Experts believe the digital tool would help Canadians keep on top of retirement planning
Retirement planning in Canada is becoming increasingly complicated and a new platform is needed to help Canadians keep on top of their pensions and other savings, according to a new report.
With the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans, many Canadians are left with a fragmented picture of their retirement savings, especially as accounts are scattered across financial institutions.
The C.D. Howe Institute report says that few people have a clear sense of how their savings will translate into sustainable income, fuelling anxiety about financial security.
The report says that a national pension dashboard could be a game changer by bringing together all retirement savings and entitlements into one digital platform where users would be able to see their Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security, workplace pensions, RRSPs, and other savings.
Similar tools are already used in Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
“How can Canadians make optimal decisions if they don’t have a straightforward way to see how savings and entitlements translate into monthly income?” asks senior fellow Kathryn BushBush, a member of the C.D. Howe Institute Pension Policy Council and former chair of the Association for Canadian Pension Management’s National Policy Committee. “We need a modern and accessible tool that gives them an accurate picture of their expected retirement income – without needing to be an expert.”
Canada already has partial infrastructure in place, such as the CRA’s “My Account” and the Canadian Retirement Income Calculator, but these require manual input and don’t consolidate data from all sources.
With recent improvements in data reporting and the potential for AI-powered integration, there is scope to build a comprehensive, secure, and easy-to-use dashboard.
A centralized platform could also reunite Canadians with forgotten or lost pension accounts, which has left billions of dollars unclaimed. It would also support administrative efficiency for pension providers, who currently struggle to track down “missing members.”
Bush says that the dashboard must be secure and give users control over who can access their data, but to reduce costs Canada can draw on existing systems and implement a real-time data retrieval model rather than maintaining a massive centralized database.
Collaboration among federal and provincial governments, along with input from financial institutions and pension administrators, will be key.
“A pension dashboard that is cost-effective, secure, and accessible could be life changing. concludes Bush. “Canadians need a clear roadmap for retirement – and the time to build it is now.”
