Pension wealth grew 6.8 per cent in nominal terms in 2017, to approximately $3.8 trillion by the end of the year, said Statistics Canada’s 2017 Pension Satellite Account which was released on Dec. 14, 2018.
This growth is predominately due to an increase in pension contributions and strong foreign equity markets, said the Statistics Canada website.
Private pension assets accounted for 89.3 per cent of the total pension wealth at the end of 2017. This includes combined assets in employer-based pensions and individual registered savings plans.
The value of employer-based pension plans rose 5.6 per cent to approximately $2.2 trillion by year-end. This was larger than an increase of 3.0 per cent in 2016.
Pension plan’s investment income of pension plans was up 2.2 per cent in 2017, after increasing 4.8 per cent in 2016. Statistics Canada said this was in part because of lower growth in interest income in 2017.
Revaluations, which means the change in wealth due to changes in asset prices, and other changes added $132.9 billion to pension wealth in 2017, up from $18.0 billion in 2016. Trusteed pension plans posted revaluations and other changes of $44.3 billion in 2017, up from $1.2 billion in 2016.