Plan details
Flexible online platform
The plan’s user-friendly digital platform makes it easy to save and manage your retirement plan, whether you’re logged in on desktop or through your mobile device.
The plan’s online dashboard shows you a snapshot of your projected retirement income, your savings target, and if you’re on track to meet your retirement savings goal. The platform is designed to help you increase contributions and transfer in additional funds, as well as update your plan as your financial situation changes.
While the plan is designed so you can manage it on your own, the OMA Insurance team can support you through the enrolment process and answer questions to help you get the most out of your plan. Please keep in mind that OMA Insurance staff does not provide investment advice.
Savings and contributions
When you’re planning for retirement, one big question is whether you are saving too much or too little. How do you know if your savings are enough to last you for as long as you live? The Advantages Retirement Plan™ helps you figure out what is “just enough.”
The plan incorporates insights from behavioural economics to help members save sooner rather than later. When a person starts saving early and saves an adequate amount on a regular and consistent basis, financing retirement becomes much more cost-effective.
In the enrolment process, you will set a target retirement income and choose how much to contribute to your Advantages Retirement Plan™ savings accounts on a monthly basis.
Setting your target retirement income
The Advantages Retirement Plan™ offers an easy-to-use, self-serve online platform that helps you calculate your target retirement income once you provide a few data points, so that you don’t have to do the calculations yourself.
Physicians have tended to rely on personal savings and government benefits since they haven’t usually had access to group retirement plans. This is where the Advantages Retirement Plan™ comes in as a group retirement savings plan to help OMA members and their spouses/common-law partners.
As you enrol in the Advantages Retirement Plan™, you will go through the process of setting your target retirement income — how much you want to have as your monthly income when you retire — based on just a handful of inputs, such as your current age, desired retirement age, and annual pre-tax income. Given this information, the plan will automatically calculate for you approximately how much to expect from government retirement benefits. A default monthly savings rate will also be provided during the enrolment process.
Contributing to grow your nest egg
With the Advantages Retirement Plan™, you can contribute in a few ways:
Choose monthly contribution amounts to be deducted from your bank account once a month
How much do I save on a monthly basis now?
The Advantages Retirement Plan™ provides a default monthly savings amount to help you achieve your target retirement income. This monthly target is based on a few data points, such as your existing savings, your projected government benefits, and your retirement date.
To participate in the plan, you can start with as little as $50 a month. You can always revisit and change your monthly contribution amount later, simply by going back to the Advantages Retirement Plan™ online platform.
Where do I put my savings?
You can choose to contribute your monthly savings to a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) and/or a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) account within your plan. The Advantages Retirement Plan™ will set a default contribution allocation split between your TFSA and RRSP accounts, which you can change at any time, including when you first create your retirement plan.
Transfer in existing assets into your Advantages Retirement Plan™
You can transfer existing RRSP, TFSA, and Registered Retirement Income Fund (RRIF) funds into the Advantages Retirement Plan™. A direct transfer has no impact on your TFSA or RRSP contribution room. This way, all your savings can start benefitting from the cost-effective approach in the Advantages Retirement Plan™. Also, direct transfers can happen at any time. There may be costs associated with transferring from your financial institution, so please check beforehand.
Make lump-sum contributions
Flexible one-time lump-sum contributions can be made to the Advantages Retirement Plan™ at any time, once you’ve completed the enrolment process.
Auto-escalation
The Advantages Retirement Plan™ offers an auto-escalation feature that will automatically increase your monthly contributions on an annual basis to keep up with annual inflation rates and your income growth. If you want to start with an amount that is less than the default monthly savings rate, the auto-escalation feature is helpful in putting you on an automatic path to reach your default savings rate over five years or less, depending on your preference for the time horizon. You can always opt out of the auto-escalation feature, including when you initially sign up.
