’Agata, the university’s director of pension and benefits, during a session at Benefits Canada‘s 2023 DC Plan Summit. McGill’s pension plan has more than $1.5 billion in assets and more than 9,500 […]
Mitigating longevity risk is key to solving the decumulation challenge, said Pat Leo, Purpose Investments Inc.’s vice-president of longevity retirement solutions, during a session at Benefits Canada‘s 2023 DC Plan Summit. Referring to a recent survey, he noted defined contribution pension plan members were most concerned about market and sequence risks, while underestimating the impact of longevity risk. […]
Defined contribution pension plan providers and advisors say plan sponsors should offer and support in-plan decumulation options, according to a new survey by PIMCO Canada Corp. The survey, which polled 12 DC plan providers and advisors, found more than half (53 per cent) of respondents said their plan sponsor clients haven’t considered implementing in-plan decumulation options, […]
Finance’s toughest problem just got a whole lot trickier, thanks to the quandary of inflation. Legendary economist William F. Sharpe sealed his place in history when he collected the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on investment decision-making, but in defined contribution pension circles, the emeritus professor at Stanford University is […]
For some Canadians, the term pension may still conjure images of a secure stash of money guaranteed to ensure a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. I should know — until joining Benefits Canada in 2020, I counted myself among this group. Defined benefit pension plans — the epitome of the image described above — still exist, but […]
The Association of Canadian Pension Management is calling on the federal government and capital accumulation plan sponsors to support members’ financial wellness by focusing on decumulation. In a new white paper, the ACPM proposed the creation of a “retirement dashboard” that informs retirees of their available sources of retirement income — including government retirement benefits, […]