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2024 Council CANADIAN LEADERSHIP ON DRUG PLAN PARTNERSHIPS In May, Benefits Canada's Canadian Leadership Council on Drug Plan Partnerships brought together industry thought leaders to discuss innovative solutions to ensure [...]

The consolidation of firms within the pension and benefits industries could pose a threat because there's less choice available in terms of service-providers, says Susan G. Seller, a pension and [...]

When Phillip Kotanidis look over as chief human resources officer at Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital in 2018, the financial well being of staff wasn't exactly high on his agenda. In [...]

In the fight against cybercriminals, institutional investors and other financial organizations are managing cybersecurity just as seriously as any other type of business risk, with standards that can accommodate the [...]

While some of Canada's largest pension funds are at the forefront of how to leverage responsible investment mandates and attempt to enact change through leadership in global organizations, the shortcomings [...]

Two thirds (67 per cent) of Canadian benefits plan members used their mental health benefits in the last year, according to the 2023 Benefits Canada Healthcare Survey, while three-quarters (73 [...]

I. Introduction Canada is the second largest trading partner of the United States and accounts for over 15% of U.S. trade with all foreign countries. (1) At the same time, [...]

While many of the investment strategies and resources at the disposal of the Maple 8--Canada's eight largest public pension plans that represent more than S2.1 trillion in assets under management--are [...]

When looking at the future of inclusive benefits, it's impor tant for employers to take a holistic approach and ensure their benefits plans offer something for everyone, says Christine Tatham, [...]

We believe that private alternatives have the potential to improve retirement outcomes. As pioneers of incorporating private alternatives within target date funds, we have proven that more material allocations are [...]

With employees often struggling to find benefits offerings related to mental-health support or chronic conditions, demand for health-care system navigation services has increased significantly in the past few years. In [...]

One of the benefits GFOA membership offers is the opportunity to engage and share insights in one--or more--of our nine affinity groups: * Alliance for Smarter School Spending * Black [...]

Thomson Reuters has unveiled its new Audit Intelligence suite today (September 12). Announced from their Toronto headquarters, this new suite of AI-powered, data-driven audit solutions promises to reimagine auditing by [...]

Byline: Sophie Baker Canada's pension funds have long been held up as shining examples of well-run and high-performing plans in the global retirement market, so U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer [...]

JOB TITLE: Director of pensions and savings, Suncor Energy Inc. JOINED SUNCOR: 2008 PREVIOUS ROLE: Manager, total rewards and pensions, Suncor WHAT KEEPS HER UP AT NIGHT: The passing of [...]

The validity of asset pricing models implies white-noise pricing errors (PEs). However, we find that the PEs of six wellknown factor models all exhibit a significant reversal pattern and are predictable by their lagged values up to 12 months. Moreover, the predictability of the PEs can produce substantial economic profits. Similar conclusions hold for recently developed machine learning models too. Additional analysis reveals that the significant PE profits cannot be explained by common behavioral biases. Our results imply that much remains to be done and there is a great need to develop new asset pricing models. KEYWORDS Asset pricing tests, factor models, machine learning, pricing errors, 1 | INTRODUCTION One of the central problems in finance is to explain why different assets have different average returns. To this end, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of [...]

Nearly 50 employers gathered at the Omni King Edward Hotel in Toronto on Oct. 20 for Benefits Canada's 2023 Healthy Outcomes Conference, a premier event for employers to exchange ideas [...]

THANK YOU TO THIS YEAR'S JUDGES Katharine Coons, national workplace mental health specialist, the Canadian Mental Health Association Matt Davison, Western University's dean of science, principal researcher, Canada's Financial Wellness [...]

With more than 40,000 employees across the country, Amazon Canada is a microcosm of the wider national workforce. Comprising five generations, the online retailer's workers represent a wide spectrum, of [...]

The coronavirus pandemic may be receding, but there's no question its effects will be felt well into the future. Indeed, it will likely take years for employers and employees to [...]

By the time Nick Chamie graduated with his first degree in economics in 1992, the Berlin Wall had already fallen and the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Still, Chamie--now [...]

CHRISTINE TATHAM, REDBRICK'S VICE-PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE While Canadian culture has long been described as a mosaic, employers' holiday policies are more likely to tie statutory holidays to Christian [...]

In 2022, some of the Lop chronic conditions affecting group benefits plans were diabetes, obesity, depression and arthritis. Diabetes was the No. 1 ranked condition for drug claims in 2022, [...]

Pierre Bocti Pierre Bocti passed away on January 14. Pierre was a member of TEI for over forty years. During that time, he was very active in TEI, rising to [...]

As global markets navigate turbulent economic waters, active management is proving once again to be a lieeline for institutional investors to ensure their portfolios ride out the storm. Pension funds [...]

Although mental health is approached differently in workplaces around the globe, most multinational employers want to ensure a continuity of care and maintain a similar experience for all employees, while [...]

Byline: Palash Ghosh In the autumn of 2022, John L. Bowman, president of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association, met in a coffee shop in Singapore with Swee Chiang Chiam, [...]

While law suits against Canadian capital accumulation plans arc virtually non-existent, U.S. pension litigation holds several lessons for plan sponsors that are based north of the 19th Parallel, says Mitch [...]

When Finland introduced changes to its parental leave policy in 2022, it was specifically aimed at encouraging fathers to take as much time off work as mothers and recognizing a [...]

This paper proposes a time-zone vector autoregressive (VAR) model to investigate comovements in the global financial market. Analyzing daily data from 36 national equity markets, we explore the subprime and European debt crises using static analysis and the COVID-19 crisis through a rolling window method. Our study of comovements using VAR coefficients reveals a resonance effect in the global system. Findings on densities and assortativities suggest the existence of the transmission mechanism in all periods and abnormal structural changes during the crises. Strength analysis uncovers the information transmission mechanism across continents over normal and turmoil periods and emphasizes specific stock markets' unique roles. We examine dynamic continent strengths to demonstrate the contagion mechanism in the global equity market over an extended period. Incorporating the time-zone effect significantly enhances the VAR model's interpretability. Signed networks provide more information on global equity markets and better identify critical contagion patterns than unsigned networks. KEYWORDS financial contagion, LASSO, network, time-zone effect, VAR models, 1 | INTRODUCTION Increased economic globalization continues to intensify the connections between countries, especially in the financial field (Acemoglu et al., 2015; Summer, 2013). The flows of capital and labor [...]

How did you come to be head of Canada for T. Rowe Price? I established a strong foundation in the asset management industry by completing my Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) [...]

When Jessica Charbonneau decided to have a child through assisted reproduction a few years ago, it wasn't cheap, but her employer helped shoulder some of the costs. Charbonneau, a 36-year-old [...]

Working in the pension industry has always been aligned with Shannan Corey's personal interests and values. Her father was an actuary so she was exposed to the pension industry from [...]

With Canadians' financial priorities shifting alongside a turbulent economic climate, including inflation levels not seen in decades and a never-ending rise in the cost of living, it isn't surprising capital [...]

In 2022, Xero sent out a global survey to all of its employees asking them to rank the most important components of its total rewards program, from time off to [...]

Actuarial Solutions Inc. 466 Speers Rd., 3rd floor, Oakville, Ont., L6K 3W9 CONTACT: Jason Vary, president TEL: 877-257-2038, ext. 400 EMAIL: jason@actuarialsolutionsinc.com WEBSITE: actuarialsolutionsinc.com SERVICES: Defined benefit pension plan consulting, [...]

The past twelve months have seen two very significant developments in the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) in Section 245 of Canada's Income Tax Act (ITA). The first is the hearing [...]

About a year before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Algonquin College updated its disability management program. 'The timing set the Ottawa-based college up for success when the crisis hit, [...]

We quantitatively measure the interactions between daily consumption and the stock market. We find that daily consumption, proxied by the cyclical component of theatrical box office earnings, can significantly and positively predict stock returns for up to 5 days. We also demonstrate a trading strategy using our consumption measures that yield nontrival excess returns with little risk. These findings suggest that the box office effect is an economically important factor for equities. The framework implies that daily consumption carries value-relevant public information, which leads to price reaction at a daily frequency. KEYWORDS asset pricing implications, box office earnings, daily consumption, information, predictability of stock returns, trading strategy JEL CLASSIFICATION G11, G12, G14, 1 | INTRODUCTION This paper studies the empirical association between early signs of daily spending and aggregate market return. Specifically, we question the conjecture that daily consumption carries public information [...]

At the beginning of April, the OPSEU Pension Trust made a change to a definition in its plan text that will have meaningful implications for plan members with disabled children [...]

At the 2023 Defined Contribution Plan Summit, which was hosted in Montebello, Que. on Feb. 21-23, delegates learned from employer case studies and expert thought leadership about innovative pension plan [...]

Large and small, pension plan sponsors are adopting in-house tools, partnering with technology research institutes or relying on investment managers for technological support with asset allocation, risk management and other [...]

As technology advances and plan members' needs become more diverse, the relationship between benefits plan sponsors and providers is adapting to fit these changes. Sarah Beech, chief executive officer of [...]

Defined benefit. Defined contribution. Target benefit. Shared risk. Collective. Multi-employer. Pooled. Canada's pension and retirement landscape is littered with lingo that can often be confusing for the people who participate [...]

Byline: Palash Ghosh A number of Canadian pension funds have been pouring money into private credit as a means of generating higher returns, increasing diversification in their portfolios and as [...]

Byline: Sophie Baker While 2023 was a difficult year in terms of macroeconomic issues -- with rising geopolitical tensions across the globe, still-high inflation and a peak in developed market [...]

Thomson Reuters has successfully acquired Pagero, a Swedish e-invoicing and tax solutions company, for approximately $800 million. The content and tech giant offered to buy Pagero for $627 million at [...]

Byline: Erin Arvedlund SLC Management was an early investor in private credit, one of the first to offer the strategy to Canadian pension funds more than a decade ago. So [...]

Byline: Palash Ghosh Canadian pension funds have been investing in Brazil, a huge country that boasts a growing $2.1 trillion economy, the largest such economy in Latin America and an [...]