Beneficiaries and your pension

Learn the options available to you when choosing a beneficiary (or beneficiaries) for your pension benefit.

1. Your spouse is automatically your beneficiary

3. Naming one or more beneficiaries

5. Changing your beneficiaries after retirement

7. How we identify your beneficiaries when you die

2. Naming your children as beneficiaries

4. Naming alternate beneficiaries

6. Obtaining tax and estate advice

Naming one or more beneficiaries

If you do not have a spouse or your spouse has waived the minimum 60 per cent lifetime survivor’s benefit and their beneficiary rights, you can name one or more beneficiaries.

You can name a combination of persons, trustees or organizations or you can designate your estate as your beneficiary.

If you are naming more than one beneficiary, you can allocate a different percentage of your pension benefit to each beneficiary. The total amount must add up to 100 per cent.

Unless you indicate otherwise, if you name more than one beneficiary and one of those beneficiaries dies before you do, the surviving beneficiary or beneficiaries will share the deceased beneficiary’s percentage of your pension benefit.