At Teachers’ we invest with a long-term focus because the pension plan will be paying benefits to today's young teachers 70 years or more from now.

Our investment strategies are designed to earn targeted returns that contribute to stable contribution rates and pension sustainability and help meet the plan’s long-term funding needs.

Our approach is to manage funding and investment risk together. Taking member demographics and future pension obligations into account, we aim to earn the best return possible at an appropriate level of risk.

Active risk management starts with determining how much risk the fund can take. This underpins other investment strategies, including:

• Selection of an appropriate asset mix. Our asset mix includes equities, debt, commodities and real assets (real estate, infrastructure and timberland).
• Active management to add value. Active management is a hallmark of our investment success. We believe that passive investing through market indexes cannot, with confidence, generate the risk-adjusted returns required so we strive to add value over and above the fund benchmark each year. This involves selecting investments that we believe are undervalued and using various strategies to optimize returns.
• Ensuring adequate liquidity (cash on hand to meet payments or make investments). The fund’s liquidity position is analyzed and reported regularly to the Investment Committee of the board.

Our investment approach is outlined in our Statement of Investment Policies and Procedures (SIPP) (115 KB PDF).