Increasing periods of heightened volatility are demanding composure and trust from investment professionals for their long-term roadmap, according to Josée Mondoux (pictured middle), chief investment officer at the Canadian Medical Protective Association, during a panel session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2025 Global Investment Conference.
Investment professionals are being tested and could be asked to react in the face of a financial and geopolitical news rush instead of staying the course with their established long horizon, she noted. “Whether it’s with your team or the board, . . . we need to be reminded sometimes — and particularly when things are chaotic or volatile — . . . just to reassure people to stay the course.”
During a recent market downturn in 2022, the CMPA elected to stay the course instead of selling assets at distressed or discounted prices, said Mondoux, but with a six per cent long-term return target objective still intact, the plan elected to retain its largely private asset portfolio, making up 40 per cent of its strategic asset allocation.
Read: How the CMPA looks at investments through a total portfolio lens
“If you’re still meeting your risk and return objectives, then you stay the course and this will rectify in time, you adjust for liquidity aspects and things of that nature.”
Also speaking on the panel, Chris Brown (pictured left), chief executive officer at the Workplace Insurance and Safety Employee Trust, said the organization is a long-term investor with short-term funders.
As a jointly sponsored pension plan with members and employers contributing equally, he contends with keeping all stakeholders on the same page. This process is challenging, he added, since this group is more likely to react in real time with the pressures their organization is under.
“It’s working with them through the process [and] understanding the long-term investment side equally balanced against the short-term impacts of what it’s going to cost members out of their paycheques and employers out of their budgets.”
Read: 2022 Risk Management Conference: Concordia University re-evaluating integrated investment policy
At the same time, these real-world pressures are impacting investment organizations’ results, with Concordia University’s pension plan facing a recent funding status decline, from 115 per cent to 105 per cent, due to inflation, which impacts indexation and pensionable earnings, noted Marc Gauthier (pictured right), the university’s treasurer and chief investment officer.
Even though inflation is a significant risk for pension funds, he said stagflation has the ability to hit everything in the return perspective. “What’s always been my No. 1 concern is stagflation because it’s one thing if you have inflation but then the return comes with it.”
Gauthier sees a combination of stagflation and inflation creating a significant modern challenge for Concordia University, in addition to the four main risks —economics, demographics, investment and longevity — pension plans are already facing.
Read more coverage of the 2025 Global Investment Conference.