Strong governance allowed the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan to find success in private markets, according to Julie Cays, the plan’s chief investment officer. Before the CAAT plan hired its first CIO in 2004, it was using an outsourced chief investment officer-type model — although it didn’t use this term at the […]
No risk, no reward. Like many things in life, investing inertia and fear are common, but they come with a cost. In the investment world, risk has a specific meaning: the probability of losses relative to the expected return on an investment. The key in this definition are the words ‘expected return.’ When it comes […]
Even 10 years after the financial crisis, many Canadian investors still don’t feel secure, according to a new survey by Natixis Investment Managers. More than half (59 per cent) of Canadian investors said they blame market volatility for undermining their ability to reach their savings and retirement goals. This compared to 53 per cent of U.S. respondents and 62 per […]
The basic advantages of passive investing are clear: it typically leads to lower fees, it reduces the chance of serious underperformance and investments are normally quite liquid, said Kurt Umbarger at the 2018 Defined Contribution Investment Forum in September. Of course, there are potential disadvantages, he acknowledged during his presentation at the event in Toronto. […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System are expressing their support for the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s proposal for a transaction fee pilot. In a letter to the SEC indicating their support, along with the support of several other Canadian and U.S. public plans, the funds argued that technical advancements and regulatory changes […]
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board posted a net annual return of 11.6 per cent as the end of its fiscal year on March 31, 2018. Adding $39.4 billion to its overall holdings, the fund now boasts $356.1 billion in assets under management. The increase included a $36.7-billion return after all expenses and $2.7 billion in […]
Whether plan sponsors expect a bear or a bull market in 2018, if they’re in a position to de-risk their pension plan, they should do it now, according to two investment consultants who spoke at an event in Toronto on Thursday. “From our perspective, if you look at the world over the last six years, […]
It’s no secret that passive investments, such as exchange-traded and indexed funds, have become more popular with investors over the past 10 years. Such funds require very little to no intervention by investment managers and, therefore, have much lower management fees than the classic mutual fund structure. Read: Continued growth predicted as ETF industry tops $100 billion […]
Amidst all of the talk about transparency in the investment industry, the dialogue around refundable fees has been on the quiet side. Also known as symmetric fees, they go up when the performance is good and down when it’s bad. Take a manager earning a fixed fee of 0.65 per cent with a symmetric component […]
Meeting plan members’ retirement goals (29 per cent) and managing litigation risk (25 per cent) are the top factors driving defined contribution pension plan sponsor decision-making, according to new research by global investment manager PIMCO. The annual research surveyed nearly 70 defined contribution consultants and advisors providing services to more than 12,000 plan sponsors in […]