Saskatchewan Healthcare Pension Returns 8.43% in 2023

The Saskatchewan Healthcare Employees’ Pension Plan announced an 8.43% return for 2023, bringing the fund’s assets to approximately C$9.97 billion ($7.29 billion). Returns for the fund primarily came in the fourth quarter of 2023, following a year of uncertainty.

At year-end 2022, the pension fund reported C$9.3 billion in assets and C$9.4 billion in liabilities, a funded status of 98%, which remained steady in 2023.

While the fund returned 8.43% in 2023, that return trailed its benchmark return of 9.7%. By asset class, fixed income returned 7.8%, while equities returned 14.5%, driven by the Magnificent Seven technology stocks. Liquid alternatives—strategies that aimed to provide attractive risk-adjusted returns uncorrelated to positive market direction—returned 1.2%.

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Opportunistic investments were the highest-performing asset classes in the fund’s portfolio. Returning 26.4% for the year, the strategy aimed to “capture potential opportunities that may come out of market dislocations and/or emerging asset strategies” and included insurance-linked securities.

Real assets in the fund’s portfolio were flat, returning 0.1%. Real estate was the only negative-performing asset class in the portfolio, returning negative 8.35% for the year. SHEPP noted that the rising interest rate environment, as well as the work-from-home trend, have negatively impacted the value of real estate in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. SHEPP’s infrastructure assets returned 7.5%.

Over the past one, four and 10 years, the pension has returned 8.4%, 6.3% and 7.7%, respectively, annualized, against benchmarks of 9.7%, 5.3% and 7.0%, respectively, for the same periods.

In May, SHEPP announced the appointment of Dustin Antonini to serve as its new CIO, succeeding Janet Julé, who had retired from the position.

SHEPP is a multiemployer plan in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. With 50 participating employers, the plan has more than 65,000 members, meaning one out of every 15 employed people in the province is a beneficiary of the plan.