Understand any stock in simple English
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Power Corporation of Canada
Power Corporation of Canada is a holding company that owns big stakes in insurance, retirement, and wealth management businesses, mainly through its control of Great-West Lifeco and IGM Financial.
Power Corporation of Canada is not an insurance company or a money manager itself. It is a holding company — a parent that owns large stakes in other financial companies — and its job is to sit on top of those businesses, allocate their profits, and let shareholders own a piece of the whole collection at once.
Its two anchors are Great-West Lifeco, a big life and health insurer and retirement provider that also owns the U.S. insurer Empower, and IGM Financial, which owns money managers like Mackenzie Investments and a stake in Wealthsimple. It also holds a stake in the asset manager Lion Electric… no, in the investment firm Sagard and China's China Asset Management. In plain terms, it earns its money the way a landlord earns rent: the operating companies pay dividends up to the parent, and those dividends fund Power's own dividend and share buybacks. The operating companies, in turn, make money by selling insurance policies, managing retirement plans, and charging fees on investment funds. The appeal for shareholders is diversification without having to pick individual financial stocks. Owning Power gives you exposure to Canadian and American insurance, retirement plans, and wealth management in one package, plus a steady dividend. The weakness is that holding companies often trade at a discount to the sum of their parts, and Power's fate is tied to interest rates and markets — when rates rise or markets fall, insurers and asset managers feel it.
Power has been controlled for generations by the Desmarais family, and that family influence is a real feature of the investment case. In 2023 it reshuffled its structure, and it has been buying back stock and holding a big chunk of cash. It is a quiet, dividend-paying Canadian financial giant — the kind of company you own for steady income and broad exposure rather than excitement.
Saved answer · last researched 12 Nov 2026