Trustees and administrators of Ontario registered pension plans: beware of Form 7.

That’s the form that administrators of registered pension plans must complete, and send to their pension fund trustees, that summarizes the estimated employer and employee contributions that will be due to be made to the pension plans in future. The form must be provided by the registered administrator of every Ontario registered pension plan to the trustee, at least annually.  If there’s a change to the estimated future pension contribution requirements, the administrator must send a revised Form 7 to the pension fund trustee within 60 days of becoming aware of the change.

Trustees of pension plans (which for this purpose include insurance companies) are not required to complete Form 7’s. But trustees have an important, independent legal obligation to notify the Ontario Superintendent of Financial Services if they do not receive the required Form 7.  Further, if contributions to the pension plan are not received by the trustee in accordance with the estimates in the Form 7 received by the trustee, the trustee must notify the Superintendent.  There are prescribed time limits for all of these requirements.

In essence, the Form 7 rules require pension fund trustees to police timely plan contributions. The law requires trustees to blow the whistle if a plan administrator is not making contributions on time.

In 2013 a trustee was prosecuted in Ontario for failing to report the non-filing of a Form 7 with respect to a plan administrator who eventually filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors. The trustee plead guilty and was fined $50,000.

The gravity of compliance with Form 7 rules was recently emphasized by the Ontario pension regulator in an announcement that can be found here.  A few days ago, the regulator released a revised Form 7 that can be found here, as well as a comprehensive User Guide that can be found here, to assist plan administrators in completing Form 7.  It also released two new standardized templates, to be used by pension fund trustees to report to the Superintendent when a plan administrator fails to submit a Form 7, or fails to make the contributions as summarized in a Form 7.  The templates can be found here.

Although Form 7 is a prescribed form, it does not have to be filed with the Ontario pension regulator. It is simply a required communication from plan administrators to pension fund trustees.  Do not take this as an indication that the Ontario pension regulator is indifferent about compliance with the Form 7 rules.  It has clearly demonstrated that it requires compliance, and it has provided a guide and templates to assist the pension industry with the rules.

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