Website: franklintempleton.ca
Head office address (Canada): 200 King Street West, Suite 1500, Toronto, ON M5H 3T4
Year established: 1954 (in Canada)
Ownership structure: wholly owned Canadian subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE: BEN), a publicly traded US-based global investment management organization
Target market/client profile: institutional investors such as defined benefit and defined contribution plan sponsors, endowments, and foundations; also serves retail and high-net-worth clients through advisors
Number of professional staff: 280 employees in Canada, including 75 or more investment professionals
Canadian office locations: Toronto (head office), Montreal, Calgary
Franklin Templeton Canada is a Toronto-based subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc., a global investment management organization. The firm works with defined benefit and defined contribution plan sponsors, endowments, foundations, and retail investors across the country. It manages $58 billion on behalf of Canadian investors through mutual funds, ETFs, and separately managed accounts.
Franklin Resources, Inc., the holding company that today operates globally as Franklin Templeton, started in New York in 1947 as a small Wall Street firm founded by Rupert H. Johnson Sr.
The firm took its name from Benjamin Franklin, whose ideas about saving and prudent investing shaped its early direction. Its Canadian roots trace back to 1954 when Sir John Templeton registered the Templeton Growth Fund in Montreal.
The fund pursued global opportunities from Montreal, which Templeton chose partly for Canada’s lack of capital gains tax.
Franklin Resources grew at a steady clip through the following decades and went public on the NYSE in 1971. That public offering gave the firm fresh capital to grow and prompted a move to San Mateo, California, in 1973.
The real turning point came in 1992 when Franklin paid US$913 million to acquire Templeton, Galbraith & Hansberger Ltd. That deal brought Templeton’s international equity strengths together with Franklin’s fixed income foundation and produced the combined name the firm uses today.
The firm’s next big Canadian move came in 2000 with the purchase of Bissett & Associates, a Calgary-based equity investment manager. Bissett added a seasoned Canadian equity research team and gave the firm a stronger domestic investment lineup.
The following year, Franklin Templeton added Fiduciary Trust Company, a wealth management firm with high-net-worth Canadian operations, to its roster. Six years later, in 2007, the firm launched Franklin LifeSmart Portfolios to serve group RRSP providers and pension plan sponsors.
The pace picked up considerably in 2020 when Franklin Templeton paid US$4.5 billion to acquire Legg Mason, a major US-based asset manager. That one deal brought seven specialist managers into the firm, including:
In 2024, the firm bought Putnam Investments from Canada’s Great-West Lifeco, a major financial services company. In 2025, BPM featured Franklin Templeton’s 2026 market outlook through global investment strategist Michael Browne. Browne pointed to a steeper yield curve as a key signal for market recovery and a potential rotation into small and mid-cap equities.
BPM also covered Franklin Templeton’s emerging markets outlook in January 2026, with Andrew Ness from the firm’s global emerging markets team. Ness said Canadian portfolios are under-allocated to emerging markets and that current conditions favour adding exposure.
Franklin Templeton Canada offers investment strategies across five core asset classes:
Franklin Templeton’s alternatives platform manages more than US$274 billion globally across more than 50 strategies. Canadian institutional clients can access all capabilities through mutual funds, ETFs, pooled funds, or separately managed accounts.
Franklin Templeton Canada serves defined benefit and defined contribution plan sponsors, endowments, foundations, and investment consultants. The firm distributes through independent advisors and a dedicated Canada-based institutional sales team that covers traditional mandates and ETF distribution.
In January 2026, BPM featured Franklin Templeton’s Michael Greenberg on the role of core equity in institutional portfolios. Greenberg described it as an efficient middle ground between passive indexing and high-active-share strategies for plan sponsors.
Plan sponsors and investment consultants can find Franklin Templeton Canada in these sections:
Franklin Templeton Canada has earned recognition from Canadian and international industry organizations for workplace culture, fund management, and individual leadership. The firm and its people appeared across multiple Wealth Professional Award categories in 2025.
Franklin Templeton maintains a formal corporate social responsibility framework across its global operations, which includes the Canadian business. The firm embeds ESG considerations into investment processes through a dedicated sustainable investing and stewardship approach.
The firm says this framework is grounded in accountability, integration, scale, and governance across all investment teams.
Behind the sudden boom, experts say concerns grow over fees and NAV squeezing
Can the asset deliver quick exposure without adding new risks to complex portfolios?
CIBC Capital Market’s Avery Shenfeld argues North America’s outlook is less about doom and more about positioning through uncertainty
Fixed income managers outline what an attractive fixed income portfolio currently looks like
Fixed income investors make the case for flexibility in a crowded credit market
‘The raison d'etre of these funds is we want to take risk,’ says Michael Greenberg
Yet, market complacency has made dividend investing more critical, argues ClearBridge Investments' Ryan Crowther
Is Trump’s Venezuela oil play a threat to Canadian energy or overblown political theatre? Investment experts weigh in
ETFs have become the “liquidity vehicle” amid market stress, says Bobby Eng
Pension managers weigh modest yield pickup against Quebec's political and fiscal uncertainty
