Keith Ambachtsheer is director emeritus of the International Centre for Pension Management, senior fellow of the National Institute on Ageing, executive-in-residence at the Rotman School of Management and co-founder of CEM Benchmarking and KPA Advisory Services.
What is the actual exposure of pension funds to infrastructure investments, and to other private-market investments such as real estate and private equity? Private-market assets have performed well for the Canadian funds in the CEM database. The three classes of infrastructure, real estate and private equity produced median 10-year returns of 9.5 per cent, 8 per cent and 17.1 per cent, respectively. That compares with returns of 9.8 per cent and 3.7 per cent, respectively, for publicly traded Canadian equities and bonds .
One force relates to a culture transition over the past 30 years in how pension investment decisions are made, with funds increasingly gravitating toward ownership-style investments. The other force is the growing importance of assessing the sustainability of future cashflows in a world of rising geopolitical and climate-related risks.