diff --git a/src/snowflake/connector/options.py b/src/snowflake/connector/options.py
index bf867a6c0..6aea0ee34 100644
--- a/src/snowflake/connector/options.py
+++ b/src/snowflake/connector/options.py
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 from __future__ import annotations
 
 import importlib
+import os
 import warnings
 from importlib.metadata import distributions
 from logging import getLogger
@@ -79,6 +80,10 @@ def _import_or_missing_pandas_option() -> (
 
         pyarrow = importlib.import_module("pyarrow")
 
+        # set default memory pool to system for pyarrow to_pandas conversion
+        if "ARROW_DEFAULT_MEMORY_POOL" not in os.environ:
+            os.environ["ARROW_DEFAULT_MEMORY_POOL"] = "system"
+
         # Check whether we have the currently supported pyarrow installed
         installed_packages = {
             package.metadata["Name"]: package for package in distributions()