It’s no secret that passive investments, such as exchange-traded and indexed funds, have become more popular with investors over the past 10 years. Such funds require very little to no intervention by investment managers and, therefore, have much lower management fees than the classic mutual fund structure. Read: Continued growth predicted as ETF industry tops $100 billion […]
Plan sponsors may have the best intentions of keeping members engaged with their pension or benefits communications, but it’s easy to miss the mark. Here are three common communications mistakes and tips to help avoid them. 1. Choosing the wrong media (or just one): Plan sponsors will often say, “Our members aren’t on social media,” or, […]
Macroeconomic trends such as longer lives, a lack of access to pensions and retirement supports, a low-growth environment, and persistent lack of financial literacy and trust in financial markets are creating a significant retirement savings gap between what people require in retirement and what they’ve actually saved. This is a global issue. But in Canada alone, […]
While the sustainability of defined benefit pension plans have long been a central talking point in the industry, they took a real hit during the 2008 financial crisis, a sting many plans feared would linger in public opinion. “DB plans were obviously affected. Actually, all retirement savings plans were impacted,” says Darryl Mabini, senior director of growth and […]
While mental health is often a sensitive area, the Co-operators Group Ltd. aimed to bring the issue into the open by introducing an online Yammer group as a safe place for employees to talk, share information and support one another. “It’s a way for us to have those organic conversations crop up from our staff,” said Stacey Kennedy, […]
By presenting pension information in simpler, bite-sized chunks and introducing a colourful character, the Alberta Local Authorities Pension Plan undertook a digital revamp that earned it the pension communications award at Benefits Canada’s 2017 Workplace Benefits Awards last week. Facing the challenge of engaging members on the difficult topic of pensions, the organization took on the task of […]
For plans sponsors that haven’t comprehensively reviewed their statements of investment policies and procedures in a while, it may be time to refresh the document to ensure it correctly reflects the details of the plan and is in line with current regulations. There’s an extra incentive to do so for plans registered in Ontario as recent regulatory changes […]
Members of the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa pension will be voting this fall on whether to join the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan. The organization, which has been in place since July 1972, is considering the merger as a way to mitigate the defined benefit plan’s impact on its operating budget, says […]
While defined contribution plans were a small piece of the pension market when Benefits Canada first rolled off the presses in 1977, the Co-operative Superannuation Society had already been operating for almost 40 years by that point. Founded in 1939 in Saskatoon, the society’s pension plan is one of the country’s oldest and largest defined […]
Back in the 1990s, senior management at the Co-operators Group Ltd. decided to be more generous with its defined contribution pension plan. While most Canadian companies with defined contribution offerings match employee contributions — often up to five per cent of salary — the Co-operators upped its plan on both sides of the equation by […]