One of the few things that cost less when interest rates go up are annuities, long a key piece of the puzzle when turning retirement savings into income. 

Save with SPP reached out to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) to find out if this recent higher-interest environment is making Canadians think harder about annuities. 

According to the CLHIA, Canadians purchased over $1 billion in individual pay-out annuities in 2021. This includes both life and term-certain annuities from registered and non-registered funds.

You can buy an annuity from a provider, usually an insurance company. In exchange for a lump sum, the provider will pay you a monthly income for life or for a selected period of time. We contacted Noeline Simon, Vice President of Taxation, Pensions and Reporting for CLHIA, to ask a few other questions about annuities. 

Q. With higher interest rates of late are CLHIA’s members seeing more interest in annuities? 

A. All else being equal, higher interest rates should result in higher annuity benefit payouts. This should have a favourable impact on demand for the product, however, there may be some time before we see the full evidence of this in the market.

Q. Do you see one benefit of annuities being insurance against volatility? (If markets go down, your annuity payments stay the same.) 

A. Yes. A significant benefit of guaranteed life annuities comes from the down-side protection against adverse market conditions and the annuitant out-living their anticipated savings. 

Q. Did the last 20 years or so of low interest rates sort of deaden interest in the idea of annuities versus registered retirement income fund (RRIF) conversions? 

A. The prolonged low interest rate environment did contribute to dampening annuity sales, even with increasing interest rates it will take time to change retirees’ demand for annuities.

Q. What do you see as the pros and the cons of annuities? 

A. Canadians who are retiring or nearing retirement should consider guaranteed life annuities as a part of their plan, since they provide downside protection against adverse market conditions and reduce the risk of outliving one’s savings. Life and health insurers believe that retirees really can benefit from having a range of choices in terms of products and solutions that can help them optimize their income in retirement. To this end, the CLHIA and others have advocated for a variety of decumulation tools, such as Advanced Life Deferred Life Annuities (ALDAs) and Variable Payment Life Annuities (VPLAs) and will continue to so into the future. 

We thank Noeline Simon for taking the time to answer our questions! 

Did you know that the Saskatchewan Pension Plan is also an annuity provider, and offers a variety of annuity options for its retiring members? According to SPP’s Pension Guide, SPP offers a life only annuity (no survivor or death benefits, but highest payment to you), a refund life annuity (provides a benefit to survivors on your death), joint and last survivor annuity (provides a lifetime pension on your death to a surviving spouse or common-law partner). The joint and last option allows you to choose, for your survivor, a pension equal to 60, 75 or 100 per cent of what you were getting. Contact SPP for more information about the annuity option at retirement. 

Join the Wealthcare Revolution – follow SPP on Facebook!

Recent research conducted for Aon has found that Canadian workers in capital accumulation plans (CAPs), such as defined contribution (DC ) pension plans or group RRSPs, while confident about these plans and their own finances, “find it hard to save for retirement and are worried about having enough money to retire.”

The global actuarial and HR firm’s report, Global DC and Financial Wellbeing Employee Survey, also found that “fewer than half” of those surveyed have a particular goal for retirement savings, and that “depending on other sources of income, many find their current plan contribution levels are inadequate to ensure their total income needs in retirement,” according to an Aon release.

Among the other findings of the report:

• Of the 1,003 respondents, only 27 per cent saw their financial condition as poor
• Almost half of those surveyed say outstanding debts are preventing them from saving for retirement
• Two of five who are in employer-matching plans (where the employer matches the contributions made by the employee) are not taking full advantage of the match
• Of those who expect to fully retire from work, two-thirds expect to do so by age 66; 30 per cent expect to keep working forever in some capacity.

Save with SPP reached out to one of the authors of the research, Rosalind Gilbert, Associate Partner in Aon’s Vancouver office, to get a little more detail on what she made of the key findings of the research. 

Do you have a sense of what people think adequate contributions would be – maybe a higher percentage of their earnings?

“I don’t believe most respondents actually know what is ‘adequate’ for them from a savings rate perspective.  The responses are more reflective of their fears that that they don’t have enough saved to provide themselves a secure retirement.  Some may be relating this to the results of an online modeller of some kind, or feedback from financial advisors.

“I also think that many employees don’t have a clear picture of the annual income they will be receiving from Canada Pension Plan/Old Age Security to carve that out from the income they need to produce through workplace savings.  Some of this comes back to not having a retirement plan in terms of what age they might retire and, separately, what age they might start their CPP and OAS (since both of those drive the level of those benefits quite significantly).”

Is debt, for things like mortgages and credit cards, restricting savings, in that after paying off debt there is no money left for retirement savings?

“We were surprised to see the number of individuals who cited credit card debt as a barrier to saving for retirement. Some of this is the servicing (interest) cost, which is directly related to the amount of debt (and which will increase materially if interest rates do start to rise, which many are predicting).

“I think that the cost of living, primarily the cost of housing and daycare, is currently quite high for many individuals (particularly in certain areas like Vancouver), and that, combined with very high levels of student loans, means younger employees are just not able to put any additional money away for retirement.  There is also a growing generation of employees who are managing child care and parent care at the same time which is further impeding retirement savings.”

We keep hearing that workplace pensions are not common, but it appears from your research that participation rates are high (when a plan is available).

“This survey only included employees who were participating in their employers’ workplace retirement savings program.  So you are correct that industry stats show that overall coverage of Canadian employees by workplace savings programs is low, but our survey showed that where workplace savings programs are available, participation rates are high.”

What could be done to improve retirement savings outcomes – you mention many don’t take advantage of retirement programs and matching; any other areas for improvement?

“In Canada, DC pension plans and other CAPs are not as mature as they are in other countries such as the UK and US.  That said, we are now seeing the first generation of Canadians retiring with a full career of DC (rather than DB) retirement savings.  Appropriately, there has been a definite swing towards focusing on decumulation (outcomes) versus accumulation in such CAPs.

“From service providers like the insurance companies that do recordkeeping for workplace CAPs, this includes enhanced tools supporting financial literacy and retirement and financial planning.  Also, many firms who provide consulting services to employers for their workplace plans encourage those employers to focus on educating members and encouraging them to use the available tools and resources.

“However, if members are required to transfer funds out of group employer programs into individual savings and income vehicles (with associated higher fees and no risk pooling) when they leave employment, they will see material erosion of their retirement savings. Variable benefit income arrangements (LIF and RRIF type plans) within registered DC plans are able to be provided in most jurisdictions in Canada, but there are still many DC plans which still do not offer these.

“It is more difficult to provide variable benefits when the base plan is a group RRSP or RRSP/deferred profit sharing plan (DPSP) combination, but the insurance company recordkeepers all offer group programs which members can transition into after retirement to facilitate variable lifetime benefits.  The most recent Federal Budget was really encouraging with its announcement of legislation to support the availability of Advanced Life Deferred Annuities (ALDAs) and Variable Pay Life Annuities (VPLAs) from certain types of capital accumulation plans.

“There is still more work to be done to implement these and to ensure that they are more broadly available and affordable, but it is a definite step in the right direction.  A key benefit of the VPLAs is the pooling of mortality risk while maintaining low fees and professionally managed investment options within a group plan.  The cost to an individual of paying retail fees and managing investments and their own longevity risk can have a crippling impact on that member’s ultimate retirement income.”

We thank Rosalind Gilbert for taking the time to connect with us.

If you don’t have access to a workplace pension plan, or do but want to contribute more towards your retirement, the Saskatchewan Pension Plan may be of interest. It’s a voluntary pension plan. You decide how much to contribute (up to $6,200 per year), and your contributions are then invested for your retirement. When it’s time to turn savings into income, SPP offers a variety of annuity options that can turn your savings into a lifetime income stream.

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22

A look at the best of the Internet, from an SPP point of view

Feds roll out concept of deferred annuity to age 85

An interesting retirement idea in the recent federal budget that hasn’t garnered a lot of attention is the advanced life deferred annuity, or ALDA, option.

While there’s still lots that needs to be done to take an idea from the budget and make it into an actual product people can choose, it’s an intriguing choice.

With an ALDA, reports Advisor’s Edge, a person would be able to move some of their retirement savings from a RRIF into a deferred annuity that would start at age 85.

Right now, the article notes, “the tax rules generally require an annuity purchased with registered funds to begin after the annuitant turns 71.” This option may be a hit with those folks who don’t like the current registered retirement income fund (RRIF) rules that require you, at age 71, to either cash out their RRSP, buy an immediate annuity, or withdraw a set amount of money each year from your RRIF (which is subject to taxation). Currently, the article notes, people can choose one or all (a combination) of these options.

In the article, Doug Carroll of Meridian Credit Union says the financial industry “has for years asked to push back the age at which RRIFs have to be drawn down.”

This proposed change, “addresses that to a large extent. It limits the amount that would be subject to the RRIF minimum, and it also pushes off the time period to just short of age 85,” he states in the article.

Will we see the ALDA option soon? Well, not this year, the article states. “The ALDAs, which will apply beginning in the 2020 tax year, will be qualifying annuity purchases under an RRSP, RRIF, deferred profit sharing plan, pooled registered pension plan and defined contribution pension plan,” the article notes.

The best things to do in retirement – more work?

There’s more to retirement than just money, of course.

According to US News and World Report, the so-called “golden years” should feature more time with friends and family, travel, home improvements, volunteering, new learning, exercise and experiencing other cultures.

There’s also the idea of work – huh? “Just over a third (34 per cent) of workers envision a retirement in which they continue to work in some capacity. And 12 per cent of working Americans would like to start a business in retirement. Perhaps you can scale back to part time, take on consulting or seasonal work, or otherwise find a work schedule that also offers plenty of time for leisure pursuits,” the article advises.

Rounding out the list of retirement “to-dos” are rewarding yourself with a big-ticket car or “other expensive item,” and writing a book. Time to dust off that old Underwood!

Whatever you choose to do with the buckets of free time you experience after retiring, savings from the time you were working will be a plus. The Saskatchewan Pension Plan is like the Swiss Army Knife of retirement savings products, because it has a feature for every aspect of the cycle. You have professional investment at a low cost, flexible ways to contribute, and many options at retirement including lifetime income via an annuity. Check out www.saskpension.com today!

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing, classic rock, and darts. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22