Employer pension plans (trusteed pension funds), third quarter 2015
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Released: 2016-03-09
The market value of employer-sponsored pension funds declined 0.6% in the third quarter, following a 1.0% decline the previous quarter.
Pension fund assets totalled $1.6 trillion. Investments in stocks declined 3.6% to $451.9 billion. The value of bond holdings edged up 0.4% to $554.3 billion and investments in real estate grew 2.4%.
Foreign investments totalled $541.4 billion, accounting for 34.4% of total pension fund assets. The value of foreign bond holdings grew 13.5% and foreign short-term investments increased 20.1% in the third quarter.
Pension fund revenue fell 28.4% to $31.8 billion in the third quarter, the result of a 22.2% decline in investment income and a 50.6% drop in profits from the sale of securities.
Expenditures increased 38.6% in the third quarter, mainly because of higher losses from the sale of securities. Higher expenditures combined with lower revenue generated net income of $1.4 billion, a 93.7% decline from $22.5 billion the previous quarter.
Over 6.2 million Canadian workers are members of employer-sponsored pension plans. Of this group, 5.2 million (83.3%) workers belong to pension plans with assets managed by trusteed funds. The remaining members have assets managed by insurance company contracts.
Note to readers
For the purposes of this survey, trusteed pension funds include the assets of one or more registered pension plans: those held under a trust agreement, those held by a pension corporation or pension fund society, those administered under legislation of the Government of Canada, or government of a province of Canada as well as those held by an insurance company for investment management only.
Excluded from the survey are pension funds held in total under an annuity insurance contract.
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