Financial security and retirement readiness

Ensuring plan members have the tools, solutions and support they need for financial security in retirement

A key focus of our retirement programs is retirement readiness – ensuring plan members have saved enough by the time they want to retire. For financial security reasons, this is of critical importance to them. But it’s of primary importance to plan sponsors too – for succession planning, managing workforce costs and maintaining productivity.

In 2025, we continued to introduce new solutions, investments, supports and analytics that can help improve plan member financial security and increase “on-time” retirement. 

This year, Group Retirement Services introduced Sun Life Choices Flex, a suite of additional savings products that plan members can choose from to complement their workplace plan. These include a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA), Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP), Non-Registered Savings Account (NREG) and the newly introduced First Home Savings Account (FHSA). 

With Choices Flex, plan members get:

  • A full suite of savings products beyond their workplace plan options
  • The choice of saving through recurring or one-time lump-sum contributions
  • Competitive fees and diverse investment options
  • The ability to manage all their assets in one place
  • Access to Sun Life One Plan, 360 Plan Advice, and financial education campaigns
  • The opportunity to strengthen their financial wellness and resiliency
  • A seamless experience when moving from Choices Flex to Group Choices, if they retire or leave their workplace plan. 

The recent addition of the FHSA to the suite of products can help plan members save for their first home. A FHSA is a powerful savings tool designed specifically for eligible first-time homebuyers. It offers a lifetime maximum contribution of $40,000, tax-deductible contributions, and tax-free withdrawals for first home purchases. The FHSA is integrated into the Choices Flex product suite, making it easy for plan members to contribute savings.

Visit our webpage to learn more about Sun Life Choices Flex.

In October, we introduced our new retirement readiness reports that provide important insights into plan members’ retirement readiness. Based on our Sun Life One Plan™ data, these new, comprehensive retirement readiness reports offer:

  • Information on how plan members are tracking their retirement goals and at what age they are expected to reach their goals
  • Segmented data for deeper analysis, including age, salary, years of service and those who have created a plan versus those who haven’t
  • Benchmarking against “all plans eligible to receive the report” for comparative analysis
  • Actionable insights to improve plan member outcomes. 

In 2026, we’ll introduce a year-over-year comparisons feature. 

Reporting is available for no additional charge to all plan sponsors who provide Sun Life with plan member salary information. If you provide this information before May 31, 2026, you’ll be eligible for next year’s report. Salary information can easily be uploaded through the ‘Upload a salary’ function on the plan sponsor secure site or by including salary data in your demographic file.

At the beginning of 2025, we formalized investment support for the Group Choices Plan and the teams responsible for providing investment guidance to plan members. We now have a dedicated Investment Solutions Executive whose primary focus is the Group Choices Plan.

This change enhances investment support, aligns strategies with plan member behaviour, and ensures consistent, high-quality advice. It provides:   

  • A deeper understanding of plan member behaviour and investment needs.
  • A greater ability to conduct investment line-up reviews, maintain competitive intelligence and recommend best-in-class options for the Choice platform
  • A key investment contact for our Financial Services Consultants and Retirement Consultants.  

This change helps us bridge the gap between fund governance and plan member-facing investment support, recognizing the different priorities of plan sponsors and plan members. It’s designed to:

  • Offer investment options meeting both plan sponsor and plan member needs
  • Provide tailored investment consulting
  • Enhance competitive intelligence.   

Through these changes, we remain dedicated to sustainable investing practices, aligning with CAPSA’s risk management framework for pension plans. This includes involving our ESG evaluation framework and integrating ESG considerations into our overall investment governance.   

Target Date Funds (TDFs) are a popular investment option for plan members, letting them delegate asset allocation based on their retirement year and investment time horizon. However, TDFs are not a "set-it-and-forget-it" choice for plan sponsors.

That’s why we support you in conducting thorough reviews of your TDFs by considering several key factors. This includes:

  • Evaluating the glidepath
  • Assessing the manager's approach
  • Examining the use of alternative investments
  • Analyzing enhancements implemented over time
  • Reviewing the integration of ESG criteria.

This comprehensive approach ensures that TDFs remain aligned with plan members' evolving needs and market conditions, ultimately contributing to better retirement outcomes. 

When considering enhancements, real assets and fixed income emerge as the two most prevalent areas of interest, each with distinct considerations. 

Real assets offer several advantages, including the benefit of stable income, inflation protection, and potentially reduced volatility compared to equities. However, it's crucial to weigh these benefits against other factors such as liquidity constraints and associated fees when evaluating real asset funds. 

For fixed income, the landscape has evolved beyond passive strategies being the sole obvious choice. A well-rounded approach to diversification should now consider the inclusion of actively managed options, such as Core Plus strategies. It may also involve expanding the opportunity set to include global fixed income and credit focused option to provide additional avenues for potential returns and diversification within a fixed income portfolio. 

These considerations underscore the importance of a thoughtful, nuanced approach when constructing portfolios with à la carte options.

Settlement option packages are now available on the plan member secure site. This provides plan members who leave their workplace plan with a faster, more convenient way to access important information.

To learn more about this feature, click here.

The Sponsor Communications Hub is an online platform that offers a variety of education and communication resources for you to share with plan members. To make it easier to find what best suits your plan members’ needs, we added four new tabs this year:

  • Market Volatility Hub
  • Planning for retirement
  • Financial Education
  • Campaigns

We’ve introduced several ready-to-go campaigns that update plan members on important features, services and programs. With the campaign tab, you can now leverage those same materials and help promote these topics whenever you’d like. 

  1. Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP)  
    RRSPs is one of the best ways for a plan member to cut their tax bill and save for retirement. Our RRSP campaign encourages plan members to enrol and contribute to their group RRSP.
  2. Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) 
    A TFSA is a great way for plan members to tuck their savings away for any purpose, big or small. Our digital TFSA campaign educates plan members about TFSA benefits, from building financial resiliency to staying on track with their savings goals.
  3. Capital Gains  
    The campaign increases awareness of the tax treatment of capital gains/losses and dividend and interest income when holding investments in a non-registered account. It provides information on how segregated funds work and the various ways an investment can generate capital gains or losses. This can help plan members make informed investment and tax planning decisions.  
    Click here to learn more about distributions that have occurred. For additional resources to support plan members, visit our page Investing in the Plan. 
  4. Financial Literacy  
    November is Financial Literacy Month in Canada . Each November, we engage with plan members to strengthen their financial literacy and encourage them to save for their future. 

We continue to offer our Financial Wellness webinars. These are free educational sessions for plan members, designed to strengthen financial resilience, boost peace of mind, and improve overall financial well-being. In 2025, we added two new topics that generated significant interest: 

  • Financial planning for the modern family
  • Making the most of your retirement with Sun Life.

Our live webinars and on-demand videos are very well received. In 2025, there were over 3,000 total views of our on-demand content and over 13,000 attendees at our live webinars.