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Employees' And Agents' Pension Benefits Plan Empower Holdings, Inc.
The plan was formerly known as the Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company Employees' and Agents' Pension Benefits Plan. It covers employees and agents of...
Employees' And Agents' Pension Benefits Plan Empower Holdings, Inc.
The plan was formerly known as the Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company Employees' and Agents' Pension Benefits Plan. It covers employees and agents of Empower Holdings, the second-largest retirement-plan recordkeeper in the United States. Great-West Lifeco, a publicly traded Canadian insurer controlled by Power Corporation of Canada, is the plan's ultimate parent. The Desmarais family has controlled Power Corporation since its founding, making this pension capital one of many pools the dynasty oversees through its holding-company structure. Investment strategy runs across buyout, mezzanine, and fund-of-funds commitments. The plan allocates to private equity through external managers, consistent with a pension fund that lacks a dedicated in-house direct-investment team. No publicly disclosed portfolio-company names or specific fund commitments are available for verification. The geographic focus is inferred to be primarily North American, given the sponsor's operational footprint and the parent group's investment history. The plan's size and team headcount are not publicly reported. The sponsor, Empower, administers retirement accounts for roughly 18 million participants and over $1.7 trillion in AUA as of 2025 (per Empower company disclosures, 2025), but the pension plan's own assets are a fraction of that figure and are not separated in public filings. The plan operates from Greenwood Village, Colorado, alongside Empower's corporate headquarters. No adjacent philanthropic foundation or co-investment vehicle is known to be tied to the plan specifically. The plan functions as a captive funding vehicle within a multilayered, family-controlled corporate structure—Power Corporation of Canada owns Great-West Lifeco, which owns Empower Holdings, which sponsors the plan. This architecture means investment governance flows through the parent group's institutional processes rather than an independent board. That embeddedness distinguishes it from public pension funds or standalone corporate plans with arms-length governance.
General information
Firm type
Pension Fund
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Greenwood Village
Corporate office
Greenwood Village, CO, United States
Frequently asked questions
Who controls the plan sponsor?
Empower Holdings is a subsidiary of Great-West Lifeco, a Canadian financial-services holding company. Great-West Lifeco is itself controlled by Power Corporation of Canada, which was founded and remains under the direction of the Desmarais family. The plan therefore sits inside a multigenerational, family-controlled conglomerate rather than a standalone corporate entity.
Is the plan's asset size publicly available?
No. Empower Holdings discloses consolidated financials only at the Great-West Lifeco level. The pension plan's separate assets are not broken out in public regulatory filings or parent-company reports, so no verifiable AUM figure exists in the public record.
What investment strategies does the plan pursue?
Available information points to commitments across buyout, mezzanine, and fund-of-funds strategies. These are almost certainly executed through external managers rather than an internal direct-investment team, given the plan's noncontributory, single-sponsor profile and the absence of any posted investment-staff listings.
Does the plan make direct investments or only fund commitments?
The plan's recorded strategy includes buyout and mezzanine categories, but typical pension plans of this type access those asset classes through commingled funds or separate accounts managed by external GPs. No evidence of a direct-investment program is publicly available.
How is the plan governed?
As a plan sponsored by Empower Holdings—a subsidiary of Great-West Lifeco, which is controlled by Power Corporation of Canada—investment governance flows through the parent group's institutional framework. The plan does not operate with an independent board of trustees visible outside the corporate structure.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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