Dynamic Pension pools urgently needed to support Canadians' retirement income security

A new report published by the NIA and the Global Risk Institute (GRI), Affordable Lifetime Pension Income for a Better Tomorrow: How We Can Address the $1.5-trillion Decumulation Disconnect in the Canadian Retirement Income System with Dynamic Pension Pools, explains why Dynamic Pension (DP) pools are urgently needed
to make retirement income security possible for millions of Canadian seniors.

With 10 million baby boomers now entering retirement—with longer life expectancies and a greater dependency on private savings to sustain them—it’s more important than ever to find solutions that will help retiring Canadians turn their accumulated savings into low-cost lifetime pension income.

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Dynamic pension pools a viable decumulation option for Canadians: report

“Retiring Canadians are more worried than ever that their savings won’t sustain them in retirement — and these fears are legitimate,” said Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, Director of Financial Security research at the National Institute on Ageing and the report’s lead author. “Financial markets, inflation and health expenses are just some of the big unknowns that retirees will need to face over 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years.”

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DP pools should be available to more retiring Canadians, report says

Millions of baby boomers entering retirement and facing a “$1.5-trillion decumulation disconnect” need better options for reliable income as they age, a new report says.

The report from Ryerson University’s National Institute on Ageing and the Global Risk Institute, released Tuesday, said the decline in traditional workplace defined benefit pension plans has left today’s retirees depending much more on personal savings and sub-par retirement saving vehicles.

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Can Dynamic Pension Pools strengthen Canadians’ Retirement Income Security?

While DP pools are recognized as a powerful decumulation solution in many other ageing countries around the world they aren’t yet broadly available in Canada.

“Turning lifetime savings into lifetime income is more than just a challenge: it’s an impossible task that threatens the financial and emotional security of a growing portion of the Canadian population,” says Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, NIA Director of Financial Security Research. “DP pools are a proven and viable solution with the potential to improve retirement financial security for millions of retiring Canadians.”

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Achieving scale in pensions through portfolio aggregation

We find that there is a correlation between portfolio size and investment performance. We argue that benefits likely begin to accrue above a certain minimum size. Moreover, Keith Ambachtsheer, Senior Fellow, NIA, and his coauthors find that larger pension plans capture more of their total returns by way of lower total expense ratios than those of smaller plans.

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In the race to a net-zero and inclusive future, Canadian pension funds have a critical role to play - and a new report shows how

“As stewards of our retirement savings, pension funds have important roles to play in securing the future living standards of Canadians in a just and livable world.” said Keith Ambachtsheer, Senior Fellow, National Institute on Ageing. “To that end, we should all welcome the Canadian Pensions Dashboard for Responsible Investing, which will provide important ongoing information on how effectively Canada’s pension funds are fulfilling their mission.”

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CETFA urges more advisors to help clients prepare for vulnerable aging

CETFA has increasingly raised the financial implications of vulnerable aging this year. This past summer, it held a webinar with Michael Nicin, the Executive Director of Ryerson’s National Institute of Ageing, to flag some of the costs and concerns of financially planning for vulnerable aging.

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Seniors brace for guaranteed income supplement cuts

"For seniors in Canada who are low income and not receiving any other forms of income, the government gives them about $950 a month (the Guaranteed Income Supplement - GIS). But for every dollar someone earns, that amount is reduced by 50 cents. In the pandemic, 90,000 seniors were working enough to quality for CERB so they would receive $2,000 a month," says Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, NIA Director of Financial Security Research. Dr. MacDonald further explains that due to this, these low income seniors are not able to collect their GIS.

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Improving the globe's retirement income systems: How are we doing... and how can we do better?

The 13th edition of the Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index (MCGPI) has just been released. Titled “Pension Reform in Challenging Times”, the report notes that while there are a few well-designed and managed national retirement income systems (RIS) in the world, many could and should do better, including in Canada. Read NIA Senior Fellow Keith Ambachtsheer's full article.

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Tests show virus cases in health-care workers

Dr. Samir Sinha, the NIA Director of Health Policy Research, said while the number of infections found so far is low, it does reinforce the need for health-care workers to be immunized.

"Right now, they’re doing rapid antigen testing as a line of defence, but really it’s a pragmatic second best approach to the best possible thing we can do to support vulnerable people — given that hundreds have died in Manitoba alone — which is making sure everyone is vaccinated," Sinha said.

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Six positive cases of COVID-19 identified in unvaccinated health-care employees

Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research, said unvaccinated staff providing a negative rapid test 48 hours before a shift is not an equal substitute to being fully vaccinated.

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Home care in crisis as droves of workers leave for hospitals and nursing homes

"We’ve grossly underfunded the provision of home and community care for decades," says NIA Director of Health Policy Research, Dr. Samir Sinha. "For example, a nurse or PSW working in our publicly funded long-term care system gets paid far less than an equivalent than a person working in a publicly funded hospital."

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The Doug Ford government is saying the right things about long-term care. But fixing it will take more than words

As of Friday, 15,589 out of 29,682 COVID-19 deaths in Canada – 54 per cent – had involved LTC residents, according to the National Institute on Ageing in Toronto. So a fundamental principle that states seniors should be as safe and comfortable in a nursing home as they are in their own home, and which applies to the basic interpretation of the law, seems like a positive step.

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Ontario’s proposed long-term care fines ‘toothless,’ critics say

“If nothing that we’ve seen so far in countless cases of elder abuse have been reasons to lay any fines, I don’t know what will,” Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research, said in an interview. “So why bother doubling something that you’re probably not even willing to use?”

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'A crisis for home care': droves of workers leave for hospitals, nursing homes

Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, said the home care situation is dire. Wage parity can solve some of the problems, he said.

"A nurse working in an acute care hospital makes far more than a nurse working in a long-term care home who makes far more than a nurse working in home care," Sinha said.

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Long-term care: the limits of reform in Ontario

The government is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to train and hire staff for long-term care facilities, but retention is an issue. Dr. Samir Sinha noted that the training that attendants receive varies greatly from location to location and does not always include the emergency or skills required to care for someone with dementia.

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Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the National Institute on Ageing, said in an interview that the initial response to COVID-19 didn’t follow the precautionary principle of applying maximum precautions then easing off as the disease became better understood.

Instead, fearing they would run out of personal protective equipment, officials did the reverse, rationing masks and starting with limited precautions, then adjusting upward – at a cost of human lives.

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NACI expands recommendations for booster shots

“I’m thrilled with NACI’s recommendation today. It really has been following the science throughout the pandemic, and what it’s shows is that in Canada, in our specific circumstance, this is the right time to start giving booster shots to older adults and other high risk populations,” says Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research.

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Ontario is promising that nursing-home residents will be able to ‘enjoy life.’ Whether it can deliver is another matter

Will the long-term care system be dominated by new inspectors, some of whom, apparently, will come from the ranks of retired police officers? Or, will it work to help homes improve? Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, believes the “right things are being said” in terms of quality of life and care. But, Sinha asks, how can those goals be achieved without fixing “fundamental issues like staffing?

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Market Resiliency, Capital Formation, and Investing for Our Future

The sustainability of traditional public sector defined benefit (DB) plans has become front-page news and the subject of acrimonious debates usually framed in stark terms of DB versus DC (defined contribution). This either/or framing is unhelpful, Keith Ambachtsheer, Senior Fellow at NIA, writes.

It simply perpetuates the strongly held views of the defenders and critics of these two opposing pension models. Moving the pension reform yardsticks in the right direction requires that we stop this dysfunctional either/or framing and embrace a more constructive conversation about what we want our pension arrangements to achieve and what that tells us about how to design them.

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