Overstaffed, overpaid and underperforming, the CPP investment fund is in need of a sharp course correction

Globe and Mail

a day ago

This time they waited until page 41 to admit it.
As with most things at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, its annual reports have become increasingly bloated over the years. Once, the organization responsible for investing Canadians' public pension savings reported on its activities each year in a relatively straightforward fashion. The typical CPPIB annual report in those days was a relatively restrained 15,000 to 20,000 words.
That was before 2006, when the CPP's surplus funds were still invested passively, that is in a way designed to track the broad market indexes. In that year, the fund switched to active management: picking individual stocks, bonds and other assets in an attempt to beat the market. Since then the fund's annual reports have become, essentially, extended advertisements for active management.
They now run to more than 80,000 words: page after page of dense, jargon-filled and numbingly repetitive prose on the many arcane strategies and reams of research the fund has deployed in the quest to 'add value' – to earn a higher return, that is, than it would have had it just stuck to investing in the indexes.
CPPIB CEO expects 'roller-coaster' year for investors after 9.3 per cent return in past fiscal year
To be sure, the fund's managers will concede, this approach is more costly – much more costly. Where 20 years ago the CPPIB had just 150 employees and total costs of $118-million, it now has more than 2,100 employees and total expenses (not including taxes or financing costs) in excess of $6-billion.
And yet, for all its eagerness to explain how it invests your money – the process – the fund is rather less keen to go into the results. This year's report is no exception. To be sure, there, in large type, is the headline figure: a rate of return of 9.3 per cent in the fiscal year ending March 31.
As in previous years, the fund's managers are quick to congratulate themselves on this achievement. 'This year, we delivered solid returns for the Fund,' writes the fund's president, John Graham, crediting 'the disciplined execution of a forward-thinking strategy, by a high-performing team.'
Now, 9.3 per cent certainly sounds impressive, unless you recall that equity markets generally were up wildly last year. The U.S. market returned more than 30 per cent in calendar 2024; Canada's, more than 20 per cent; other developed countries, an average of 12 per cent. Bonds earned much less, of course, but with any reasonable mix of stocks and bonds it would have been like falling off a log to earn 9.3 per cent.
In fact, the CPP's traditional benchmark portfolio, a mix of 85 per cent stocks and 15 per cent bonds, earned 13.4 per cent last year – half again as much as the fund's team of disciplined, forward-thinking high-performers were able to generate. That's what you'd get just by buying the averages, or – what is the same thing – if you'd just picked stocks at random.
That, however, is not the point. Any one year you could put down to bad luck. But the CPP fund didn't just underperform the indexes last year. It has done so, on average, ever since it switched to active management. That's the admission you find buried on page 41 (it was on page 39 last year): since fiscal 2007, 'the Fund generated an annualized value added of negative 0.2 per cent.'
Compound that 0.2 per cent annual shortfall over 19 years, and it adds up to more than $70-billion in forgone income, on assets that now total $714-billion. The fund's managers have spent nearly two decades and a total of $53-billion trying to beat the market, only to produce a fund that is nearly 10-per-cent smaller than it would be had they just heaved darts at the listings.
That's not a comment on the skills of its employees. It's a comment on the strategy. The best managers in the world regularly underperform the market, especially after costs are taken into account – two thirds in any given year, nearly all of them over longer time frames. It's one of the most well-studied phenomena in the literature. Which is why many large pension funds have given up trying, switching from active to passive management.
Still, if the fund's managers can't be blamed for this performance, neither should they be rewarded for it. Which is the other scandal here: notwithstanding the fund's indifferent returns, everyone there is making out like bandits – not just in the executive suite, whose five highest-paid inhabitants earned nearly $5-million apiece on average in salaries and benefits last year, but across the organization, whose 2,100-plus employees were compensated to the tune of more than $500,000 on average.
CPP Investments is an organization that is literally out of control. It is long past time it was reined in and given new directions.