June 16 Benefits and Pensions Monitor Daily News Alerts
Joe Hornyak
Former editor of Benefits and Pensions Monitor and founder of Joe Hornyak Communications
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Analytics Allow Leveraging Of Technology
With the advent of all of the analytics recently given to healthcare providers, there is “the opportunity to leverage technology to predict and to be able to engage with all of the different touch points to really ensure the right access to information and get members the right care at the right time and, in particular, the right way,” says Donna Carbell, head of group benefits at Manulife. She told the ‘Health by Design – How Science and Technology Support Health and Wellness’ session at the Canadian Pension & Benefits Institute’s ‘Forum 2021’ that, however, “you want to automate the right claims ? those pretty routine dental or those drug visits” as not everything needs to be automated. The exciting part about data technology is knowing when to automate and when to engage. “We don't always get it right, but I think there's at least an opportunity,” she said. The other thing that needs to be remembered through all of this “is the science and the innovation that's happening around us in healthcare is so exciting,” she said. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, are making advancements with treatment programs on rare disease. “I know we get very scared about the cost of that, but really the value that those drugs are providing to a member to get them back to health is incredibly important,” said Carbell. “So, we want to continue to look for opportunities there.” As well, advancements in diagnostics like predictive analytics or pharmacogenetics, for example, are “so exciting that we can diagnose and help get access to the right treatment and connect people.”
ACPM Backs End To Solvency Funding
The Association of Canadian Pension Management (ACPM) recommends Saskatchewan moves to partial solvency funding or no solvency funding, with enhanced going concern funding, for defined benefit pension plans in the private sector. Saskatchewan’s ‘Consultation Paper: The Pension Benefits Act, 1992 A Review of the Pension Funding Framework For Single Employer Defined Benefit Plans In the Private Sector’ sets out two general options to consider ? changing the way in which solvency deficiencies are funded and, the ACPM’s preferred approach, partial solvency funding or no solvency funding, with enhanced going concern funding. It prefers this because it does not believe the changes under first approach significantly remove the issue of high funding costs in low interest rate environments. That approach starts with the existing solvency rules and attempts to address the cost, volatility, and asymmetric risk issues to the plan sponsor with options that will reduce or eliminate contributions that would otherwise be required. With all these modifications, one must, therefore, question the very rationale behind the solvency liability as a measure of the pension benefit to be funded in the first place, says the ACPM. It is preferable to start with the ongoing measure of the pension obligation and then strengthening those funding rules to improve benefit security which the second approach does. It says similar approaches to the going concern funding rules were recently introduced in Québec and Ontario to reduce the volatility and magnitude of DB plan funding requirements, although in some cases, the total funding obligations may be higher than under the current funding model.
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