Global top 300 pension funds

The world’s leading pension funds covered in this survey have sustained respectable growth in recent years, amounting to 4.9% per annum in the past five years.

However, this has not made them resilient to pressures from multiple sources. Solvency concerns, stakeholder expectations, the COVID-19 ramifications, sustainability pressures and other challenges have compounded to make pension fund boards’ agendas more complex and stressed than at any previous times.

Defined benefit (DB) fund boards’ solvency concerns sit alongside the management of defined contribution (DC) participant expectations. Both fund types have faced up to the gathering headwinds by increasingly stretching their risk budgets to meet return targets and future goals. This has resulted in increased allocations to private assets in recent years.