Case Study: Government of New Brunswick achieves secure, sustainable Shared Risk Pension Plan with TELUS Health

Morneau Shepell’s role in the design of New Brunswick’s Shared Risk Pension Plan model

Morneau Shepell served as actuary and advisor to the Government of New Brunswick and its expert task force to address chronic funding and structural problems in defined benefit pension plans — including solvency and going‑concern shortfalls, financial stability, intergenerational equity, and benefit transparency.

The team designed a Shared Risk Pension Plan that ties benefits to actual experience, using integrated asset/liability modelling and extensive stress‑testing (2,000 simulations over 20 years, i.e., 40,000 years of modelling) which showed base benefits would be secure in over 97.5% of scenarios and ancillary benefits would average about 75%+ of target. The model was recommended in May 2012, enabling legislation followed two months later, and the approach has since been adopted and praised for making pensions more secure, sustainable and predictable.

Government of New Brunswick