Canadian pension plan sponsors are revisiting their portfolio management principles, reviewing their asset allocation, scrutinizing their managers more closely, and strengthening due diligence processes, according to new research from Greenwich Associates.

The firm reports that the investment losses incurred last year have left Canadian institutions concerned about their ability to meet their funding requirements, and in some cases questioning the strategies they had been employing in their portfolios.

Domestic equity allocations among all Canadian institutions fell to 18.7% of total assets in 2008 from 21.0% in 2007, Greenwich reports. “Institutions went into the fourth quarter of last year planning to continue their move out of domestic equities,” says Greenwich Associates consultant Dev Clifford. “But the fact that virtually every asset class got hit last year — including international investments and alternative asset classes — has called into question the benefits of the diversification push that has driven institutional allocation strategies for the past several years.”

Nevertheless, it reports that institutions in Canada last year continued to add to alternative asset allocations that were already larger than those reported in Europe or the US. As of the start of Q4 2008, pension funds had allocated more than a quarter of their overall assets to alternative asset classes, including 12.5% to real estate, 6.9% to private equity and 3.6% to hedge funds. They allocated an additional 2.3% of assets to infrastructure and 0.6% to commodities.

Canadian public and provincial funds have also been the leaders in the recent movement of assets out of domestic stocks and bonds, it notes. Heading into October 2008, allocations to domestic stocks averaged 16.0% among these funds, compared with 23.8% among Canadian corporate plans and 19.1% among Canadian subsidiaries of U.S. companies. At 28.2%, public/provincial allocations to domestic fixed income were also the lowest among Canadian institutions.

Greenwich also found that Canadian companies remain committed to their defined benefit pension plans, as only 2% of corporate plan sponsors said they intend to close their plans in the next two to three years.

IE