Report says DC plans gain ground while funds shift from stocks to alternatives and resilience tools like gold
Canada’s pension assets now stand at roughly one‑and‑two‑thirds of GDP – making this one of the most pension‑intensive economies in the world.
The Thinking Ahead Institute’s Global Pensions Assets Study 2026 puts Canadian pension assets at an estimated US$3,777bn at year‑end 2025, second only to the US among 22 major markets.
Pension assets equal 165.4 percent of Canadian GDP, behind only Switzerland (173.2 percent) and just ahead of Australia (162.5 percent) and the Netherlands (about 147 percent).
A bigger player in a very concentrated club
Across the 22 markets (the P22), total pension assets are estimated at US$68,274bn at the end of 2025.
The US still dominates with 65.8 percent of that pool; Canada and Japan each hold about 5 percent of the total.
The seven largest systems – Australia, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the US – account for 91 percent of all assets.
The study measures this concentration using a Gini coefficient of 79.0 percent for pension assets, versus 63.0 percent for GDP across the same countries.
Pension wealth is therefore more clustered than economic output, which the authors link to deeper capital markets and more mature pension systems in the largest jurisdictions.
Canada’s share of global pension assets dips slightly over the last decade as US assets grow faster, but Canada’s absolute numbers remain strong.
In US‑dollar terms, Canadian pension assets grow at 5.3 percent a year over 10 years, from US$2,257bn in 2015 to US$3,777bn in 2025e, with a 12.0 percent jump in 2025 alone.
Growth tracking markets – with local twists
For the P22 overall, pension assets rise from US$35,563bn in 2015 to US$68,274bn in 2025e, a 6.5 percent annual growth rate in US dollars.
Over the same period, a simple 60 percent global equities / 40 percent global bonds portfolio returns 6.5 percent a year in US dollars.
Over shorter periods the gap widens: in 2025, P22 assets grow 9.60 percent in US‑dollar terms while the 60/40 reference portfolio returns 15.90 percent.
Local‑currency figures tell a different story in several markets because of a long period of US‑dollar strength.
The study shows particularly rapid local‑currency asset growth in South Korea, South Africa and Mexico over 10 years. It also highlights the Swiss franc as the most appreciated currency against the US dollar over the decade, while some emerging‑market currencies lag.
How the asset mix is shifting
The key structural message is familiar: less reliance on traditional equities and bonds, more use of other asset classes, and a gradual erosion of home bias in equities.
Across the seven largest markets:
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Equities fall from 57 percent of assets in 2005 to an estimated 48 percent in 2025.
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Bonds edge up from 28 percent to about 31 percent.
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“Other” assets – real estate and alternatives such as private equity, hedge funds, infrastructure, insurance contracts and commodities – rise from 13 percent to about 19 percent.
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Cash increases modestly from 1 percent to about 3 percent.
For 2025, the average P7 allocation is 48 percent equities, 31 percent bonds, 19 percent other assets and 3 percent cash.
Australia, the US and Canada all maintain above‑average equity exposure; Japan, the Netherlands and the UK lean more heavily on bonds. Switzerland stands out for its large allocation to “other” assets.
The study finds that domestic equities now make up only 36.6 percent of P7 equity portfolios on average, down from 55.3 percent in 2005.
Over the past decade, the US, Netherlands and Australia hold the highest home‑equity shares, while Switzerland, Canada, Japan and the UK keep less than 40 percent of their equity exposure in domestic markets.
In bonds, home bias remains stronger: domestic issues still represent about 70.5 percent of total bond exposure, down from 82.5 percent in 2005, with Canada among the markets that hold the largest domestic bond shares.
DC’s steady rise – and the retirement income problem
The study underlines the long‑term shift from DB to DC across the big systems. Over 20 years, DC assets in the P7 grow at 7.9 percent a year, compared with 3.1 percent for DB.
Over the last decade, DC grows at 9.4 percent annually versus 2.9 percent for DB.
In 2005, DC accounts for 41 percent of total P7 pension assets.
By 2025e, that share rises to 63 percent, leaving DB at 36 percent.
The authors estimate that DC assets now represent 22 percent of global pension assets within the P7 lens.
DC is dominant in Australia and the US; Canada, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Japan remain more DB‑heavy but show gradual DC growth and, in some cases, system‑wide reforms.
A spotlight on DC argues that “income in retirement is still the biggest unresolved issue” for DC systems.
The Thinking Ahead Institute’s 2025 Global DC Peer Study finds that 60 percent of leading DC organisations see retirement income as their main challenge over the next decade, given that most DC designs still focus on accumulation rather than delivering stable lifetime income.
The study points to UK and Australian initiatives on “Value for Money (VfM)”, default retirement pathways, small‑pot consolidation and retirement measurement frameworks as examples of regulators trying to tilt DC from pure savings towards better income outcomes.
Whole‑portfolio thinking, resilience and gold
On portfolio design, the study pushes the Total Portfolio Approach (TPA) – a shift from siloed asset‑class mandates to whole‑fund decisions.
Under TPA, the central question becomes how each exposure contributes to total‑fund objectives, not how it performs in isolation.
The authors argue that TPA better matches today’s risks: inflation, liquidity, concentration, systemic and climate risks that cut across traditional buckets.
Resilience sits alongside TPA as a core theme.
The report defines resilience as both robustness of the current portfolio and the organisation’s ability to anticipate, adapt and learn through time.
It calls for macro‑foresight, horizon scanning and scenario analysis to understand how systemic risks might interact and affect long‑term objectives, with a clear focus on narrowing extreme outcomes while improving the odds of meeting long‑term goals.
A dedicated section on gold – prepared by the World Gold Council – presents gold as a risk stabiliser within this whole‑portfolio lens.
Using long‑run return data and a 20‑year portfolio experiment, the authors show that modest gold allocations can improve risk‑adjusted returns, add diversification in crises, hedge specific macro risks and provide liquidity and “crisis optionality” that some TPA‑driven funds now treat as part of their resilience toolkit.
