Pension manager holds 38% of assets in US as CIO leans into private credit
Alberta Investment Management Corp.’s chief investment officer sees opportunity, not risk, in the very parts of the market that rattled performance last year.
According to Financial Post, AIMCo CIO Justin Lord has no plans to pull back from private credit or from investments in the United States, despite concerns about souring loans in some corners of private markets and ongoing trade tensions with the administration of US President Donald Trump.
He instead frames current conditions as a potential entry point.
Negative sentiment in private credit could even prompt AIMCo to increase its exposure, even though the asset class has already reached its target weight.
Lord said about five percent of AIMCo’s portfolio is in private credit and that the focus will be on high-quality senior secured exposures.
He said they are spending more time ensuring exposures are “managed appropriately” and reassessing the investable universe, and argued that “illiquidity, negative sentiment and widening spread” are creating potential for attractive deal flow in the near to medium term.
Lord also stressed that AIMCo has not yet seen cracks emerge in its private credit book.
He said the manager has focused more on private credit in Europe than in the United States and has not observed deterioration so far, according to Financial Post.
He said these assets “work well and we think will continue to do so,” despite liquidity concerns, and noted that “we haven’t seen a change yet from a watch list or default perspective.”
On geography, Lord said about 38 percent of AIMCo’s assets under management are in the United States, spanning infrastructure, public equities, fixed income, private equity and, to a lesser degree, private credit.
He added that AIMCo does not intend to change that allocation level. “We still view the US as a very attractive place to invest across our products,” he said.
The positioning comes against a backdrop of benchmark underperformance but solid absolute returns.
As per Benefits and Pension Monitor, AIMCo’s Balanced Fund delivered a 7.6 percent net investment return, or $13.1bn, for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared with a 7.5 percent net investment return for the Total Fund.
Both the Balanced Fund and the Total Fund underperformed their respective benchmark returns by 2.7 percentage points, which AIMCo linked to “a challenging year for private markets” and to the use of public market‑linked benchmarks in private asset classes.
Benefits and Pension Monitor said public equities and absolute return together returned 18.6 percent over one year, 11.4 percent over four years and 10.9 percent over 10 years.
Public equities alone delivered a 19.4 percent one‑year return and double‑digit annualized gains over four and 10 years.
Benefits and Pension Monitor reported that, in a statement on the results, Lord said public equities “maintained impressive performance in 2025” as investors backed AI‑related capital investments and factored in stronger earnings.
Private markets lagged but still contributed.
Private debt and loans generated a 7.9 percent one‑year return, closest to public equities among private assets, while private equity returned 3.0 percent and infrastructure 3.3 percent in 2025.
Real estate declined 2.2 percent and renewable resources fell 0.5 percent over the year.
“Despite the challenging year for private markets, these asset classes continue to offer important diversification for our clients over the long term,” Lord said, according to Financial Post.
