Canada's $793 billion pension giant is using scenario analysis and a new risk framework to prepare for deglobalisation and sustained macro uncertainty
Canada's largest pension fund has developed a four-scenario geopolitical risk framework it says will guide every investment decision the fund makes as the global order becomes increasingly unpredictable.
Priti Singh, senior managing director and chief risk officer at CPP Investments in Toronto, outlined the approach at the Top1000funds.com Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Harvard University on June 4, 2026.
The framework — which Singh described as a "deglobalisation radar" — maps four plausible futures: deglobalisation, re-Americanisation, de-Americanisation, and complete fragmentation. It was built in partnership with Oxford University and draws on more than 70 macroeconomic and geopolitical indicators.
"When initially the tariffs came in and all of the announcements, and every day you didn't know which way you were going, you quickly realised that you needed a framework to how you tackle this," Singh told the symposium.
How the framework works
The model takes 2007 — widely considered the peak of modern globalisation — as its reference point. It then tracks changes across five pillars: trade flows, capital movements, human capital migration, policy direction, and the state of the US–China relationship.
Singh said the fifth pillar carries particular weight. The trajectory of US–China relations, she said, has deep implications for nearly every asset class and geography in the fund's portfolio.
The goal of the exercise, she emphasised, is not to predict which scenario unfolds. It is to ensure CPP Investments can act decisively when any of them does.
"Most of the work that we're doing now is on the risk preparedness side versus saying, 'hey, can we come up with the best dashboard that's going to pick the best probability of when this would happen'," Singh said.
The fund is currently positioned toward the higher end of the liquidity spectrum, she added — a deliberate choice intended to give it the flexibility to move capital quickly when market dislocations emerge.
Results reflect a turbulent environment
The framework arrives as CPP Investments grapples with the real-world consequences of geopolitical disruption. The fund closed its fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, with net assets of $793.3 billion, adding nearly $79 billion over the twelve-month period.
But its 7.8% net return for fiscal 2026 lagged its benchmark portfolios, which returned 13.2% — a gap the fund attributed in part to tariffs, trade disputes, and geopolitical tension shaping costs, supply chains, and investment conditions across many sectors.
According to CPP Investments' fiscal 2026 annual report, president and CEO John Graham noted that conflicts in Europe and the Middle East also affected energy markets, shipping routes, and inflation expectations during the year.
The fund's emphasis on scenario readiness over benchmark-chasing reflects a design philosophy that prioritises resilience over short-term performance alignment.
A new asset class in economic security
Also speaking at the Harvard symposium was Daleep Singh, vice chair and chief global economist at PGIM in New York, and a former deputy national security advisor for international economics in the Biden administration.
He told attendees that geopolitical disruption is not simply a risk to manage — it is a source of investable opportunity for institutional players with long time horizons.
Daleep Singh argued that economic security is emerging as a distinct asset class, driven by government demand for private capital to fund supply chain restructuring, critical technology development, and energy transition infrastructure. He estimated the global opportunity set at as much as $10 trillion, noting that most governments are too fiscally constrained to fund these projects themselves and that the venture capital sector lacks the scale to bridge the gap.
"Every supply chain vulnerability is a commercial opportunity," he said.
He cautioned, however, that capturing those opportunities requires the right institutional culture — one that values humility and historical perspective.
"It'll reward people who can imagine. It's going to really punish those who are unwilling to learn from history," Daleep Singh said.
