A First Nations partnership announced plans, Tuesday, to launch a lower-cost institutional pension and insurance plan designed for Aboriginal people. The plan will match what non-native Canadians have been receiving for years.

TWCC Insurance Partners LP (TIPI) is a limited partnership and strategic alliance between Tribal Wi-Chi-Way-Win Capital Corporation (TWCC) and three First Nations owned insurance operations - FirstPlan Benefits, First Commercial Benefits, and First Commercial Brokers.

"We are set to change the way insurance and pension services are delivered to our communities," said Alan Park, CEO of TWCC and President of TIPI, in a press release. "This is the inspirational message TIPI wants First Nations Canadians  to hear."

TIPI will be launching its Institutional Pension Plan for Canada's Indigenous People this fall, along with a benefits plan and the most comprehensive Aboriginal property and casualty insurance program in Canada.

Currently, most Aboriginal governments and businesses are not benefiting from the kind of large-scale pension and insurance plans used by larger cities, big businesses or teachers' plans. Instead they are usually covered by small, inefficient, over-priced retail plans administered by non-Aboriginal brokers and insurance operations.

"TIPI has gone directly to the big institutional markets and negotiated pension and insurance programs every bit as lucrative for ourselves as any non-Aboriginal plan in Canada," said Park. "And the more Aboriginal groups that join us, the better our bargaining power will be."

As it is majority owned by nearly 50 First Nations communities, TIPI allows its contributors - the majority owners - to benefit when it does. As TIPI grows it will be looking to fill position with Aboriginal peoples.

Currently TWCC employs 140 people in a call centre in Winnipeg as well as another 40 working in its two lending divisions. More than 80 per cent of TWCC's workforce is Aboriginal and it conducts services in eight languages.

For more information visit www.tipionline.ca.

More to come on this story.