What is fiduciary oversight and why is it important?

Reviewed November 3, 2026. Figures are for 2026 unless stated otherwise.

Fiduciary oversight is the ongoing oversight INTEGRIS provides over your Personal Pension Plan (PPP®). Rather than simply setting up the plan, INTEGRIS coordinates the actuaries, investment manager, accountant, trustee and custodian, and keeps reviewing your file so the plan stays optimized and compliant. It comes with every INTEGRIS PPP®. See what fiduciary oversight covers over the life of a plan.

Why it is a fiduciary role

With many financial products, it is hard to know whether the provider is bound to act in your best interest or whether "buyer beware" applies. The administrator of a pension plan has no such choice.

A fiduciary is "someone who has undertaken to act for or on behalf of another in a particular matter in circumstances which give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence."*

As the delegated administrator of each PPP®, INTEGRIS acts as a fiduciary to the plan's members. Where provincial pension law applies, it reinforces that duty. In British Columbia and Alberta, for example, the administrator stands in a fiduciary capacity and must act in the best interests of members; in Ontario, the Pension Benefits Act holds an administrator's agent to the administrator's standards of care, skill and loyalty (s. 22(8)). Fiduciaries are held to a high standard of care and loyalty. They must be loyal, not put personal interests ahead of their clients and not profit from this relationship unless the clients consent ahead of time.

What it means in practice

For clients of the INTEGRIS PPP®, that role means:

1. INTEGRIS negotiates fee reductions from service providers associated with the PPP®. Group discounts are passed on to individual clients.
2. The oversight itself comes with being a client. Specialized work, such as actuarial valuations, plan amendments or a plan windup, is billed at published, fixed fees.
3. INTEGRIS puts its pension specialists and compliance team at the disposal of clients and their advisors to handle any issues that might arise. This means advisors don't have to become pension experts themselves. It is the kind of oversight large corporations get from a compliance department, and because it is shared across all INTEGRIS clients, every PPP® client has it without carrying that cost alone.
4. INTEGRIS acts as the ombudsman of the client when issues or difficulties are encountered with service providers.
5. INTEGRIS is transparent about fees and administrative decisions, and clients have online access to their plan's records through the client portal.

While many companies in the financial sector use trust as a marketing tool, in the case of INTEGRIS, acting in the best interest of our client is part of our DNA.

*Bristol and West Building Society v. Mothew 1996 EWCA Civ 533, 1998 Ch 1 (24 July 1996) per Lord Millett