Asian Pension Funds - Articles & White Papers

The Global Pension Assets Study estimates global pension fund assets across 22 major pension markets (the P22). These geographies now stand at US$55.7 trillion in pension assets and account for 69% of the GDP of these economies. The study, conducted by WTW and the Thinking Ahead Institute since the 1990s, includes an…

The Asset Owner 100 is a Thinking Ahead Institute study which gathers data on the total assets of the top 100 asset owners around the world. Though not included in the ranking, the study also presents the total assets for the top 10 insurers and the top 10 foundations and endowments.

Published in December 2023, 'Pensions at a Glance' highlights the pension reforms undertaken by OECD countries over the last two years. It includes a special chapter focusing on pension provisions for hazardous or arduous work. It describes existing rules, characterises recent policy trends and assesses the design and…

The Global Public Pensions 2023 report explores how public pension and sovereign funds are building optimal investment strategies to address the uncertain economic environment and factor sustainability into their portfolios. The report draws on surveys, discussions, and written contributions from 22 global public funds…

Global Pension Finance Watch, published quarterly, reviews how capital market performance affects defined benefit pension plan financing in major retirement markets worldwide, with a focus on linked asset/liability results. We cover defined benefit pension plans in Brazil, Canada, the Eurozone, Japan, Switzerland, the U.K.…

This edition of Pension Markets in Focus shows the developments in asset-backed pension systems in 2022. Elevated inflation and higher interest rates led to negative real returns in 2022. This resulted in a fall in assets earmarked for retirement in the OECD, despite higher contributions.

In this article, we focus on pension software, and we compare the design and operations of DB system and Thrift Plan (also known as Defined Contribution pension plan) as two common payroll-based pension-savings systems adopted worldwide. Both are built to support and operate a huge client-base (up to millions of scheme…

The Responsible Investment Super Study series is the most comprehensive research conducted on the responsible investment and ESG practices of Australia’s superannuation sector. It is published every two years.

I investigate the role of pension funds on stock market liquidity, using panel data for seventeen EM countries during 2006-2019. In particular, I focus on whether pension funds' liquidity provision is time-varying and is more or less pronounced during crisis times.

Fixed indexed annuities (FIAs) were first introduced in the 1990s in the United States to offer policyholders exposure to upside participation in equities along with downside protection. Since then, they have grown to be one of the most important annuity products in the U.S., netting an industry total sales of close to USD $…

Longevity risk and related capital market solutions have grown increasingly important in recent years, both in academic research and in the markets we refer to as the Life Market, i.e., the capital market that trades longevity-linked assets and liabilities. Mortality improvements around the world are putting more and more…