Pension Funds - Articles & White Papers

In a world of low return expectations and even lower interest rates, pension plans are re-evaluating their portfolios, looking for alternative ways to achieve return targets and improve funded status. Diversifying portfolios with real assets helps address these challenges. Real assets may reduce portfolio volatility, enhance…

The Global Pension Assets Study estimates global pension fund assets across 22 major pension markets (the P22). These geographies now total a record US$56.6 trillion in pension assets and account for 76% of the GDP of these economies. The study, conducted by WTW and the Thinking Ahead Institute since the 1990s, includes an…

Advances in technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning are radically reshaping winners and losers across the service sector in both developed and emerging markets – and at an even faster pace after the Covid-19 pandemic. To understand the investment implications of this next revolution…

Institutional portfolios such as corporate pension plans are increasing allocations to illiquid private assets seeking better returns and diversification. However, as allocations increase, a portfolio’s liquidity structure changes, sometimes abruptly. How can a CIO increase their confidence with private asset allocations and…

The key theme of this year’s report, the ‘S’ pillar of ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing, is highly pertinent. As politicians and policy makers across the world aim to ‘build back better’, Create-Research and DWS believe they need to take the time to fully understand the social part of ESG.

How America Saves is Vanguard’s seminal report on 401(k) plan design and retirement savings habits. This year’s report reveals plan design opportunities employers can address to further improve workers’ retirement readiness.

The challenges of investing in illiquid private assets while also facilitating member switching and early release schemes are addressed in a new PGIM IAS framework to help CIOs examine how to adjust asset allocations when faced with differing levels of early access permissioning.

Is your plan cash-flow negative? Is it underfunded too? This paper breaks down alternative cash-flow sources – equipped to serve short- and long-term funding needs. Explore the potential benefits of a cash-flow-driven investment (CDI) framework that includes cash-flow-aware growth assets – especially those with an explicit…

Dimensional Fund Advisors study the performance of different investment and spending strategies for retirement. Investment strategies include wealth-focused glide paths that combine equities with short-term, high-quality fixed income. They also consider an income-focused glide path that combines a moderate equity allocation…

Nuveen examines ways corporate pension plans at all funding levels can optimize their approach to portfolio construction and identifies how factor exposures and asset allocations shift when applying a factors-first approach.

The Global Pension Assets Study covers 22 major pension markets (the P22), which now totals US$52,522 billion in pension assets and account for 80% of the GDP of these economies. The study includes an analysis of the seven largest markets (the P7) which includes Australia, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and US…

Every quarter, our Content Team curates a unique list of the best asset manager salary surveys from around the world, providing our members with information on benchmark salaries for investment management professionals. These fund manager salary surveys cover a wide variety of roles within the asset management industry,…

No one was ready for 2020, but investors can be prepared for 2021 and, ultimately, look to a future envisaged before the pandemic hit. PGIM’s Annual Best Ideas: The Future in Focus, sheds light on the opportunities that they believe are worth watching in 2021.

This is the second year that DWS has sponsored this report by CREATE-Research. Amongst other insights, this year’s survey confirms the on-going movement of passive investment into the mainstream with 66% of survey respondents considering passive index investing as a mature part of their portfolio.

The global top 300 pension funds is an annual study conducted by the Thinking Ahead Institute. The research highlights high-level trends in the pension fund industry and provides information on how the characteristics of these top funds have changed.

Talent is at a premium across the economy, and now is the time to better align benefits with what employees expect, or even demand.

With the rapid growth in funding ratios over the past year, an increasing number of UK defined benefit (DB) pension schemes have been contemplating their investment approach for the endgame – the point at which a plan moves from being underfunded to being fully funded or even having a surplus.

Many pension plan investors have historically ignored high yield and convertible bonds. However, as their funded statuses have improved, now might be the time to consider them as an intermediate de-risking step.