Global (excluding US) pension fund performance

Pension fund performance describes the performance of pension fund managers, sampled worldwide.

Descriptive statistics
According to a 2011 study, US defined benefit plans held 6.454 trillion dollars in 2010, representing 43% of US retirement pension plan assets. The table below provides the mean strategic policy asset class weights for defined benefit plans over the period spanning 1990 - 2010. The asset class breakdown consists of equity, fixed income, cash and alternative assets. Alternative assets include investments in tactical asset allocation, commodities, natural resources, real estate, infrastructure, private equity and hedge funds.

The table below shows mean expense ratios for US defined pension plans over the 1990 - 2010 period. The mean all assets expense ratio rose over the span to an end of period average 0.55% due to an increase in the strategic allocation to alternative asset classes.

Andanov, Bauer, and Cremers (2012) find economy of scale advantages in reducing costs: "...one standard deviation increase in the log of assets reduces the total investment costs by 7 basis points. The scale advantage is much more pronounced for alternative investments, where a one-unit increase in the log of alternative assets results in 111 basis points lower costs. As expected, funds managing a greater percent of their assets through active and external mandates have higher investment costs."

Performance
CEM Benchmarking Inc. is a Canadian based company which provides independent objective and actionable benchmarking information for large pools of capital including pension funds, endowments/foundations and sovereign wealth funds. Some studies utilize their data to provide insight into pension plan administration cost and service levels.