{"id":268233,"date":"2013-06-24T13:10:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T18:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/uncategorized\/ontario-eases-withdrawals-from-locked-in-retirement-funds\/"},"modified":"2013-06-24T13:10:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T18:10:00","slug":"ontario-eases-withdrawals-from-locked-in-retirement-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/news\/industry-news\/ontario-eases-withdrawals-from-locked-in-retirement-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario eases withdrawals from locked-in retirement funds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ontario is making it easier for people to access locked-in retirement funds. The province is shifting responsibility for providing access in cases of financial hardship from regulators to financial firms directly.<\/p>\n

The Ontario Ministry of Finance said Monday that it is restructuring its financial hardship unlocking program in a number of ways.<\/p>\n

Beginning January 1, 2014, individuals will be able to apply directly to their financial institution for financial hardship withdrawals from locked-in funds \u2014 which are amounts transferred from a registered pension plan into a locked-in account (such as locked-in retirement accounts, life income funds and locked-in retirement income funds) \u2014 rather than to the Superintendent of Financial Services, Finance says.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the government is reducing the amount of evidence required to authorize a withdrawal, and the asset test that determines how much can be unlocked from an account will be replaced with a maximum withdrawal limit, it reports. The seven criteria under which an applicant can apply for financial hardship unlocking will be consolidated into four: rental or mortgage arrears, medical expenses, payment of first and last month’s rent and low income.<\/p>\n

“A fair society helps individuals and families achieve security for retirement, helping to ensure that their well-being is not jeopardized in financial hardship. These measures will make it easier for those struggling with loss of income or medical expenses to get access to their locked-in accounts,” said finance minister Charles Sousa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Financial hardship unlocking process simplified<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38954,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2312,2318],"tags":[2346,3269],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38954"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268233"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=268233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}