Associate Director, Actuary

University Pension Plan Ontario; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading pension plan as an Associate Director, Actuary, where you will leverage your extensive experience to enhance pension administration and support strategic initiatives. This role offers a hybrid work environment and the opportunity to work with a dedicated team focused on member service and innovation.

Benefits

Work from abroad up to eight weeks/year

Extended paramedical and mental health service coverage

Health care and lifestyle spending accounts

Fertility treatments and paid parental leave

Education Assistance program

Qualifications

• 10+ years in actuarial valuations and pension administration.
• Fellowship in the Canadian Institute of Actuaries required.

Responsibilities

• Manage pension administration tools and ensure compliance.
• Mentor actuarial staff and support corporate finance activities.

Skills

Interpersonal Skills

Project Management

Attention to Detail

Mathematical Rigor

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Actuarial Science

Post-Graduate Degree in Mathematics

Tools

MS Office

Job description

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UPP is the first pension plan of its kind in Ontario’s university sector, proudly serving over 41,000 members across five universities and fourteen sector organizations. Our purpose is to bring greater retirement peace of mind to the university sector by investing with integrity and serving members with care. As a sector-wide plan designed for growth, our doors are open to all Ontario universities.

Together, we’re a team of progressive thinkers and agile doers operating within a fast-paced culture of collaboration and respect. We believe in bringing smart and capable people together to create, solve, and grow with a clear shared vision and values of integrity, inclusivity, ingenuity, and impact. Our culture is intentionally welcoming and purposefully rooted in equity, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation (EDI&R). We believe diverse teams, perspectives, and lived experiences contribute to better decisions and a better workplace.

As a pension plan, UPP approaches investing through a long-term lens to generate and safeguard value. Our commitment to investing responsibly accounts for material risks that impact our investment portfolio to generate sufficient risk-adjusted returns to meet the pension needs of our members.

Join us in building a bright future for our members, our organization, and each other.

THE ROLE

This is an exciting opportunity for an exceptional individual to join a team of high performing professionals and make a significant impact. There are numerous opportunities to take ownership of projects from inception to completion in this role.

Reporting to the Senior Director, Actuary, the Associate Director, Actuary will build strong trusted relationships with internal stakeholders in support of the Pension Services strategic imperative to deliver world class service to our members through the timely and accurate delivery of administrative projects. This role is also responsible for supporting the corporate finance, pension plan engagement activities, and periodic actuarial requests from the Office of the CEO at UPP as needed from time to time. As such, the Associate Director, Actuary will have a role in mentoring and motivating actuarial and finance staff to create a high performing team dynamic with a focus on delivering exceptional outcomes.

This role is based in downtown Toronto under a hybrid work policy, allowing employees the flexibility to work remotely and in-office (approximately two days per week in-office).

SPECIFIC ACCOUNTABILITIES

The Associate Director will be contributing to projects with high impact to UPP, which requires deep understanding of the pension administration and collaborating with cross-functional teams. In this capacity, the role will have a variety of duties, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Manage and contribute to the development and maintenance of pension administration off-system tools for exception handling and audits of the pension administration system while ensuring regulatory compliance and acceptable actuarial standards of practice.
• Contribute to the development of a governance framework around the tools developed for pension administration to ensure the process can be audited by UPP’s internal and external auditors.
• Supporting periodic audits of member data from UPP’s pension administration system to support external auditors, internal auditors, and UPP’s Pension Services and Corporate Finance teams as such audits are completed to ensure the data used in the system is reliable and consistent.
• Perform research on ad hoc topics or calculation issues and recommend changes to plan administration policies or assumptions to the Senior Director, Actuary
• Reviewing and resolve escalated calculations that are of a special or complex nature or providing actuarial advice on interpretations of provincial pension legislation or federal pension tax rules
• Act as a subject matter expert of UPP plan provisions and calculations
• Reviewing plan terms and actuarial standards as they impact calculations where no clear plan rules or prior administration practices exist. Liaising with external actuaries and collaborating with UPP legal to gather opinions on precedent setting administration questions and cases.
• Collaborate and share best practices with internal stakeholders and external service providers to ensure efficient and timely delivery of pension calculations
• Mentor actuarial and pension services staff to conduct such verifications of calculations and the creation and maintenance of tools
• Working with internal stakeholders to recommend plan amendments for onboarding new universities while considering cost, legislative requirements, and practical implementation challenges
• Continuously improving and innovating through research and analysis on actuarial methodologies, pension regulation, relevant accounting standards, etc.
• Actuarial analysis as requested for UPP’s Active Engagement and Onboarding Teams. This includes preparing and reviewing side-by-side comparisons of pension plan provisions of universities interested to join UPP, preparing and reviewing member accrued pension comparison graphs, reviewing illustrative defined contribution to defined benefit pension calculations, performing funded status projections for interested universities, and helping with any inquiries from the Outreach Teams regarding UPP plan funding, risk management, or pension legislation.
• Assisting UPP’s Corporate Finance team with the annual preparation of UPP’s audited financial statements and UPP’s Annual Report. Corporate Finance support includes checking monthly updates to UPP’s Notional Tracking system and liaising with either UPP’s auditors or external actuaries on either Notional Tracking or annual audit checks.
• Supporting CEO requests related to UPP’s strategy for long-term funding, growth, and sustainability.
• Support regular reporting to UPP’s leadership team and Board of Trustees, as required
• Other projects and activities, as required

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s Degree or Post-Graduate Degree in Actuarial Science, Mathematics, or equivalent
• Approximately 10 or more years of experience in a professional consulting firm environment or other large pension plan performing actuarial valuations, pension administration, pension accounting, and other related consulting assignments
• Completion of Fellowship in the Canadian Institute of Actuaries with five or more years of experience post-fellowship
• Strong programming skills and an in-depth command of MS Office (especially Excel and PowerPoint)
• Knowledge of Ontario pension legislation, federal pension tax rules, accounting standards, and actuarial standards as they apply to pension administration and preparation of pension plan financial statements

SKILLS & ATTRIBUTES

• Deep pension administration knowledge
• Demonstrated ability to meet high-performance standards
• Excellent interpersonal skills and a positive attitude; able to build positive relationships within the UPP and with external stakeholders
• Excellent project management skills
• Exceptional attention to detail and strong mathematical rigor while also maintaining the ability to think broadly and creatively
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Strong commitment to innovation and continuous improvement
• Ability to prioritize and manage work on multiple initiatives while maintaining a calm, pleasant demeanor in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
• Strong commitment to innovation and continuous improvement
• A nimble, resourceful team player/leader who thrives in a scale-up environment

LIFE AT UPP

Do work that matters. We are duty-bound to serve our members’ interests, and it’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. That’s why we’ve ingrained sustainability in our work from day one—to ensure our members have a resilient future to retire into, both today and for generations to come.

Stronger together. Collaboration is how UPP was born, and it’s how we work with each other and our partners day in, day out. No one at UPP is just a number (even if they are excellent at math) and every win is a shared win.

Grow every day. You’ll have the opportunity to work on unique, once-in-a-career projects that maximize your skill set and probably teach you some new ones—at any stage in your career.

Prioritize wellness. At UPP, wellness takes many forms. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring our people are cared for in the ways that matter to them. Check out some highlights of our inclusive employee-focused benefits program including:

• Work from abroad up to eight weeks/year
• Extended paramedical and mental health service coverage
• Health care and lifestyle spending accounts
• Fertility treatments, paid parental leave, and gender affirmation coverage
• Education Assistance program

UPP enthusiastically welcomes applications from all qualified applicants and especially invites people with lived experience as an Indigenous person, a person with a disability or as a member of another Human Rights Code protected group that faces barriers to employment to apply. Our goal is to create a barrier-free experience for every candidate throughout the recruitment process, so if you require accommodation at any point during the process, please let us know so that we can make the appropriate arrangements. It would be our honor to work with you to adapt our processes to ensure that you can meaningfully participate.

UPP respects your privacy. For information on how UPP handles the personal information you provide during the application process, please see our Job Applicant Privacy Statement.

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Director

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Other, Finance, and Science

• Industries

  Financial Services and Pension Funds

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