‘It creates unequalness, maybe even unfairness, as to how the system works,’ says CAAT’s Jillian Kennedy
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Benefits and Pensions Monitor is recognizing the critical issues women face in the pensions, investment and benefits space and those who aim to better the industry. Happy Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day!
The decumulation landscape in Canada has a gender problem. Notably, the tools designed to help people transition from saving to spending in retirement are not built for the realities most women face.
That is the view espoused by Jillian Kennedy, newly appointed chief operating officer at CAAT Pension Plan, who sees several major gaps in how the system serves women approaching retirement.
The first, Kennedy acknowledged is the most obvious, pointing out that longevity risk is being underestimated. Science suggests people will live far longer than previous generations, and that will stretch the retirement window without extending the working one.
"I think women in particular, because they do live longer on average, because of some of the behavioral characteristics that might have them saving later, or gaps in their work, they're definitely going to be impacted more than their counterparts," she said. “These are risks that already exist for everyone, regardless of gender but women will be over impacted and that that's just something that I think I watch because it could be detrimental to that cohort.”
Second, she points to behavioural realities, noting research and practice show that women are more likely than men to prioritise stability and security. Kennedy argues that this is a difference in preference, not capability, but it shapes how women use advice and planning tools as they tend to lean on calculators, projections, and advisers rather than guesswork, and must figure out how a lump-sum balance can sustain an income over time.
However, the problem in her view, is that most of these tools still assume a simple, linear career and earnings pattern. They don’t reflect the fact that women move in and out of the workforce more often and continue to face pay inequities, which directly translate into lower pension contributions.
To that end, she stressed that this misalignment doesn’t only affect women. For example, anyone in a vulnerable or non-traditional position like workers with disabilities or new Canadians can find the models unworkable. But she sees women as disproportionately exposed compared with men in the same system.
Julie Seberras, head of wealth planning and practice management at Manulife Wealth agrees with Kennedy, who also challenges the assumption that aging in place is a viable default. While more than 90 per cent of Canadians say they want to stay in their homes, the reality is more complicated as many houses are not physically suited to aging, retrofitting may not solve the problem, and family members who step in as caregivers may have to sacrifice their own income and financial plans to do so, she said. Seberras suggests this makes retirement planning a multi-generational issue, not just an individual one.
“This can be a multi-generational conversation as well so you really have to be thinking of these what if scenarios and that longevity. We can’t be super aspirational, that everybody's healthy and living to life expectancy. We have to think about death, disability, divorce, widowhood and really consider the impact to the financial plan if that happens,” noted Seberras.
The third gap, in her view, is investment outcomes and risk. According to Kennedy, on average, women earn lower investment returns than men, which she links to a more conservative risk tolerance driven by the desire for security and gaps in understanding how investment choices tie into lifestyle.
She is notably concerned about sequence-of-returns risk, which she describes as “where you're living and dying by your account balance.” Kennedy noted large crashes that occur every couple of decades can wipe out 20–50 per cent of portfolio value.
Considering events like divorce, which can split or erode retirement assets, she sees a landscape in which a converted retirement balance is far from guaranteed. When taken together, she views these factors as creating structural inequities.
"These are kind of the things that we watch pretty closely, where we just think that it creates unequalness, maybe even unfairness as to how the system works and how it might not be built for the modernized women in our career," she said.
Kennedy argues the industry talks about financial literacy without interrogating how education is designed or delivered. Generic programs ignore that women's careers and care responsibilities differ from men's, so they fail to build real confidence. She wants practical, personalised education embedded in workplace wellness, tailored to "today's woman" and tied to everyday financial decisions.
Mid-career, around ages 40–45, is where she sees the critical intervention point. Rather than pushing people straight to traditional advice which are often linked to product sales, she noted, she favours employer-backed access to counselling, debt management, budgeting, and basic savings skills. She compares it to how employers adopted telehealth, using scale to secure neutral, third-party support without assuming full fiduciary liability.
Seberras is equally concerned about financial literacy gaps among older women, many of whom took a back seat on household finances. For example, when a husband dies, she noted it’s the worst moment to start learning how money works. Meanwhile, sometimes women do not even know certain accounts exist.
"It is not unheard of that it is a pension plan that belonged to the male spouse, and the female spouse had no idea it was even there," she noted. “I can’t emphasize financial literacy enough.”
On tools, Kennedy emphasized that most insurer-built models cap projections at a set age and assume a tidy J-curve spending pattern through retirement. They break down when workers try to add DB pensions, personal assets, or a spouse's savings. She believes they aren’t sophisticated enough to integrate all "three-legged stool" components of retirement income, leaving employees to draw down workplace savings without understanding their full picture.
Moving forward, Kennedy underscored how the industry needs to move away from product-first design toward managed accounts built around actual behaviour, needs, and real-life scenarios.
She acknowledged the restated CAP guidelines is a meaningful shift as the updated guidelines clarify these tools can create risk and that plan sponsors have a responsibility to evaluate them.
Rather than limiting governance reviews to service standards, investment returns, or member behaviour, plan sponsors should be examining the assumptions embedded in the tools themselves, noted Kennedy.
She wants employers to stress-test those tools against their own workforce demographics like asking how a projection model serves a population skewed toward early-career Gen Z employees.
"That will empower employers to actually create better education programs, better roadmaps, or, potentially, in some cases, complement those tools with internal resources that make it easier to understand or suppress those tools until members get to a particular age or stage," she said. “That's a really practical way for employers to start.”
