PH&N Balanced Pension Trust Segregated Fund Changes within Global equities
Plan sponsors may wish to consider whether this investment news has any implications for the investment options available within their plans. Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada purchases units of the funds listed below, which are established as segregated funds in accordance with the Insurance Companies Act (Canada).
No action required
You don’t have to take any action as a result of the update below. Please review the details about the changes to the PH&N Balanced Pension Trust Segregated Fund (“PH&N Balanced fund”.)
What’s new
PH&N recently announced significant changes to the underlying Global Equity funds in the PH&N Balanced fund. Together, global equities will continue to represent 36% of the PH&N Balanced fund. The table below shows a summary of the changes.
|
Previous Allocation (%) |
New Allocation (%) |
|---|---|---|
RBC Global Equity Leaders |
12 |
0 |
RBC Global Large Cap Equity |
0 |
8 |
RBC QUBE1 Global Equity |
14 |
11 |
RBC Global Equity Focus |
10 |
17 |
1QUBE refers to RBC’s quantitative strategies.
PH&N made these changes to improve style and fund diversification. The holdings in the RBC Global Equity Leaders fund have an 85% overlap with those in the RBC Global Equity Focus fund. With these changes, the Global Equity component of the PH&N Balanced fund will have exposure to three distinct strategies with limited overlap.
There are no changes to the objectives or risk profile of the PH&N Balanced fund. The PH&N Balanced fund’s benchmark also did not change, since the overall allocation to global equity remains the same.
The RBC Global Large Cap Equity fund, launched in the first quarter of 2025, is a low tracking error fundamental strategy managed by Portfolio Managers David Tron and Shantu David, who also manage the PH&N U.S. Equity fund.
GRS Investment Solutions View
We are comfortable with PH&N’s decision to add more style diversity to the global equity component of the PH&N Balanced fund. However, we note that the newly added RBC Global Large Cap Equity fund was just recently launched and is managed by David Tron and Shantu David, both of whom have no prior experience managing a Global Equity mandate. Tron and David are part of the RBC North American Equity team and have portfolio management experience in Canadian and U.S. equities. They also recently took over lead portfolio management responsibilities for the PH&N U.S. Equity fund. While the overall allocation to the fund within PH&N Balanced is only 8%, we would have preferred to see an allocation to an established strategy and a team with longer global equity experience.
We’ll continue to closely monitor the fund and provide updates as necessary.
Questions?
Please contact your Sun Life Group Retirement Services representative*.
*In Quebec, registered as a Group annuity plans advisor.