The Ontario Medical Association is partnering with Common Wealth to offer its physician members and their spouses access to a retirement plan. The Advantages Retirement Plan, which will be rolled out later this year, is the result of more than two years of research on physician retirement readiness and input from OMA members. A survey conduced […]
Canada has risen one spot, to No. 8, on a list of the countries that provide the best retirement security. The annual list, from Natixis Investment Managers, found Canada ranked higher in the finances and material well-being sub-indexes, decreased in quality of life and held steady in health. The report also identified three global risks weighing on […]
In October 2017, De Beers Canada senior management flew to the company’s remote Victor diamond mine near Attawapiskat, Ont., to tell its employees some tough but not unexpected news: the mine was slated to close in the first quarter of 2019. When the fly-in, fly-out operation opened in 2008, the company forecasted it would last […]
As a solution to employee inertia, many plan sponsors with defined contribution arrangements are looking at setting automatic features as their plan’s default option. When the Royal Bank of Canada redesigned its DC plan in 2012, it introduced auto-enrolment for all new plan members following a six-month waiting period. Before the change, employees had a […]
Pethealth Inc.’s senior vice-president of HR talks flexible working, mental health and crime fiction. Q. What top challenges do you face in your role? A. A key challenge is balancing between the needs and wants of employees. For example, employees at different life stages value different benefits — some employees want more vacation time, while […]
Hub International Ltd. is acquiring Mississauga, Ont.-based employee benefits consulting firm GMS Insurance Inc. Last year, the global insurance brokerage acquired GMS’s Kitchener, Ont. operations. The company said owning both entities would allow it to enhance its services to southwestern Ontario and greater Toronto area clients. Read: Hub International acquiring assets of Clarity Benefits Group […]
One in three (30 per cent) U.S. defined contribution plan sponsors have adopted a solution to deal with plan members’ need for a lifetime income, according to a survey by Willis Towers Watson. That’s up from 23 per cent in 2016, the last time the organization surveyed plan sponsors on this issue. The survey, which polled 164 large […]
Canadian insurers paid out $98 billion in benefits in 2018, an increase of seven per cent over 2017, according to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association’s annual fact book. Similar to previous years, this was led by retirement benefits from annuities ($49 billion), health benefits for prescription drugs and extended health providers like dentists […]
Defined contribution plan sponsors have to stay aware of plan design developments to improve their benefits offerings for their specific workforces, according to a new report by Callan. As workplace demographics shift, it’s important for plan sponsors to make sure their DC plan features are keeping up with those changes to ensure the benefits they’re providing are most effective […]
With the private sector’s move from defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans and rising life expectancies, the issue of retirement decumulation is increasing in importance. Decumulation deals with converting retirement savings into income that must be managed over the rest of the retiree’s lifetime. It can be a challenge for Canadians who don’t have a significant […]