1 / 18

CIA Annual Meeting Assemblée annuelle de l’ICA

CIA Annual Meeting Assemblée annuelle de l’ICA. June 29 & 30, 2006 Ÿ Les 29 et 30 juin 2006 Ottawa, Ontario. PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report. CIA Annual Meeting Assemblée annuelle de l’ICA. Hrvoje Lakota Mercer Human Resource Consulting. PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report.

Download Presentation

CIA Annual Meeting Assemblée annuelle de l’ICA

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. CIA Annual MeetingAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA June 29 & 30, 2006 Ÿ Les 29 et 30 juin 2006 Ottawa, Ontario PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  2. CIA Annual MeetingAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA Hrvoje Lakota Mercer Human Resource Consulting PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  3. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • Monsanto – Two years later • In July of 2004 the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal in the Monsanto case. This: • Brought (some) closure to the longstanding Monsanto pension dispute, at least for Monsanto • Confirmed the requirement under Ontario law to distribute surplus on the partial wind-up of a pension plan. • What has happened since then? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  4. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • Surplus distributions for many small, and simple, partial wind-ups have been settled • Complicated situations with significant amounts of surplus are still largely unresolved • Numerous questions remain unanswered, with the resulting litigation risk for plan sponsors PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  5. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • What the Supreme Court said: • Members affected by a partial wind-up are entitled to same benefits as on a full wind-up • Surplus assets related to the partial wind-up group have to be distributed from the plan PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  6. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • What the Supreme Court did not say: • How should the assets attributable to the partial wind-up group be determined? • If the surplus is distributed to employees, how should it be divided among individuals? • What happens in provinces other than Ontario or with multi-jurisdictional plans? • How should old partial wind-ups (some from 10-15 years ago) or newly declared historical partial wind-ups be dealt with? • … PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  7. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • What does this mean for plan sponsors? • Potentially unlimited liability with limited ways of mitigating risk • Definition of a “partial wind-up” under the PBA not clear • No statute of limitations for Superintendent forcing a declaration of a partial wind-up (potentially back to 1960s) PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  8. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • What are plan sponsors doing? • Some companies are trying to mitigate the risk of having their decisions challenged in the future by seeking negotiated settlements and/or guidance from courts • Companies are also reconsidering: • Ad-hoc benefit improvements • DB promise • Funding policy and targets (i.e. geared to be <100% funded on solvency basis) • Segregation of assets for PWU group PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  9. Unresolved Issues / Questions PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  10. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • To which jurisdictions does the Monsanto decision apply? • Ontario  • Federal ? • Other provinces ? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  11. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • How should the surplus at the partial wind-up date be determined? and Should past partial wind-up balance sheets be re-determined? • The purpose is no longer simply to show that the plan has sufficient assets for payment of basic benefits • Difficult (in some cases impossible) to accurately estimate the cost of purchasing annuities, especially for large indexed pension plans PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  12. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • What happens if the partial wind-up covers a lengthy period of time (e.g. 2 years) • What date should be used as the “partial wind-up date”? • What date should the surplus be determined at? • What if the surplus level changes (materially) during the partial wind-up period? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  13. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • How should the plan assets be divided for partial wind-up purposes in a multi-jurisdiction plan? • Pro-rata on: • Going concern liabilities? • Solvency liabilities without grow-in? • Solvency liabilities with grow-in? • Other approaches? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  14. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • If there was surplus at the time of the partial wind-up, how much surplus exists today? • Interest method • Balance sheet method • What if there was no surplus at the time of the partial wind-up but there is surplus today? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  15. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • How should surplus be allocated among the affected members? • FSCO has indicated a preference for distribution in proportion to liabilities • Other methods may be possible, especially if all affected members have accepted the method PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  16. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • How should plan improvements be treated? • Should improvements made coincidental with a past partial wind-up be considered a distribution of surplus? Are they considered use of surplus? • What about subsequent improvements, such as ad hoc pension increases? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  17. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • Do annuities have to be purchased or can the benefits remain in the plan? PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

  18. CIA Annual Meeting ŸAssemblée annuelle de l’ICA • Other legal issues / questions: • Who does the surplus belong to? • What if the surplus belongs to the employer? • Risk of undeclared partial wind-ups? • How far back do the companies have to go? • How to mitigate the risks that the plan sponsors / administrators are facing? • … PEN-4 Monsanto Status Report

More Related