MIPC Symposium 2026: Unleashing the Power of Funded Pensions
He posted this on LinkedIn over the weekend:
If you have an hour to spare this weekend, I highly recommend watching the Symposium held last Friday at McGill University. Bernard Morency and Ramy Rayes shared a wealth of insights on how to unlock the full potential of funded pension systems.
Some key takeaways:
*** Funded pension systems do more than provide retirement income security. They also strengthen economic resilience by giving governments greater fiscal capacity to respond to major challenges.
*** Funded systems create a virtuous cycle. As assets grow, funds can take on more controlled risk, expanding into new asset classes and progressing from purchasing completed assets to developing them.
*** Pension funds can act as market stabilizers. With locked-in contributions, they are not subject to runs or forced selling and can provide liquidity during periods of market stress.
*** As pension funds grow in size, they will increasingly find themselves at the center of debates about local economic development. These discussions can be productive if there is a clear understanding of what funds can and cannot do within their fiduciary mandates.
*** Large funds must remain globally diversified to avoid distorting local markets and to preserve portfolio flexibility. At the same time, there is scope to increase domestic investment if Canada creates more investable opportunities, particularly in infrastructure where many assets remain publicly owned.
*** Asset recycling, widely used in countries such as Australia, allocates risks to those best positioned to bear them. Governments take construction risk, while pension funds own stable, long-term assets. Public investment vehicles such as the Canada Infrastructure Bank/ Banque de l'infrastructure du Canada, the Building Ontario Fund, and the Canada Growth Fund can also help make assets investable for institutional investors.
*** Public scrutiny is appropriate given that large pension funds are public institutions. Success depends on maintaining: (1) a clear mandate, (2) arm's-length governance, (3) agreed measures of success, and (4) balanced treatment of both good and bad news.
*** Rising living costs, housing affordability challenges, and low private-sector pension coverage risk leaving younger generations with inadequate savings. Canada can draw lessons from both its leading public-sector funds and successful reforms in Australia and the UK to build cost-efficient collective savings pools for private-sector workers.
The Symposium was organized by the McGill Sustainable Growth Initiative at McGill University - Desautels Faculty of Management and served as the opening ceremony for the 10th edition of the McGill International Portfolio Challenge (MIPC).
We were honoured to welcome President H. Deep Saini and Jean Claude Kugener, Ambassador of Luxembourg to Canada, who delivered the opening and closing remarks, respectively.
I am under the weather today, caught a bug, but I highly recommend you take the time to watch this discussion.
Both Bernard and Ramy are highly experienced professionals, and they provide excellent insights here.
I know students looking for a career in pensions should definitely watch it, but so should experienced professionals.
Once again, Sebastien did an excellent job moderating the discussion and offered his own wise insights.
I thank Sebastien for sharing this with me over the weekend and apologize I can't get into certain sections more in-depth, feeling very lousy tonight and it had nothing to do with Nvidia.
Below, take the time to watch this discussion, MIPC Symposium 2026 - Unleashing the Power of Funded Pensions.
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