The Infinite View is your weekly guide to rethinking wealth and taking control of your finances. Each edition breaks down key economic data in simple terms — then flips the script to offer a powerful alternative perspective on how to grow and use your money. It’s about clarity, control, and confidence in a system that works for you.

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The Bank of Canada’s recent rate cut to 2.50% is a clear signal: the economy is softening. Inflation crept slightly higher to 1.9%, but core inflation remains stubborn around 3.0%, especially in areas like rent and services. This mix of cooling and stickiness complicates the central bank’s next steps.

The Canadian dollar has dropped to a 4½‑month low against the U.S. dollar. At the same time, bond yields are slipping slightly, and the TSX is pulling back from record highs as investors adjust to weaker economic signals.

Beyond the Traditional Pension: Rethinking Retirement Security in the New Age Market

In the new age market, the idea of spending one’s entire career at one company long enough to earn a pension is no longer viable. The workforce moves fast, progressing and innovating faster than growth can happen internally through one company. This leads to moving from position to position to find a bigger, better, more profitable position. Where does this leave the workforce when it comes to retirement?

Why are pensions desirable?

A pension can be defined as an employer-sponsored retirement plan that guarantees income for life. Unlike personal savings however, the risk is carried by the plan sponsor. This is very important. It digs into the psychological appeal of the pension. There is no need to manage investments or worry about market crashes. There is only a sense of stability that comes from predictable income. Its not flashy, its not going to dramatically change your fortune overnight. By design its very vanilla, but this is what makes it so desirable. You don’t own the risk, the plan sponsor does.

In 2023, only 37.7% of paid Canadian workers were covered by a registered pension plan (RPP) (StatsCan, 2025). If we break that down further, less than 25% of private sector workers have access to a pension, and 85% of public sector workers have access to a pension (Canadian labour Congress). With those numbers in mind, compounded with the fact that the new age workforce does not generally stay in one company for the entirety of their career, what are the alternative options available?

The Stress of Relying Only on Investments

For those without a pension, the default is to build up a portfolio of investments then “draw down” in retirement. The problem is by definition an investment carries risk. Whether that’s in stocks, bonds, real estate or any other investment is irrelevant. As the investor, you carry the risk. Time in the market beats timing the market, but how do you avoid this when living off the investments in retirement? If you need to draw down those investments to fund your lifestyle, you are exposed to the ups and downs of the market. This comes with a massive psychological component of being tied to those markets. You start constantly monitoring the markets, you adjust spending when the markets drop, and there’s a large emotional toll of hoping your investments will last for as long as you live. So if you want the security of a pension, but aren’t able to get one, what are the alternatives?

Building your own pension with a whole life policy

In the new age market where pensions are no longer as prevalent, workers have to create their own. Luckily, there is a tool that exists that creates the guarantees of a pension without exposing the owner to the risks of investment. A whole life policy comes with many provisions that make it an ideal retirement tool.

First, you can get the benefit of providing protection for your family. This is a life insurance product so its main function is to provide protection against financial responsibilities that occur at death. The beneficiaries of the policy receive a tax-free payout that bypasses the estate to provide financial protection when families need it most.

Second, due to contractual obligations within a whole life policy, the growth that exists within the policy is fully guaranteed. A whole life policy is an agreement between the policy owner and the life carrier. The life carrier agrees to pay a pre-determined death benefit in exchange for annual premium payments. As you pay premium, you start to build equity within the policy called cash value. As per the contract, the cash value must equal the death benefit at the life insured’s age of 100. When designed in a specific way, we can add riders that allow the policy owner to continually increase the death benefit by paying additional premium. However, the original provision about the cash value equaling the death benefit has not changed. This creates an environment where we create an ever increasing death benefit with guaranteed growth of the equity. There is no risk.

This tool however has more uses than just at retirement. The policy owner can leverage that cash value equity at any time throughout the life of that policy to fund whatever the policy owner wants or needs. Since there is no actual withdraw happening from the policy, the growth and compounding is never interrupted. Instead we take a policy loan from the life carrier where the life carrier charges simple interest on the loan. This is a very unique situation because our original capital is continually growing even while the loan is out. When we repay that loan, we have access to the original equity, plus all the growth that has happened within the policy while we repaid the loan. Congratulations you have just created the mechanics to form a personal banking system while simultaneously saving for retirement.

When it comes time to use this policy for income in retirement, we can go to any major bank and leverage the policy for tax free income. A whole life insurance policy is as stable an asset as you can have. It is guaranteed to pay out because everyone dies at some point. Because of this, banks will use it to create an annuity where they agree to pay a pre-determined sum of money for the rest of your life, and all they do is put a lean on the death benefit so they get paid out when you pass away. Again, the risk is not on the worker, but instead on the life carrier during the build-up, and then on the bank during passive income time.

A different kind of security

A traditional pension gives you peace of mind because it’s steady and predictable. A well-designed whole life policy can give you that same predictability — but with the added flexibility of being able to use the money while you’re still alive.

It’s not about replacing the idea of a pension — it’s about building your own, one that works for you before and after retirement. In today’s market, that kind of control might be the ultimate form of retirement security.