Adding the Right Group Retirement Program

Canadian Group Retirement Plans
Greater Toronto Area   |   Founded in 1998   |   Manufacturing   |   120 Employees

Company Background

For most of this Canadian manufacturer company’s life-span, they employed under 15 staff. Then with some new investment and innovations, they saw rapid growth - growing to 80 employees in 2 years and adding another 40 more in the following 5 years.

The problem once the dust settled, and they were at their optimal size of 120 employees—their benefits program was still stuck at 15 employees. Their benefits program didn’t reflect what an employee or prospective employee would come to expect from a 120-employee manufacturing company.

Their health and dental benefits were ok but could be improved.

The glaring issue for this business — no group retirement plan. They knew they needed to implement some kind of group retirement program to retain and attract key employees.

Challenges

  1. The company was profitable and doing well, but with thin margins, they didn't have money for a group retirement program ‘laying around'.
  2. Demographics for this company varied greatly throughout the organization. It included employees of different generations, occupations (engineers, sales, and line workers mainly), family status’ and financial status and goals. Whatever group retirement plan was implemented had to be a win for everyone. They needed to find the right plan for their organization.
  3. Despite the rapid growth and management confidence that they were at the right size, HR and Finance were spread thin and could not afford to spend any significant amount of time on the maintenance and employee support of a new program.

How NextGen Advisors Helped Them

  1. After a deep dive into this Canadian companies' health, dental, and disability programs, NextGen Advisors found some glaring inefficiencies. A company under 15 employees might not be able to solve these inefficiencies due to a different set of available products and solutions available for small businesses. But at 120 employees, the inefficiencies in their health, dental, and disability programs, were solved with NextGen specific innovations. NextGen advisores were able to sustainably reduce this companies' benefits costs by nearly 20%. These savings, combined with the cost of living adjustment raise they planned to provide, more than covered their cost of adding a group retirement program for their employees.
  2. Old traditional group retirement programs do little for younger employees who still have student debt, are saving for a home (or bigger home) and/or are starting a family. They often only appeal to aging demographics who see retirement on the horizon. NextGen advisors implemented a creative and proven program that allows all employees, regardless of life stage to save for what matters most to them in a tax-effective, and financially efficient way.

NextGen implemented a streamlined admin system, backstopped by best in class employee support, education and resources, ensuring the HR and Finance teams were not taken away from their important projects and day to day tasks.