The shape of it
iA Investment Management manufactures funds. It does not advise households directly. Funds reach customers through advisors who hold mutual-fund, securities or insurance licenses depending on the wrapper. MERs vary by class, embedded compensation and whether the wrapper is a securities product or an insurance contract.
iA Investment Management is the asset-management subsidiary inside iA Financial Group. It sits between the parent insurance company — Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc. — and the licensed advisors who place the funds in client accounts. The mandate is narrow on purpose: design the fund, run the portfolio, publish the disclosure documents and keep registered-plan eligibility current. Everything customer-facing — suitability assessments, household-level rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting at the account level — sits with the advisor or, for high-net-worth households, with the iA Private Wealth side of the organisation.
The product shelf is built around four wrappers. Mutual funds account for the largest share of assets and are the most familiar wrapper to retail customers. Segregated funds, which are insurance contracts that hold an investment portfolio inside a guarantee chassis, are a Quebec speciality and remain a large book at iA Investment Management because the parent is a life insurer. Model portfolios bundle several underlying sleeves into a single ticker and are popular inside fee-based advisor practices. ETF wrappers are the newest layer on the shelf and have grown alongside the broader Canadian shift toward exchange-listed exposure.
Mutual funds at iA Investment Management
Mutual funds at iA Investment Management cover the standard asset-class grid: Canadian equity, US equity, international equity, global equity, Canadian fixed income, global fixed income, balanced sleeves and a handful of niche mandates such as small-cap, dividend-tilted and sustainable strategies. Each fund publishes a Fund Facts document twice a year, and that document discloses the management expense ratio, trading expense ratio, top holdings, top regional weights and the year-by-year performance net of fees.
Retail customers usually meet iA Investment Management mutual funds through an advisor inside a non-registered, RRSP, TFSA or RRIF account. The advisor selects the appropriate series — A-class with embedded trailing commission, F-class with a separate advisor fee, or O-class for institutional sleeves — based on how the practice is compensated.
Segregated funds at iA Investment Management
Segregated funds at iA Investment Management are sold under an insurance contract. The contract carries maturity and death-benefit guarantees that pay back a defined percentage of deposits if the contract holder reaches the maturity date or dies before withdrawing. That insurance overlay costs more than a comparable mutual fund — typically 0.30% to 1.10% of additional MER depending on the guarantee level chosen at issue — but it brings two estate-planning benefits a mutual fund cannot match: named-beneficiary payouts that bypass probate, and creditor protection in the right circumstances.
Because segregated funds are insurance contracts, the licensed individual placing the contract must hold a life-insurance licence. Many advisors carry both a mutual-fund licence and a life-insurance licence, which lets them present the choice between mutual and segregated wrappers to the same household.
Fund classes and MER ranges
The table below sets out the typical fee posture across the major product types at iA Investment Management. Treat the ranges as ballparks — the exact MER on any individual fund is published in the Fund Facts and refreshed at least annually.
| Fund type | Typical MER range | Target investor |
|---|---|---|
| Mutual fund — F-class equity | 0.85% – 1.15% | Fee-based advisor relationship; advisor fee billed separately |
| Mutual fund — A-class equity | 2.05% – 2.55% | Commission-based advisor relationship; trailing commission embedded |
| Mutual fund — F-class fixed income | 0.55% – 0.85% | Fee-based account holding bond sleeves |
| Segregated fund — 75/75 guarantee | 2.30% – 2.85% | Estate-planning customer wanting the lowest segregated cost tier |
| Segregated fund — 75/100 guarantee | 2.65% – 3.20% | Customer prioritising death-benefit reset features |
| Model portfolio (multi-sleeve) | 1.40% – 1.95% | Households wanting one-ticker diversified exposure |
| ETF wrapper — broad-market | 0.20% – 0.45% | Cost-sensitive accumulators inside fee-based accounts |
Registered-plan administration
iA Investment Management funds sit inside the full registered-plan grid: RRSP, spousal RRSP, TFSA, RRIF, LIRA, LIF, RESP and RDSP. The plan administration runs through the iA trust company, which holds the assets in nominee name and issues the annual tax slips. Customers see contributions, withdrawals and the year-end T4RSP, T4RIF, T5008 and RC62 slips inside My Client Space.
Contribution-room rules and plan eligibility follow federal tax law. Authoritative guidance on registered-plan limits, attribution rules and over-contribution penalties is published by the Canada Revenue Agency’s registered-plans page, which iA Investment Management mirrors in its own customer disclosures every spring.
Distribution and fee transparency
iA Investment Management does not run a direct-to-consumer channel. Every fund reaches a customer through an advisor authorised to sell that wrapper. The advisor channel splits across three groups: captive advisors who carry the iA Financial Group brand on their business card, independent mutual-fund-licensed advisors at third-party dealers who carry iA Investment Management funds on their approved-product list, and Investia-affiliated advisors who sit inside the iA-owned dealer network.
Fee transparency rules in Canada require advisors to disclose, in dollar terms, the trailing commissions they receive from the fund company each calendar year. That report arrives with the year-end statement and lets a customer reconcile the headline MER against the actual dollar compensation flowing to the advisor practice.
The product names rotate as iA Investment Management updates its shelf, but the underlying logic of the line-up has been stable for more than a decade: build a fund, file the disclosure, register it as a qualified investment for the relevant plans, and publish a Fund Facts document twice a year. iA Investment Management treats the Fund Facts as the source of truth, and any third-party reference — including this page — should defer to the document published on the carrier’s own portal whenever a number on a brochure conflicts with a number on this site.
One closing note on the boundary between iA Investment Management and the wealth side of the house. iA Investment Management does not write a financial plan. It does not pick a household’s asset allocation. It does not decide whether a customer should hold an RRSP versus a TFSA. Those decisions live with an advisor or, for households above the discretionary threshold, with iA Private Wealth. iA Investment Management ships the building blocks; the advisor assembles the household.