La Caisse, Quebec's pension and insurance fund manager, reported a 5.1% average return on depositors' funds for the first half of 2026, below its benchmark index's 7.5%. Net assets reached $552 billion.
The gap was driven largely by private equity, which posted a 6-month return of -4.3% against a benchmark of 8.0%, a divergence CEO Charles Emond attributed partly to a decline in valuation multiples for private equity holdings in sectors "seen as more vulnerable to the increasing adoption of AI, such as technology, insurance and services."
The comment lines up closely with what PwC's own 2026 insurance M&A outlook, published in June, has been telling dealmakers directly.
PwC's mid-year outlook stated plainly that AI uncertainty is already showing up in public broker valuations.
"After several active deals years, 2026 has seen uncertainty over how AI may disrupt the sector, resulting in greater deals scrutiny and declines in publicly traded broker valuations," said Mark Friedman, PwC's insurance deals leader.
The report noted that AI poses a specific threat to the traditional brokerage model in simpler personal lines coverages, and that "the emergence of AI and slowing organic growth have broader valuation implications for publicly traded insurance brokers, including those focused on more complex commercial lines risks." PwC warned that if public broker multiples stay depressed, a private market pricing reset is likely to follow, since persistent compression of public broker multiples tends to pull private distribution deal pricing down with it, even if not to the same degree.
For Canadian brokers, especially those weighing a sale or an outside investment, PwC's findings carry a specific, practical implication: consolidators and private equity buyers are becoming more selective, with pricing now weighted more heavily toward organic growth quality, technology infrastructure and the maturity of internal reporting, rather than scale alone.
PwC noted that MGAs with proven underwriting profitability and stable capacity relationships are still commanding mid- to high-teens multiples, so the pressure isn't uniform. It's concentrated in simpler personal lines distribution, where AI-native entrants could plausibly underprice incumbents, and in publicly traded broker stocks, where markets are pricing in that uncertainty in real time.
The more important context for La Caisse's comment specifically is timing. Its private equity portfolio's underperformance this half aligns with a documented, sector-wide re-rating already flagged by one of the industry's own deal advisory practices, not an isolated event confined to one pension fund's holdings.
Over five years, that same private equity portfolio still delivered a 7.9% annualized return and generated nearly $30 billion in gains, one of La Caisse's largest long-term contributors, which is worth noting since this half's AI-related pressure is a recent development within an otherwise strong-performing asset class, not a sign the portfolio has been structurally mispositioned for years.
Credit rating agencies DBRS, S&P, Moody's and Fitch all reaffirmed La Caisse's top investment-grade ratings with a stable outlook during the period.
