The Canada Supplementary Pension Plan (CSPP): Towards an Adequate, Affordable Pension for All Canadians (also available in French)

Canadians successfully reformed the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans in the 1990s. Now we must do the same for the rest of our Retirement Income System. This paper offers both a vision and a plan to provide a decent post-work standard of living for the millions of Canadian workers currently accumulating insufficient retirement savings.pension papers, governance and public institutions,

Pension Reform: How Canada can Lead the World

Canada Supplementary Pension Plan (CSPP), public pension reform

Why Pension Fund Management Needs a Paradigm Shift

This chapter asserts that the management of the assets of defined benefit (DB) plans has been guided by a simple three-part paradigm. First, designers assumed that the generous equity risk premium observed in the past will be available in the future. Second, they have posited that a constant asset mix policy portfolio such as 60-40 or 70-30 (in stocks) will provide adequate protection against shorter-term equity markets volatility. Third, given the first two assumptions, it can be deduced the bulk of a fund’s human and financial resources can be spent attempting to add modest additional return to the fund’s policy portfolio return by taking on a modest amount of additional risk. We show that within this old paradigm framework, the average US DB pension fund performed reasonably well over the 10-year period ending 2002. But we also show that the choice of policy portfolio largely determined total DB plan balance sheet mismatch risk, and that on average, this major risk went unrewarded over the 10-year measurement period. Our findings raise questions about the appropriateness of the old pension paradigm; instead, we assert that a new paradigm is required which include a defensible set of investment beliefs which include a time- varying equity risk premium; an integrative investment model that directly links a varying return opportunity set to DB balance sheet stakeholder income needs and risk tolerances; and a human systems-based decision-making protocol that can dynamically integrate the first two elements into the production of measurable stakeholder value over time

The pension system in Finland: Institutional structure and governance

Professors Nicholas Barr and Keith Ambachtsheer have charted the Finnish earnings-related pension scheme at the request of the Finnish Centre for Pensions. Barr and Ambachtsheer are internationally renowned and esteemed experts in the pension field. Professor, Director Keith Ambachtsheer (Rotman International Centre for Pension Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto) investigated system governance in his evaluation

Combined Use of Models and Measurements for Spatial Mapping of Concentrations and Deposition of Pollutants

When modelling pollutants in the atmosphere, it is nearly impossible to get perfect results as the chemical and mechanical processes that govern pollutant concentrations are complex. Results are dependent on the quality of the meteorological input as well as the emissions inventory used to run the model. Also, models cannot currently take every process into consideration. Therefore, the model may get results that are close to, or show the general trend of the observed values, but are not perfect. However, due to the lack of observation stations, the resolution of the observational data is poor. Furthermore, the chemistry over large bodies of water is different from land chemistry, and in North America, there are no stations located over the great lakes or the ocean. Consequently, the observed values cannot accurately cover these regions. Therefore, we have combined model output and observational data when studying ozone concentrations in north eastern North America. We did this by correcting model output at observational sites with local data. We then interpolated those corrections across the model grid, using a Kriging procedure, to produce results that have the resolution of model results with the local accuracy of the observed values. Results showed that the corrected model output is much improved over either model results or observed values alone. This improvement was observed both for sites that were used in the correction process as well as sites that were omitted from the correction process

Suomen eläkejärjestelmä: Instituutiorakenne ja hallinto

Professorit Nicholas Barr ja Keith Ambachtsheer kartoittivat Suomen työeläkejärjestelmää Eläketurvakeskuksen pyynnöstä. Barr ja Ambachtsheer ovat kansainvälisesti tunnettuja ja arvostettuja eläkealan asiantuntijoita. Professori, johtaja Keith Ambachtsheer (Rotman International Centre for Pension Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto) tarkasteli arviossaan järjestelmän hallinnointia. Suomenkielinen käännös alkuperäisteoksesta

Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic

Pensions and population aging intersect in two ways. First, demographic change threatens the sustainability of traditional pay-as-you-go social security pensions, leaving workplace-linked pensions with a greater role in retirement provision. Second, as the Baby Boom generation enters retirement, new challenges arise around its retirement support. This chapter reviews some of the implications of population aging for workplace pensions in this new environment, outlines market considerations important for workplace-related pension design for the future, and discusses how governments can create an environment supportive of workplace-related pensions, should they wish to do so. We conclude that workplace-linked retirement saving systems will be asked to do even more than in the past, given the financial stress that pay-as-you-go governmentrun Social Security plans are confronting in the face of an aging demographic. This will require further product innovation and additional research