Townley - Pension Calculations Specialist - Burnaby, Canada - Pacific Blue Cross

Pacific Blue Cross

Verified Company

Burnaby, Canada

2 weeks ago

Posted by:

Sophia Lee

beBee Recruiter

Description

Job Summary

Under the general supervision of the Team Leader, provides complex technical analysis and pension estimating services for members of D.A.

Townley-administered pension plans on request or upon member retirement, termination or death including calculating pension benefits, options and alternatives for member consideration, preparing pension estimates and custodian instructions, distributing estimates to members following peer review and responding directly to member inquiries.

Conducts peer review of calculations performed by other team members.

Executes a variety of annual or special pension administration projects such as determining eligibility for transfer deficiency payments, contributions reciprocity, pension adjustments or reversals for RSP purposes and year end pension reconciliations for selected plans.

Job Duties

_Pension Estimates_

Provides complex technical analysis and pension estimating services for members of D.A.

Townley - administered pension plans on request, or upon member retirement, termination or death by:

a. receiving, reviewing and analyzing a diverse range of confidential and sensitive information relating to member and plan history such as marital circumstances, historical changes in pension regulations, plan amendments made during the life of the plan, the existence of cost certificates, accrued contributions, funds under management, member retirement philosophies and preferences, present versus future value, mortality tables and other information provided by actuarial specialists;

b. identifying various factors affecting pension estimates such as interest rate, pension accrual rate or early retirement reduction rate;

c. calculating pension benefits, options and alternatives for member consideration including those with tax and retirement income planning vehicles such as locked in RSPs, LIFs, RRIFs, Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits;

e. matching previously-calculated estimates to current scenarios and updating calculations to reflect changes in circumstances and valuations;

f. receiving notices from the estates or beneficiaries of deceased members, advising custodians to cease retirement benefits, and calculating pre-retirement death benefits depending on beneficiary and spousal status

g. preparing pension estimate templates and statements following completion of calculations and submitting to colleagues and/or actuaries for peer review;

h. updating, adjusting and/or correcting documentation following peer review and distributing estimates to members;

i. preparing custodian instructions, making closing entries and updating a variety of manual and automated system information to reflect current member status;

j. responding to member inquiries directly, explaining how calculations were conducted and clarifying available options.

Conducts peer reviews of calculations performed by team members to ensure calculations meet the test of reasonableness and accompanying documentation is accurate and follows established rules and guidelines.

_Special Projects_

Determines eligibility on an annual basis for members qualifying for transfer deficiency payments for the funded portion of selected pension plans. Prepares and distributes information packages. Responds to payment requests by calculating payment amounts based on the funded portion plus interest.
Calculates pension adjustment (PA)/pension adjustment reversal (PAR) amounts to determine RSP headroom left after annual contributions made by employees and reports amounts to plan custodians for T4 production purposes.
Prepares year end pension reconciliations for selected plans and generates contributor statements of status and amounts paid into the plan.
Calculates annual cost of living adjustments for pensioners of affected pension plans and forwards required adjustments to the plan custodian for action.

_General Team and Department Support_

Using the advanced features of Excel including nested functions, IF statements, lookups, pivot tables, named ranges and filters, updates existing spreadsheets used to prepare a variety of reconciliations, refund listings, mail merges and text conversions to other formats. Using the intermediate features of Word including character and paragraph formatting, footers/headers, clip art and page borders, updates pension plan documentation for inclusion in pension estimate packages for members.
May perform selected duties of the Pension Billings Administrator including processing disbursements and preparing letters of notice for pension plan contributors approaching age 71.
Maintains up to date knowledge of pension rules, policies, procedures, and best practices, system requirements, terminology and other information related to the provision of pension administration services through continuous learning initiatives.
Performs other assigned duties related to the provision of pension administration services and