 | James Pierlot
Founder and CEO, Blue Pier James Pierlot is the founder and Chief Executive officer of Blue Pier™, the registered trade name of Canada’s first and only Pension-Plan-as-a-Service, an innovative, institutional-class group pension solution available to public- and private-sector employers from coast to coast to coast . With 25 years of public and private sector experience in the regulation, governance and delivery of workplace retirement plans, James has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Chicago Actuarial Foundation’s John Hanson Award for his peer-reviewed publications on pension policy and advocacy for better retirement-income and benefit security, including bills presented to both Chambers of Parliament.
| Fluent in English and French, James holds degrees in Taxation Law (Osgoode Hall), Droit Civil (Université de Montréal), Droit international et Communautaire (Université d’Aix-Marseille III), Common Law (Osgoode Hall) and History (University of Western Ontario). He is a member of the C.D. Howe Institute Pension Policy Council, serves on advisory committees of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario and chaired the Financial Services Commission of Ontario Legal Advisory Committee. |  | Alex Mazer
Co-founder & Co-CEO
Common Wealth Retirement
Alex Mazer is a co-founder and co-CEO of Common Wealth, a mission-driven financial technology company that provides straightforward, portable retirement plans. To advance our mission to make it possible for everyone to have a financially secure retirement, Common Wealth focuses on serving those not covered by workplace retirement plans, including SMBs, not-for-profits, self-employed professionals, and modest earners. | Working together with our partners, Common Wealth’s innovations have included helping to create the first retirement plan in Canada for modest earners and the first group retirement plan in Canada for physicians. Common Wealth’s plans have received multiple awards for their innovative design, including a WorldPensionSummit innovation award from Pensions & Investments. Before co-founding Common Wealth, Alex served as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and in various public service roles. As Director of Policy to the Ontario Minister of Finance during the global financial crisis, Alex helped deliver major reforms to Ontario’s retirement system, helping to lay the groundwork for the recent expansion of the Canada Pension Plan. A graduate of McMaster University (as a Loran Scholar), the University of Toronto, and Harvard Law School (where he served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review). He is active in community-based volunteerism, including coaching youth baseball (currently assistant coach of West Toronto 14U AAA) and serving on the board of the Loran Scholars Foundation.
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| Brian McClennon
President & CEO
Link Investment Management As an advocate for workplace financial literacy, my mission is to anticipate the needs of corporate clients and deliver optimal solutions. With extensive experience in technology, I am driven by the belief that there is always a better way! | Listening and collaborating with clients it became evident that there was a need for the evolution of corporately sponsored benefit plans. With the KISS principle in mind we have produced a new model, the next generation for these plans. Simplicity combined with a better experience, superior administration, and improved retirement outcomes for plan members.
As an innovator I am committed to continually evolving Link’s solutions, and welcome sharing ideas with you. |
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Attend to learn:
- about the pension “coverage gap” and the practical reasons why most employers don’t offer pension coverage, despite strong evidence that employees want pensions.
- about the differences between the main types of group-retirement plans available to most small and medium-sized employers in terms of risks, workload, and tax-effectiveness for both employers and members.
- about the differences between member-selected and institutionally-managed investments with a particular focus on employers’ workload and risks, members’ experience, fees and performance.
- about the accelerating global trend away from bespoke and retail, high-cost, employer-managed, and defined benefit group retirement plans to pooled, collective, low-cost institutional DC plans managed by expert third parties.
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