CAPSA chair outlines association’s new strategic plan
Off the heels of updating its CAP guidelines, the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA) recently unveiled its 2026-2029 strategic plan.
According to its chair, CAPSA builds its strategic plans on a three-year cycle. As the previous plan wound down, a committee was formed to develop the next one, drawing on feedback from member regulators and industry stakeholders. As CAPSA chair Angela Mazerolle explains, the process is designed to keep the association anchored to its core function.
"The plan really reaffirms members commitment to working collaboratively during a period of ongoing economic and global uncertainty affecting pension plan sponsors and members," said Mazerolle, who's also vice-president, regulatory operations and superintendent of pensions at the Financial and Consumer Services Commission of New Brunswick. "I wouldn't characterize it as being meant to solve a problem. Instead, it's meant to guide the association and to advance our mandate of strengthening coordination and harmonization across Canada's pension regulatory landscape."
According to Mazerolle, CAPSA's role is to pull regulators from across the country into one room, where they can tackle shared problems and arrive at consistent approaches to pension oversight. Its guidelines, in turn, give plan administrators a practical framework for meeting their fiduciary obligations.
Under the previous strategic plan, the association updated two notable pieces of guidance. Guideline Number three, on capital accumulation plans, "clarified roles and communication expectations for sponsors and administrators and service providers," Mazerolle said.
Meanwhile, Guideline Number 10, which is focused on risk management, brought together guidance on emerging threats - cybersecurity, ESG considerations, leverage, and third-party involvement - into a single, consolidated document.
According to Mazerolle, CAPSA’s new strategic plan is built around four core areas: bringing greater consistency to regulatory expectations for pension plans, strengthening supervision, deepening partnerships and engagement with stakeholders, and improving public understanding of pension plans. She emphasized that these are not ranked in order of importance but reflect the areas where CAPSA believes it can make the most useful contribution.
She suggests those priorities were shaped by a mix of factors. CAPSA draws on input from its member regulators, each of which has its own mandate and pressures, while also listening to industry stakeholders who flag recurring pain points in the pension sector. Consequently, the organization has to be realistic about capacity, since its members are advancing CAPSA work alongside their responsibilities in their home jurisdictions.
In that sense, the plan is less about setting abstract ambitions than about focusing effort where there is both a clear need and a practical opportunity to add value.
Mazerolle acknowledged that carrying out a strategy across multiple jurisdictions “presents inherent challenges,” given the different regulatory environments involved. Still, she argues that CAPSA is set up to manage that complexity through collaboration and a structured governance model.
She points to the organization’s history as evidence that it can deliver across jurisdictions, citing the multilateral agreement for multi-jurisdictional pension plans as an example of what sustained co-operation can produce. For Mazerolle, progress depends on maintaining that same collaborative approach while continuing to refine implementation where needed.
"As we advance the work, we will certainly communicate more details on the exact initiatives that we're looking to advance and in what order or what timeline and we'll be looking for some industry input on some of the initiatives, I'm sure," she noted.
She also acknowledged the several forces now shaping the pension landscape, including economic and geopolitical volatility, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. To respond, CAPSA created a Supervisory Practice Enhancement Committee that will support more forward-looking discussions among regulators about emerging risks and supervisory approaches. At the same time, its guideline committee will keep reviewing existing guidance so it remains current and aligned across jurisdictions, she said.
For Mazerolle, CAPSA sees part of its role as helping regulators stay ahead of emerging risks by sharing research, exchanging information, and building a clearer picture of the pressures facing pension plans.
Under the new strategic plan, that role is being reinforced through stronger partnerships and closer engagement with stakeholders, giving the organization more ways to track changes affecting plan governance, risk management, and overall plan health, she noted.
Mazerolle also notes that CAPSA has joined the National Institute on Aging’s Pension Centre of Excellence, which gives it another channel to both contribute to and draw from pension-focused research. Taken together, she suggests these steps should give CAPSA a stronger voice and a more active role across the broader pension sector.
Yet, one of CAPSA’s recurring challenges, Mazerolle highlighted, is pinning down exactly what stakeholders want from the organization, pointing to decumulation as a good example.
While CAPSA had already set up a committee after hearing repeated calls for guidance in that area, once it started asking for specifics, the picture became less clear.
"There wasn't a lot of details available or even a clear picture of what in general industry was looking for," she said.
As a result, that has forced CAPSA to slow down and do more groundwork before deciding what, if anything, it should produce. Mazerolle acknowledged the committee has been spending more time researching the issue, meeting with stakeholders, and trying to determine where CAPSA can play a useful role.
“Everyone's talking decumulation because of the increased prevalence of DC plans and DC plans getting more mature in that they're, they're now seeing retirees coming out of these DC plans. They're not just an accumulation vehicle now. They have to turn their minds to decumulation,” noted Mazerolle.
“Everyone has to think about what role CAPSA has in providing guidance and what type of guidance is needed in that area. Some of it's just research and making sure we fully understand what the ask is,” she added.
