NAICS 52691Industry · 5-digitnational market

Open-end investment funds

SoftwareFund Administration & Private Capital Software 526

This industry comprises funds primarily engaged in investing in a specialized (except real estate) or a diversified portfolio of securities and other investments on behalf of their shareholders/unit holders. Shares are offered in an initial public offering, after which additional shares are offered continuously. Shares are redeemed at the market price, as determined by the net asset value. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 280
Under 10 employeesA: 93%

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

1–423383%

5–92810%

10–1973%

20–4993%

50–9910%

100–19921%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 280 Canadian establishments with employees, 93% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario16459%

British Columbia4416%

Alberta3513%

Quebec269%

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.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 5269 Other funds and financial vehicles covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 5269

Investment Fund LaunchExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

A fund is a legal vehicle, so the enterable proposition here is the act of launching one — registering as an investment fund manager, filing a prospectus and seeding a mutual fund or ETF. Read that way the category is enormous and growing: SIMA reported mutual fund assets of $2.797 trillion and ETF assets of $924.2 billion at the end of August 2026, both all-time highs [A]. The vehicle is also cheap to create relative to that pool; trustees, custodians and administrators are all for hire, which is the point of the 526 fund-administration record nearby. The cut is who decides which funds a saver is shown. A fund does not sell itself: it is placed by an adviser from a dealer's approved shelf, or picked by a self-directed investor from a screen sorted by size, fee and track record — and a new fund has none of the three. The flow figures show where the marginal dollar goes: ETF net sales of $15.5 billion in August against $4.7 billion for mutual funds [A], into a format where the product is an index somebody else publishes, the fee is the only variable left, and the winners are the issuers with the scale to live on it. The 681 establishments, 508 of them with one to four employees, are mostly the vehicles themselves and small managers running private pools — real businesses, but built on a client book the founder already had, not on a product launched cold.

NAICS 52695 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.

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. But note the shape of this industry: 93% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

8 rows sit directly beneath 52691. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
526911	Equity funds - Canadian	39	screened at 5269
526912	Equity funds - foreign	86	screened at 5269
526913	Mortgage funds	131	screened at 5269
526914	Money market funds	9	screened at 5269
526915	Bond and income / dividend funds - Canadian	6	screened at 5269
526916	Bond and income / dividend funds - foreign	—	screened at 5269
526917	Balanced funds / asset allocation funds	2	screened at 5269
526919	Other open-ended funds	7	screened at 5269

Alongside it, under 5269 Other funds and financial vehicles

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
52693	Segregated (except pension) funds	21	screened at 5269
52698	All other funds and financial vehicles	380	screened at 5269