Barry McInerney’s reset - Investment Executive

Actuaries are not known for their soft skills. They can crunch numbers with the best of them. If you need someone to assess a set of risks and recommend a strategy, they’ve got you. The difficulty — one that has dogged firms like Mercer and Eckler Ltd. for decades — is who do you put in charge of these Math Olympians. It’s got to be someone who knows their way around an actuarial table, but they’ve also got to communicate well and manage the myriad subtleties that come with leading high performers. Barry McInerney was spotted early in his career, as just such an outlier. “He was a very good actuary,” said Malcolm Hamilton, a giant in Canada’s pension industry and a partner in Mercer’s influential pension consulting practice for 33 years before retiring in 2012. “He was identified almost immediately as somebody with enormous potential.” McInerney was just 35 when he was tapped as national practice leader, Mercer Investment Consulting. “He worked hard, he took his job seriously. He thought clearly and he studied well,” Hamilton said. “But he was also a good manager, and that’s the rarest commodity in an actuarial consulting firm. … He was a good public speaker. He was widely respected, and he wasn’t brash. He never felt that he needed to one-up people or put anybody down.” McInerney said he learned a lot from Hamilton, a visible thought leader who accepted more than his share of speaking and writing invitations. “Malcolm taught me how to communicate — how to write and speak clearly, concisely,” he said. “He might be the smartest person I ever met.” Hamilton led the publication of “Troubled Tomorrows,” a landmark 1995 report on Canada’s retirement system for the Canadian Institute of Actuaries. It was the wakeup call Ottawa needed to put the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) on a more sustainable track. Soon after, McInerney and his team won the consulting contract to help stand up what would become the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). In those days, CPP assets were all held in non-marketable debentures. “It was a wonderful engagement — life altering,” he said. As of June 30, 2025, the fund had reached $731.7 billion, according to CPP Investments — the brand name under which the CPPIB now operates — making it one of the largest pension funds in the world. New York next Mercer moved McInerney and his family to New York City in the spring of 2001, naming him president of its U.S. investment consulting arm. His office was in midtown Manhattan, about three and a half miles north of the World Trade Center. He could see the twin towers from the meeting room he was in on Sept. 11. “We were at an early meeting,” he said. “The sunshine was brilliant that morning, so our blinds were down. We get a knock on the door, and someone said that a weather plane had hit one of the towers. Then a second knock. We pull up the blinds … and craziness.” It was a formative moment for McInerney, as it was for so many. He watched Mercer’s leaders step up, and New Yorkers rally. “We saw that American spirit,” he said. “It was unbelievable. … How they banded together and came around, it was remarkable.” After Mercer, McInerney earned executive positions at Russell Investments in New York, BMO Global Asset Management in Chicago and then Mackenzie Investments back in Toronto, where he served as president and CEO from 2016 to 2022. It was barely a homecoming though. On his second day at Mackenzie, Power Corporation CEO Jeffrey Orr called him with an ask (Mackenzie is part of IGM Financial, a Power Corporation subsidiary). The firm was increasing its stake in China Asset Management Co., a state-linked asset manager that is the country’s second largest, and he wanted McInerney to oversee it. Mackenzie opened offices in Boston and London during his tenure. He was also accountable for teams in Dublin and Hong Kong. McInerney would spend about as much time travelling as he did on Bay Street. “All the companies I worked for supported me to globalize the businesses,” McInerney said. “I saw the world.” The big reset Like a lot of us, McInerney came out of the Covid pandemic feeling like he needed a change. “I did a lot of commuting in my life,” he said. “I’ve spent two-thirds of the last 20 years working in a city I didn’t live in.” It was time to simplify. He parted ways with Mackenzie, took a board position with Equitable Life of Canada and an adjunct professorship at The Catholic University of America in Arizona. He opened McInerney Consulting Group, doing advisory and governance work, and got thinking about writing a book. “I asked myself, ‘what have you excelled at?’” he said. “I’ve had lots of failures, made mistakes. But it’s leadership. It’s bringing teams together and creating organization.” Leadership Reset is the result, a 408-pager that presents a view of the world informed by McInerney’s executive-suite experiences during a period of intense globalization. “Create a culture in which everyone feels good about doing their best work and works well together,” he said. “Make sure you’ve got a foundation, an operational foundation, and a vision.” The book drills down on three trends: depopulation, energy transition and international relations, principally those between the U.S. and China. McInerney believes they are central to understanding how to lead organizations through societal, political and economic change. Developed-world depopulation A developed country requires a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to maintain what’s referred to as its replacement rate. Anything below that triggers a drop in citizenship numbers. Canada slipped below that rate in 1972. And it’s not alone. Israel is the only Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member with a replacement rate above 2.1 currently. The consequences of that are well documented — the population ages, triggering labour shortages. Economic growth slows, health care and pension systems struggle to meet needs and intergenerational tensions rise amid housing and other issues. Many countries, including Canada, have sought to reverse or slow this down with aggressive immigration policies. But as we’ve seen in multiple cases, that too can be disruptive. “That’s the No. 1 issue affecting every leader right now,” McInerney said. “And it creeps up really slowly.” Successful leaders will “look for opportunities and take advantage of it,” he said. From a public policy perspective, “don’t beat up on immigration, be more thoughtful about it,” McInerney said. Also, “Every country deserves a border. … You’re entitled to decide who comes in.” Energy transition McInerney calls the argument over global warming the “dumbest debate ever.” He doesn’t advocate for or against the science behind climate change; he’s focused on solutions. “The earth is warming,” he said. “So how do we deal with that? How do we get ready for warming?” The mistake Ottawa has made in recent years, McInerney said, is to let environmental advocacy get out ahead of pragmatic policy making. “You can’t speed up the energy transition without understanding that our greatest competitive advantage in this country — first, second and third — is our natural resources. … You have to think more long term and lean into our advantages.” “Canada’s not France,” McInerney said, referring to that country’s embrace of nuclear power. Something close to 70% of France’s electricity is nuclear-generated, making it the most advanced in the world. “Good for them,” he said. “[But] why are we being put to the same standards, in terms of what’s best for Canada? What’s best for this amazing country is to thoughtfully, strategically, monetize our natural resources for future generations.” What’s best for financial advisors and their clients is recognizing that there are investment opportunities in all of this. During his time at the helm, Mackenzie bought Greenchip Financial Corp., a Toronto-based sustainable-investment boutique that emphasized environmental placements. “We never