{"id":18041,"date":"2020-04-13T09:30:22","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T13:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benefitscanada.com\/news\/cap-members-seeking-reassurance-but-arent-changing-investments-144974"},"modified":"2020-04-13T09:30:22","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T13:30:22","slug":"cap-members-seeking-reassurance-but-not-changing-investments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2020\/04\/13\/cap-members-seeking-reassurance-but-not-changing-investments\/","title":{"rendered":"CAP members seeking reassurance but not changing investments"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Copyright <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Martha Porado <\/span> | April 13, 2020 <\/p>\n

While a flurry of capital accumulation plan member activity might indicate their anxiety amid an economic crisis, not many are choosing to make changes to their investments right now.<\/p>\n

In meeting with record keepers, Rosalind<\/span> Gilbert, associate partner in the<\/span> retirement and investment consulting group at Aon, says plan sponsors are more eager than usual for data on CAP member behaviour. \u201cGiven that it\u2019s a particularly crazy time, we asked the record keepers to bring more information \u2014 Are <\/span>members phoning the call centre way more? What are they asking about? Where are they going on the member portal and what kind of things are they doing?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past few years, CAP members have tended to favour online portals as a source of information on their retirement benefits. However, during the coronavirus crisis, record keepers have been inundated with phone calls and don\u2019t have the capacity to handle that massive influx, although the industry quickly hired additional staff to return wait times to their regular levels. \u201cRecently, it\u2019s the call centre volume that\u2019s gone up and the numbers are ridiculous, like 3,000 per cent,\u201d says Gilbert.<\/p>\n

Read: Will coronavirus push changes to CAP landscape forward?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

By and large, she says plan members aren\u2019t having a knee-jerk reaction to market crash in terms of moving their money. Rather, they\u2019re calling to ask questions and seeking reassurance that there\u2019s someone they can talk to about their concerns. \u201c\u2018What should I be doing? And what should I be thinking about? And where do I go to get this information?\u2019 It\u2019s not huge, crazy reactions that record keepers were concerned about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, during the month of March, Sun Life Financial only saw 1.8 per cent of CAP members asking to make changes to their investments, says Shawn Kauth, the insurer\u2019s assistant vice-president of strategy, product and partnerships for group retirement services. <\/span><\/p>\n

Given the circumstances, that compares favourably to the less than one per cent who\u2019d typically ask to make a change during a month, he says, noting not all these plan members are looking to mitigate risk either.<\/p>\n

Read: Gather data on CAP member behaviour to inform communications in a crisis<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they\u2019re making a change, about 47 per cent of them are choosing to de-risk. They\u2019re going to funds with less equity exposure,\u201d says Kauth. \u201cBut a third of them are going to funds with a little bit more, so they\u2019re seizing an opportunity. It\u2019s not a big volume and, generally, [members are] becoming a bit more conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spike in plan member calls to Sun Life has now tapered off, he says, likely due to increased transparency in how the government is handling the virus, including subsidy programs. However, he believes another jump in activity might be on the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe full wave of the impact of layoffs has not yet hit. The insurers and the record keepers, we\u2019re not seeing massive terminations or withdrawals yet. We haven\u2019t seen any reduction or change in the volume of contributions . . . but I expect we might start to see that. Some members will stop contributing or change their contribution levels. We haven\u2019t quite gotten to that stage, but that\u2019s the sort of thing we\u2019re taking a look for. We\u2019re watching out for those leading indicators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read: Are CAP sponsors changing contribution rates amid coronavirus?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martha Porado  | April 13, 2020 While a flurry of capital accumulation plan member activity might indicate their anxiety amid an economic crisis, not many are choosing to make changes to their investments right now....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}