Pension Governance Considerations

Private equity funds often seek Canadian pension plans as investors. Canadian pension funds, including those that are too small to invest more directly in private assets, often find such funds to be an appealing way to obtain exposure to a diversified portfolio of investments.

At the contracting stage, private fund managers will often be met with a variety of due diligence and documentation requests from a potential Canadian pension plan investor or their investment manager as part of any proposed investment. This article seeks to provide some context for, and demystify the reasons behind, these requests.

Key considerations

Registered pension plan (RPP) administrators have fiduciary obligations and must adhere to a prudent person standard when investing pension plan assets. RPPs are also subject to the Income Tax Act and minimum standards pension legislation, both of which contain restrictions on how pension plans can invest their money¹. A violation of the