Belonging to an employer-sponsored pension plan can help boost returns on workers’ outside investments, according to new research by Statistics Canada. Although previous research examined how membership in a pension can affect how much employees save, Statistics Canada sought to understand the potential effects on generated returns. To that end, it analyzed the relationship between pension coverage […]
Progress increasing women on corporate boards in 2018 has been slow, with women holding 17.9 per cent of all directorships at MSCI ACWI index companies as of Oct. 16, 2018, up incrementally from 17.3 per cent in 2017, according to an MSCI Inc. progress report on women on corporate boards. Among MSCI world index companies, […]
The Public Sector Pension Investment Board is taking on a majority stake in B.F.B. Pty Ltd., an Australia-based agricultural business. Currently, BFB has taken on more than 441 square kilometres of arable land and operates businesses in grain storage, fertilizer, agronomy, livestock, farming and logistics. “We’re impressed with BFB’s team, performance and integrated business model, and we’re excited to […]
More than a third of Canadians aren’t confident they’ll reach their financial goal for retirement, according to a new survey by the Royal Bank of Canada. The bank, which surveyed 2,000 non-retired Canadians, found 16 per cent are very confident, 45 per cent felt somewhat confident and 39 per cent aren’t confident they’ll ever reach their retirement […]
While there aren’t consistent definitions around the inclusion of environmental, social and governance issues in investing, factoring them into the investment process is now mainstream, which is increasing the demand for ESG data, according to a report by capital markets consultancy firm Opimas. Institutional investors, such as pension funds, insurers and asset managers, have been at the forefront of that […]
A majority of Canadians, health-care providers, labour organizations and employers agree a national single-payer system is an idea whose time has come, according to a report by the Broadbent Institute. Canada has attempted to bring in a national pharmacare plan nine times in the last 73 years — in 1945, 1947, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1970, 1997, 2002, and […]
While a defined benefit pension plan’s main goal is to provide steady income for retirees, in doing so they also provide substantial benefits to local, state and national economies, according to a report by U.S.-based National Institute on Retirement Security. In 2016, retired Americans received US$578 billion in pension benefits with $294.7 billion paid to retired state and […]
In the active versus passive investment debate, manager fees play a major role, but how much do they really impact returns? According to the S&P indices’ latest scorecard on how fees affect investing, one-year returns were positive for active equity institutional managers, with those in 11 out of 17 categories outperforming their respective benchmarks, gross of fees. However, […]
While Canadian organizations have good intentions around their diversity and inclusion strategies, their investments and actions aren’t always aligned, according to a Conference Board of Canada report. The report found that while Canadian organizations indicated they intend to focus on inclusion efforts, the behaviours that go along with these intentions, such as providing development opportunities for members of […]
The Corporation of the City of York employee pension plan is merging with the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. The City of York plan is one of five defined benefit plans sponsored by the City of Toronto. It covers 83 retired members and 79 survivor pensioners. Its latest valuation showed that, as of Dec. 31, 2017, it had […]