NAICS 5261Industry group · 4-digitnational market1 market record

Pension funds

SoftwareFund Administration & Private Capital Software 526

This industry group comprises funds containing net assets set aside for the purpose of meeting retirement benefit payments of the pension plan, when they become due. Pension funds may or may not have separate legal identities and may or may not have trustees. A pension plan is a reporting entity separate from a sponsor and the plan participants that, by any arrangement (contractual or otherwise), establishes a program to provide retirement income to employees. This class includes pension plans of all types, regardless of whether the fund is registered as a separate legal identity or is administered by trustees. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 70
Under 10 employeesA: 40%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–41927%

5–9913%

10–1957%

20–491217%

50–9957%

100–19934%

200–4991116%

500+69%

Of 70 Canadian establishments with employees, 40% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Ontario2231%

Quebec1623%

Manitoba1014%

Alberta57%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Finance and Insurance, US · opened 2020

85.2%

1 year

65.1%

3 years

53.8%

5 years

38.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 526, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 526 Funds and other financial vehicles

Funds are legal vehicles, not operating businesses. The operating businesses are the managers and administrators that serve them.

Who sets the price: Management fees under competitive pressure.
The software it runs on: Fund administration and investor reporting.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Pension Fund (a Buyer, Not a Market)Structure decides

binding constraint: market size

This code counts pools of money, not businesses. A pension fund exists because an employer or a government sponsors a plan; nobody founds one to compete for customers, and its members are assigned by their employment rather than won. The honest screen is that this is a buyer, not a market to enter, and the addressable market for an entrant as a pension fund is nil — which is why the cut is market size even though the pools are vast. Statistics Canada put trusteed pension assets at $2.6 trillion at the end of 2025, up 6.2%, with public-sector plans holding $2.1 trillion — 82.4% of the total — against $460.6 billion in private-sector plans [A]. That concentration is the second finding. The establishment count bears it out: 70 employers, of which 17 have 200 or more staff — the large public plans that run investment teams in-house — while private-sector plan assets grew only 1.5% in the year. So even what is sold to these funds (asset management mandates, custody, actuarial and administration services) faces a small number of very large buyers who increasingly do the work themselves, and a long tail of private plans that is barely growing. Those supplier markets are the ones to screen; the fund-administration software sold into this branch is screened separately at 526.

NAICS 52615 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 526 Funds and other financial vehicles

Fund Administration & Private Capital SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent SS&C Technologies and Allvue Systems (Vista)

A fund administrator's system holds the capital account of record, so the buyer's diligence is an audit — SOC 1 Type II, custodian integrations and a reference list of funds that already trust it — before a single subscription is signed. SS&C, whose $6.27B is recorded against the capital-markets screen at 5231, is the same balance sheet met from a different angle.

NAICS 5263 vendors named1 sourced figuresOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 8

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
AIMCoPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	1/8
BCIPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	2/8
CDPQPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	3/8
CPP InvestmentsPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	4/8
HOOPPPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	5/8
OMERSPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	6/8
Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP)Private	Pension funds5261	—	7/8
PSP InvestmentsPrivate	Pension funds5261	—	8/8

Who works here

The occupations employed in Finance and insurance, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Insurance, real estate and financial sales occupations Mostly one sector 51.9%

Auditors, accountants and investment professionals Mostly one sector 43.1%

Computer, software and Web designers and developers Mostly one sector 7.6%

Managers in engineering, architecture, science and information systems Mostly one sector 6.4%

Judges, lawyers and Quebec notaries One industry 3.2%

Library, correspondence and other clerks Mostly one sector 3.1%

Service supervisors Mostly one sector 2.8%

Electrical, electronics and computer engineers Mostly one sector 2.8%

College and other vocational instructors One industry 2%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 1.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 25.8%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 23.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 13.8%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 9.1%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 8.9%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 7.2%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.6%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 5.5%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 4.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 5261, and 3 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
52611	Pension funds	70	screened at 5261

Alongside it, under 526 Funds and other financial vehicles

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
5269	Other funds and financial vehicles	681	Investment Fund Launch