Brink's Canada Joins CAAT's DBplus

CAAT Pension Plan announced that Brink's Canada looks to DBplus for a sustainable pension solution:

Employers from across the country continue to turn to CAAT's DBplus as a sustainable, secure pension alternative for their employees.

The latest organization to join CAAT's growing list of participating employers is Brink's Canada Limited. Over 750 full-time and part-time Brink's personnel – 582 from Ontario and 175 from British Columbia – represented by Unifor, joined DBplus on a go-forward basis effective July 1, 2020.

Brink's Canada was looking for a solution that would relieve the high servicing costs of administering a single employer pension plan, while continuing to provide their employees with a valuable, competitive pension. DBplus proved to be the solution, offering fixed contributions and more security for employees.

The move to DBplus also brings enhanced eligibility for all of Brink's part-time employees. In addition to the nearly 130 part-time workers who joined DBplus on July 1, another approximately 213 part-time staff, who weren't eligible to participate in the previous plan, now have the option to join DBplus.

DBplus has made lifetime defined benefit pensions accessible to more working Canadians across the country, and base planning assumptions are that the CAAT Plan, which currently has more than 63,000 members, is expected to grow by 300,000 in the next six years.

The CAAT Pension Plan is open for growth in membership from the public, private or not-for-profit sectors in Canada. This includes workplaces currently offering defined benefit pension plans, defined contribution plans, group RRSPs, and those with no current workplace retirement savings plan. Although DBplus was only opened to all Canadian workplaces in 2019, more than 15,000 members from more than 30 employers have already joined, including Postmedia, the United Way of Greater Toronto, and Saint John Airport. CAAT now has members across Canada that come from nine different industries, and has support and participation from 14 different labour unions.

Quotes

"We are delighted to welcome Brink's and its employees from Ontario and British Columbia. The popular DBplus, which delivers the promise of a lifetime pension for employees with cost certainty for employers, proved to be the right solution for Brink's and Unifor."

- Derek W. Dobson, CEO and Plan Manager, CAAT Pension Plan

"Joining CAAT has enabled Brink's Canada to provide our employees with a superior pension plan. The CAAT team was a great help in planning and transitioning to the new plan."

- John Corley, President, Brink's Canada Limited

"This move will ensure that our workers are part of a sustainable pension that will provide them secure income in retirement, which is a priority at Unifor. CAAT provides a great pension. We are very pleased to see more Unifor members joining DBplus."

- Jerry Dias, Unifor National President

About CAAT Pension Plan

Established in 1967, the CAAT Pension Plan is an independent, jointly governed, multi-employer plan that offers multiple designs of a defined benefit (DB) pension. CAAT's award-winning DBplus offering is leading to extraordinary pace of growth for the Plan. Originally established for the 24 Ontario colleges, the CAAT Plan now proudly serves more than 75 participating employers from the for-profit, non-profit and broader public sectors from across Canada, and is open for continued growth in membership where it is mutually beneficial. The CAAT Plan is respected for its pension and investment management expertise and focus on benefit security. As at January 1, 2020, the Plan had $13.5 billion in assets and was 118% funded on a going-concern basis with a $2.9 billion funding reserve, and a 10-year annual net rate of return of 10.0%. To learn more about DBplus, visit www.DBplus.ca.

About Brink's Canada Limited

Brink's is a global leader in total cash management, route-based secure logistics and payment solutions in cash-in-transit, ATM services, cash management services (including vault outsourcing, money processing and intelligent safe services), and international transportation of valuables. Brink's Canada Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brink's, Incorporated, owned by The Brink's Company, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. To learn more about Brink's Canada Limited, visit www.brinks.ca.

How fitting, Brink's Canada which safely secures the transfer of cash to banks and other businesses is now securing the retirement income of its employees.

And they have chosen CAAT Pension Plan, one of the best DB plans in the country which is now offering its services to Canadian public and private organizations via its DBplus platform.

Why is Brink's Canada striking a deal with CAAT? Jon Corley, President of Brink's Canada, said it best: "Joining CAAT has enabled Brink's Canada to provide our employees with a superior pension plan. The CAAT team was a great help in planning and transitioning to the new plan."

And it allows Brink's Canada to focus on its core business and let experts worry about the pensions of their employees.

Derek Dobson, CEO of CAAT Pension Plan, is also right: "We are delighted to welcome Brink's and its employees from Ontario and British Columbia. The popular DBplus, which delivers the promise of a lifetime pension for employees with cost certainty for employers, proved to be the right solution for Brink's and Unifor."

I'm actually helping CAAT Pension gain more clients here in Quebec (very preliminary) but I want to get the message out to all corporations looking to bolster their pension plan, before you go visit some insurance company which is going to charge you an outrageous fee to transfer the risk of your plan onto their books, go look at the DBplus solution.

CAAT Pension is very well managed, fully funded and I give it an A+ in terms of communication, administration, funding policy and investment management.

It's still a relatively small plan compared to the Canadian pension behemoths but it's growing fast and is doing a great job managing its growth.

DBplus has been growing its list of clients since the start of the year and the pandemic hasn't slowed them down.

Even Canadian lawyers are looking at DBplus and they should be as should doctors, dentists, accountants and other professionals.

In February, CAAT announced that unionized PSAC employees at Saint John Airport joined DBplus:

“The message we’re sending to all employers is clear,” said PSAC’s national president Chris Aylward in the release. “If you think defined benefit pensions can’t be restored, you’re wrong. We’ve proven that when we stand together, retirement security is never out of reach.”

The airport’s management and the union were in negotiations for almost a year. Along with the return of the DB plan, another key win was wage increases.

“I’m pleased that we have worked with the union to reach a fair agreement and I’d like to thank the negotiation teams on both sides for their diligent and respectful efforts,” said Derrick Stanford, airport president and chief executive officer. “I’m delighted that YSJ is the second airport in Canada to offer our unionized employees this progressive new pension plan.”

I cannot overemphasize the importance of joining a well-governed DB plan like CAAT or OPTrust which also ramping up its membership of Ontario non-profit organizations.

Today, the Bank of Canada released its monetary policy report and lowered the policy rate to the effective lower bound of 25 basis points (0.25%) and launched a range of liquidity facilities and purchase programs to keep markets functioning.

Importantly, and quite remarkably, the new Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, stated this:

"We are being unusually clear that interest rates are going to be unusually low for a long time. If you’ve got a mortgage, or if you’re considering to make a major purchase, or you’re a business and you’re considering making an investment, you can be confident that interest rates will be low for a long time. Low interest rates make spending and investment more affordable and spending and investment will support the recovery. That would be our message to Canadians."

Now, I have enormous respect for Tiff Macklem but this is the comment I posted on LinkedIn:

Quite unbelievable, our central banker is telling over-indebted Canadians to go out and borrow more but will the Bank of Canada (BoC) guarantee the principal? Long term for the BoC now is the next two years, which is quite short-term for a business looking to invest over the next ten years. The Bank is buying a minimum of $5 billion of Canadian bonds every week so foreign fixed income portfolio managers are borrowing at zero and buying Canadian bonds, swapping out currency risk. This is why the loonie isn't tanking despite the record high deficit as bond flows are flowing into Canada. The Bank is basically telling the federal government not to worry about the $343 billion projected deficit as they will keep buying Canadian bonds so Mr. Trudeau can keep spending his heart away. This all begs the question: why do Canadians have one of the highest tax rates in the world if the central bank can finance this folly indefinitely? Central banks around the world are destroying capitalism and forcing retired seniors to speculate on stocks or risk pension poverty. And if rates start rising unexpectedly, watch out, it will be a bloodbath out there.

I don't expect rates to soar over the next two years but you never know.

The point I'm making is if central banks keep manipulating the yield curve to finance deficit spending, then rates will remain ultra low, forcing everyone including seniors on a fixed income to speculate on stocks.

And if rates remain ultra low, I can guarantee you stocks will remain ultra volatile.

In this low rate world, you want to be invested with a large, well-governed pension which can take intelligent risks around the world investing across public and private markets.

This is why I was a huge proponent of enhancing the CPP for all Canadians (managed by CPPIB) and why I welcome more initiatives like CAAT's DBplus and OPTrust's Select.

What about Canadians with no DB pension? My best advice is to invest wisely in a low fee well managed mutual fund like the Mawer Balanced Fund but let me be clear, that's not as good as a defined-benefit plan which offers you a safe, secure defined benefit pension for life no matter what happens in the stock market.

Alternatively, you can invest all your money in the Nasdaq (buy QQQ) and pray you have enough money when the time comes to retire but if the tech bubble implodes right before you retire, you'll be eating cat food for dinner.

Anyway, I'd better stop there as I'm scaremongering and being overly pessimistic (pension poverty in Canada isn't as bad as in other countries as we have OAS and GIS for seniors on a very modest income).

Lastly, please take the time to read my review of CAAT's 2019 results.

To all the new members of CAAT DBplus, know this, you're in very good and competent hands.

To all prospective members, don't think twice about joining CAAT's DBplus, it will be one of the wisest decisions you'll make for your company and more importantly, for your employees as they will be a lot happier knowing they will have access to a lifetime pension.

Below, CAAT's president & CEO Derek Dobson discusses the annual year-in-review webinar on benefit security. Derek is an exceptional communicator and extremely well-informed on pension design and funding. He offers a great overview and I also embedded highlights from the 2019 year.

Also, Ed Devlin, former head of Canadian Portfolio Management at PIMCO provides his take on the Bank of Canada's interest rate decision and latest comments.

Low rates for a very long time? You'd better get yourself a great DB pension or risk never being able to retire or retiring in pension poverty. Either way, don't think twice about joining CAAT's DBplus.