Northwind's Annual Pension Fund Forum
Cambridge, Ontario
What's the best route to DB pension benefit security?
Participant: Brent Simmons
The purpose of this session was to consider different ways of ensuring benefit security for DB plan members and the wide range of industry viewpoints on this topic. Brent joined a panel and looked at the spectrum of strategies ranging from risk management in the plan to ensure long-term sustainability to full risk transfer to an insurance company.
They looked under the hood at insurance company risk management practices and compared and contrasted that to pension plan risk management practices. They shared their differing views on the following questions:
- How much risk should pension plans take?
- Does it make sense for pension plans, especially those as large as some insurance companies, to have different funding rules for pension promises?
- What's the right balance between benefit security and return?
- How could Ontario's new funding regime impact benefit security?
In today's unprecedented, highly uncertain times how can pension plan sponsors make good decisions to ensure benefit security?
