The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which stood apart from other major pension plans and Canadian financial institutions because it didn’t have a chief risk officer, appears to have had a change of heart.

Neil Beaumont, who was most recently vice-president of Finance Minerals America for BHP Billiton, will become chief financial and risk officer at CPPIB on July 24.

Beaumont will take over some functions from Benita Warmbold, who is retiring, but adds duties to reflect the pension fund’s “continued focus on rigorous risk management across the organization.”

The appointment comes a little more than a year after Mark Machin became chief executive of the pension management organization that invests money for Canada’s national pension scheme.

Jason Mercer, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, was among the critics of CPPIB’s trend-bucking decentralized model of risk management.
He argued that a chief risk officer has a critical role in balancing operations and risk, by playing devil’s advocate to other senior members of management who take risks to achieve business objectives. Mercer suggested that this position, a staple at an increasing number of banks, pensions and insurance companies since the financial crisis of 2008, provides comfort to stakeholders that risks facing the organization are being overseen independently.

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