Global asset owners have made significant advancements in the transparency of disclosures with the industry, showing unprecedented alignment with best practices in performance, responsible investing and governance disclosures.

However, transparency of cost disclosures continues to be a pain point, according to the 2025 Global Pension Transparency Benchmark.

A joint initiative between Top1000funds.com and CEM Benchmarking, the 2025 edition of the GPTB marks the final instalment of a five-year project which was established to showcase best practice in the industry and provide a self-improvement framework for fiduciary investors.

Each fund and country analysed is given an overall transparency score out of 100, which is informed by their reporting practices across four dimensions: cost, governance, performance and responsible investing.

This year’s results are a clear indication of the steps that global pension funds have taken to enhance trust and improve reporting practices. In 2025, the average transparency score for funds is 65, compared to 63 last year and 60 in 2023.

More funds continued to enhance the quality of their public reporting, with 61 per cent lifting their scores – slightly lower than the 72 per cent that did so last year.

Responsible investing disclosures continue to be the area with the most measurable change, with the average country score of 71 in 2025, which represents a significant jump from 47 in the first edition of the GPTB in 2021.

Eight funds received a perfect score in at least one factor, with Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global scoring 100 in all four and taking the top spot in the fund rankings for the third year in a row.

The average country score of the performance factor rose to 66 (from 64 last year), while the average governance score edged up to 75 (from 74 in 2024).

But funds have failed to make inroads on cost reporting. Over the five years of the GPTB project, the average country score actually regressed from 51 in 2021 to 49 in 2025.

Cost

Pension funds were scored on cost across 28 questions in three aspects common to all, including annual and financial report disclosures, asset class disclosures and the completeness of external management fees, and one aspect focused on member service.

Year on year, the average country score on the cost factor did not see any improvements (49 points). There is also a great dispersion of results with individual fund scores ranging from 11 to 100.

The Netherlands continues to demonstrate best-in-class cost reporting with the highest score of 90, while Denmark and Switzerland are the two countries among the top 10 whose rankings improved.

The benchmark notes that there are barriers to comparability in reviewing costs across the globe, due to differences in tax treatment, organisation/plan types, and accounting and regulatory standards. The review is focused on the material areas common to most funds.

Governance

Organisations were evaluated across 35 questions across four components in governance, which included the disclosure of governance structure and mission, board qualification, compensation and team structure, and organisational strategy.

Three of the six funds that achieved a perfect score in this category are Canadian investors. Canada is also the country with the highest governance reporting score of 99.

Norway was the only country among the top 10 overall with improved rankings in governance.

The benchmark report notes that governance scores were most closely correlated with the overall score and proposes that as good governance produces positive results, it creates greater incentives to be transparent with stakeholders.

Governance also has a demonstrated relationship with responsible investing, as the report notes that good governance could prompt funds to move beyond purely managing assets and towards creating social and environmental benefits.

Performance

Performance scores were based upon 44 questions across seven components that were common to all funds, and two (member services and funded status) that were only applicable for some asset owners.

The benchmark report notes that components were re-weighted to accommodate what was not applicable, so that each individual fund was scored out of 100.

Canada again claimed the top spot in performance reporting disclosures with a country average score of 92, followed by the US and Australia. South Africa was the only nation in the top 10 to lift its ranking, improving from a score of 61 in 2024 to 66 in 2025.

The report notes that disclosures of the current year and at the total fund or investment option level are generally comprehensive, however reporting on longer time periods and asset class results tends to be minimal or missing. Some funds disclose intermediate (for example, three to seven years) performance figures.

Responsible investing

Assessment around responsible investing is the most comprehensive with 47 questions across three major components. The average country score was 71 in 2025, up from 67 in 2024 and 47 five years ago. The massive uplift is a sign that the responsible investing trend remained resilient despite headwinds facing ESG.

Canada retained the top spot in the factor ranking with an average score of 96.

Although sitting outside the top 10 leader board, three Latin American nations – Mexico, Chile and Brazil – improved their rankings, all with a score uplift of more than five points.

The Nordic countries – Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway – continued to hold high standards as a region with responsible investment reporting, with all countries scoring higher than the factor average.

The benchmark report highlights that responsible investing continues to have the greatest dispersion of scores, reflecting that countries are at different stages of implementing responsible investing within their investing framework. Average country scores ranged from 0 to 100.

Over the years, CEM Benchmarking product manager Edsart Heuberger says the GPTB benefited from valuable input from funds that were measured, allowing it to evolve. Of the top 10 transparency leaders, eight engaged closely with the project, filling in measurement gaps of the research and asking for examples of best practices.

The real force that will drive change within an organisation almost always comes from the internal leadership team, rather than from external forces such as regulators, he says.

“My tip is this is a framework that is robust, remains relevant… if funds haven’t made the improvements, the roadmap is still in the public domain.

“The goal was to take public reporting to a much higher level, and given all those stats, I think we’ve accomplished that.”

Norway’s $2 trillion Government Pension Fund Global has retained its title as the world’s most transparent fund, scoring a perfect 100 out of 100 for the second year in a row, according to the results of this year’s Global Pension Transparency Benchmark.

A joint initiative between Top1000funds.com and CEM Benchmarking, the 2025 edition of the GPTB marks the final instalment of this five-year project, which was established to showcase best practice in the industry and provide a self-improvement framework for fiduciary investors.

The full assessment consists of 155 questions determining funds’ levels of transparency across the disclosures of cost, governance, performance and responsible investing. A total of 11,625 data points from 75 funds were analysed by the CEM Benchmarking research team in 2025.

The Government Pension Fund received a perfect score in 2025 and 2024, a notable improvement from an overall transparency score of just 75 in 2022. The fund’s prioritisation of transparency has come from the top with CEO Nicolai Tangen telling Top1000funds.com in 2023 that transparency is integral to the fund’s ambition of becoming “the world’s leading fund, full stop”.

CPP Investments was in second place in 2025, with a score of 97 points and Quebec’s CDPQ displaced CalPERS in third place.

This year has proven to be particularly competitive with four funds tied in fourth with the same transparency score: AustralianSuper, BCI, Norway Domestic Fund and CalPERS.

The A$330 billion ($215 billion) Australian Retirement Trust ranked ninth with 92 points and was the biggest improvement among all funds over the past four years. In 2022, QSuper – which later merged with SunSuper to form Australian Retirement Trust – scored just 49 points, but the consolidation has prompted the creation of more rigorous public reporting standards.

CEM Benchmarking product manager Edsart Heuberger reflects that scale, mandates and types of investment holdings are all factors that drive a fund’s transparency ranking. For example, it is more difficult for Canadian funds to achieve a perfect score with their massive private asset books than the Government Pension Fund, which only invests in listed markets, he says.

There are also external factors like regulation which dictate the types of disclosures funds need to make as a minimum requirement.

Heuberger says there is a unique dynamic in benchmarking transparency compared to, for example, benchmarking fees or performance.

“What you typically see [in any kind of benchmarking] is that the leaders set a bar, and everyone else follows and gets closer, whereas this benchmark, it was very obvious from the beginning, and the leaders were making the greatest improvements – the laggers were not,” he says.

2025 improvements

That said, 2025 marked the first time an equal number of funds improved their scores in the top and bottom halves of the ranking, showing that public scrutiny continues to translate into industry practice alignment.

Across all funds, 61 per cent improved their score (compared to 72 per cent last year) and 15 per cent had worse scores.

In 2025, 19 of the top 20 funds maintained or improved their scores from last year. Sweden’s AP4 was the only fund to slip – down one point and five places – highlighting again the fierce competition among leading funds.

As the project comes to an end, Heuberger encourages funds to keep using the GPTB framework for improving and maintaining a transparent organisation for stakeholders.

“For the top 10 funds, there is a next echelon of transparency with smaller improvements … but I think there is an upper limit to this,” says Heuberger.

“A tip for everyone is to just look at the best disclosures in the world, because what some leading funds do is very inspirational for other funds and something to look up to.”

Canada has been named the country with the most transparent pension funds for the fifth consecutive year, according to the 2025 Global Pension Transparency Benchmark, with each of the five Canadian funds assessed ranked in the top 15 funds globally.

The results reaffirmed the strengths of the Canadian model, known for its sound governance, clear investment mandates and well-run in-house capabilities. The Canada country ranking was eight points ahead of the two countries in second place, Australia and the Netherlands, which had an overall transparency score of 92.

The GPTB assesses the largest five funds in 15 countries and in Canada that was CPP Investments, CDPQ, BCI, OTPP and PSP. The overall transparency score is based on the measure of four factors – three of which Canada led the way. It displayed the best-in-class governance, performance and responsible investing disclosure practices, but lost out to the Netherlands in cost disclosures.

In large part the leadership displayed by Dutch pension funds in cost reporting is due to regulation. Dutch funds are legally required to report on their costs under a prescribed method – through the Financial Assessment Framework – to the regulator De Nederlandsche Bank.

CEM Benchmarking product manager Edsart Heuberger, who is research lead for the GPTB, says Canada’s leadership position is partly driven by a healthy dose of peer competition.

“With a region like Canada, there’s always been a bit of an effect of thinking ‘what’s CPP doing? If CPP is doing it, we better do too’,” he says.

“The Maple 8 funds pride themselves on great governance and great transparency. They’re all big. They’re all wanting to be leaders and competitive with one another. They want to say this is who we are, and this is what we have to be – that’s why I think they’re leaders in all but one category in the four factors.”

Europe showed strength in transparency as a region, with half of the top 10 most transparent countries belonging to the continent.

Heuberger notes that some nations don’t have a prevailing culture of transparency which is manifested in the ranking, such as Latin America and Japan (despite its massive pension assets).

“In countries like Mexico and Chile, which are the two Latin American countries in our benchmark, and to a lesser extent Brazil, we just don’t see a lot of progress,” he says. “Even though this [transparency benchmark] has been in the public domain for five years, there hasn’t been much impetus for change, that we’ve heard or seen.”

“Likewise, some of the Japanese pension funds didn’t seem to have lot of movement. Maybe that’s just reflective of that [reserved] Japanese business culture,” he says, noting that the $1.9 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) only ranked 32 in the overall benchmark.

“Another aspect is there are some highly regulated markets … like Australia and the Netherlands, and the UK, and you do see those markets do well.”

A joint initiative between Top1000funds.com and CEM Benchmarking, the 2025 edition of the GPTB marks the final instalment of a five-year project which was established to showcase and encourage best practice in the industry and provide a self-improvement framework for fiduciary investors.

Among all 75 funds assessed, 61 per cent improved their score (compared to 72 per cent last year) and 15 per cent had worse scores.

All 15 countries represented in 2025 fared better than five years ago when the GPTB released its first edition. The countries that have improved transparency the most over the five-year period are Australia (20 points), Canada (18 points) and the United States (16 points).

The UK’s £45.3 billion defined contribution pension scheme NEST is conducting a strategic review of its private markets allocation, in a bid to ensure it is still well-positioned in the market since it launched the program back in 2020 to capture a liquidity premium for its young member base.

The analysis by the investor’s eight-person private markets team includes assessing if there are more rigorous ways of identifying opportunities and is a chance to add managers if more strategies are needed for the fully outsourced allocation. The process also includes reviewing all managers to ensure that if the team were putting money out today they would select the same partner, explains Rachel Farrell, director of public and private markets in conversation with Top1000funds.com.

She reflects that one of the biggest challenges for private market investors involves maintaining re-investment and holding onto a deliberate pacing model that is challenged by the rolling maturation of assets as they realise. Something that is made more complicated for NEST by some £500 million ($645 million) of contributions pouring in every month,

“It requires constantly putting more money to work to maintain the allocation,” she says.

NEST’s journey into private markets began by developing some of the first evergreen structures with asset managers to specifically facilitate re-investment. These products have an indefinite life span that supports continuous capital raising, but were uncommon in private markets at that time NEST began building out its allocation, she says.

“The UK market was unused to evergreen structures at the time NEST began investing in private markets, but managers realised the benefits of not having to raise capital all the time. It’s a cost saving that is now accrued to the LP,” she says.

Evergreen structures (and close manager partnerships) also allow the team to constantly monitor deployment, she continues. In closed end structures managers raise the capital, investors commit over a 3-5 year cycle, and although there is communication between the two, the lack of transparency can be a source of investor frustration. In evergreen vehicles, NEST can see its money being put to work and see their investment pipeline.

“In many cases, NEST was the first evergreen fund the manager had done so the structures were really designed in consultation with us.”

NEST began investing in private assets with an inaugural allocation to private credit. That has now grown to include infrastructure, renewables, private equity and real estate and “as long as opportunities continue to present themselves” the pension fund aims to increase its 20 per cent allocation to privates to 30 per cent by 2030.

The team is close to funding a new US direct lending mandate and is also looking at opportunities in value-add infrastructure that marks a departure from the predominantly core allocation. NEST also added a second timber manager in August 2025.

Farrell believes scale also contributes to success. Researching private markets requires resources to monitor and select managers, and NEST’s scale also gives it more negotiating power with managers.

“Scale contributes to success in private markets, and the government’s initiative to create larger pools of capital makes a lot of sense. Financial services benefit from efficiencies of scale, and this is true of DC too,” she says, referencing the government’s Pension Schemes Bill which aims to consolidate smaller DC and DB schemes into fewer, better governed and more scalable entities.

NEST has styled its manager relationships around allocating large amounts to particular partners. It means that in many ways the pension fund has grown with its managers, and the relationships are strategic on both sides. Still, NEST took strategic partnerships one step further when it bought a stake in IFM Investors last year, joining a collective of 15 Australian pension funds.

“Our ownership stake in IFM means we treat each other as part of the same organization – it’s like being inside of the business.”

Close manager relationships also support better terms.

Farrell looks carefully at the trade-off between its large mandates and its own name in the market and wouldn’t work with a manager not willing to offer products at a fee the team feel is justified. Nor does NEST pay performance fees.

“We don’t believe that is necessary,” she says. There is no performance compensation within its own organization, and she says culturally NEST remains unconvinced by the idea that performance pay makes people work harder. Instead, the investor nurtures an ethos characterised by a belief that “people come in and do the best they can because they care about our members and want to do the right thing.”

NEST operates in a target date fund structure whereby members are invested in diversified funds that target their retirement. NEST’s investment structures and strategies have evolved in line with the Australian model

Another component of strategy is governance, of which ensuring managers have an appropriate valuation process as the value of assets grows in the portfolio, is key.

Because it’s a DC plan NEST prices a daily NAV, yet because private markets don’t price daily the team must ensure they are comfortable with the price they are holding assets, she explains. Governance around the valuation process includes ensuring each manager values and refreshes the portfolio and knows NEST will intervene if the valuation is suddenly out of wack because of infrequent valuation.

For example, private markets typically lag the public markets correction trajectory.

“During the pandemic, the correction in private equity lagged behind public equity. Had we been invested in private equity at this time, this would have been an obvious point of intervention. Public markets corrected more quickly than privates, and we would have needed a process with our managers to consider applying a discount, for example,” she says.

Good governance also includes ensuring manager stability. Managers are monitored on a quarterly basis to makes sure the team hasn’t changed in any way that could impact the strategy they manage on NEST’s behalf, particularly given the high level of M&A in fund management means teams often shift

Investing in private markets has also enabled NEST to integrate responsible investment. As direct owners, private markets give investors the ability to be a more active and influential owner; help managers focus on responsible investment and ESG, and have important conversations with companies.

Admittedly, equity owners can wield more influence than debt providers but she concludes that private debt investors can play an important role in encouraging corporate reporting.

Trustees and employers overseeing the United Kingdom’s 5,000 corporate pension plans holding an estimated £1.2 trillion have another option to help manage the defined benefit assets.

TPT Retirement Solutions currently oversees around £11 billion in pension fund assets, and has launched a DB “superfund” that will invest on behalf of plans seeking to ‘run-on,’ UK pension industry parlance for well-funded schemes choosing to continue as they are, rather than opt for a so-called buy out, and sell to an insurance company.

TPT estimates assets under management in the new superfund could reach £3 billion in five years. Under its model, TPT would ultimately share investment profits with beneficiaries and would invest in growth assets, in line with the government’s ambitions to get pension funds to invest more in UK productive assets.

Currently, many of the UK’s DB funds, often in their end game as their corporate sponsor prepare to shift its liabilities off balance sheet, aren’t positioned to tie up assets in illiquid investments.

“There will be an emphasis on private markets and deploying capital in a manner that aligns with the UK government’s current thinking, we believe,” says Nicholas Clapp, chief commercial officer of TPT, speaking to Top1000funds.com. “Our structure means we will be able to have a long-term horizon and support illiquidity, and we will also be able to create an internal market from one client to another, and from one solution to another. This investment philosophy is already at the heart of what we want to do.”

He adds that the latest solution on offer from TPT reflects the organisation’s commitment to offer a range of consolidation options to the UK pension market.

“We believe this is another compelling option and will encourage UK pension funds to consider TPT as one of their consolidation options – we offer a different type of opportunity and skill set to deliver on behalf of DB pension schemes.”

Overtime, the superfund will achieve synergies and efficiencies by merging vintages of client DB funds”, Clapp continues. Schemes within the superfund will have access to seven different fund structures in a fund of fund vehicle enabling them to access numerous managers. From this they will be able to create an asset mix shaped by their maturity, risk appetite and investment objectives.

He says the fees will be specific to each deal, but notes TPT is experienced at running solutions that offer value for money and use scale to create operational efficiency. “We can do everything in house; we have the skill set, pipework and plumbing between different services like actuarial, administration and fiduciary management.”

TPT will submit its proposal to the pensions regulator for assessment in January. So far, only one other superfund, Clara Pensions, has passed regulatory scrutiny and Clapp believes the superfund market is large enough to accommodate different varieties of superfund, and not be homogenous. “When you look through the lens of risk, we present a different type of skills set to deliver DB pension schemes, and our track record speaks to itself.”

Still, he says that positive feedback has primarily come from consultants rather than corporate pension funds themselves.

Moreover, take up of superfunds by the DB pension community has been historically slow. The sharp rise in interest rates in 2022 improved the funding levels of many DB schemes and by 2024, many funds were close enough to 100 per cent funded to be sold to an insurer.

But TPT hopes it offers a compelling selling point. It will allow pension schemes in the superfund to use the surplus for member augmentations in an approach Clapp believes will be both “interesting and appealing” to a wide variety of funds.

However, this will only happen when TPT’s seed investor is repaid.

UK regulations require all DB funds entering the super fund are fully funded on a buy out basis whereby the pension scheme has enough assets to transfer all of its liabilities to an insurance company which then takes over paying members’ pensions. This meant TPT’s required finding a seed investor to take on the role of the sponsor, ensuring the pension funds are fully funded.

“Once our seed investor has earned their investment back, members should get the majority of the surplus,” he concludes. “Our strategy allows members to enhance benefits more than they would normally which will be an alternative to consider for ceding sponsors and trustees.”

The chief investment officer of the $150 billion Minnesota State Board of Investment has the power to hire and fire managers without board approval for the first time, in a governance overhaul approved this week that will significantly speed up its decision-making process. 

Presenting the proposed governance change to the board this week, executive director and chief investment officer Jill Schurtz said the velocity of investment decision-making has “accelerated meaningfully” – especially around co-investment opportunities and continuation vehicles – and is out of pace with the quarterly board meeting cadence.  

“This would be an important enhancement for efficient decision-making, and in particular facilitating our ability to take advantage of attractive opportunities as well as favourable economics,” she told the board meeting.  

Under the new investment policy statement (IPS), which the board approved, the CIO now has the authority to hire and terminate investment managers in public assets at her discretion.  

In private markets, the CIO will be able to make commitments of up to $750 million per fund, secondaries and co-investment vehicles, plus up to 1 per cent of such commitments to cover any required costs at closing. She can also make direct co-investments alongside commingled funds in which the SBI has existing commitments, for an amount no greater than the primary commitment or $500 million.  

The old process of hiring new managers required SBI investment staff to interview shortlisted organisations and submit finalists to its 17-member investment advisory council (IAC), comprising public sector, finance, employee, and retiree representatives. The IAC’s recommendations then required board approvals before the staff could contract an external manager.  

Under the new IPS, the board retains the ultimate say in policy decisions such as asset allocation, the ability to modify or revoke delegated authority to the CIO, as well as the appointment and termination of the CIO.  

Schurtz said the move to delegate investment authority will align SBI with industry best practice.  

“It’s not just pension plans that have moved to this model far and wide, but as well it’s universities, foundations, endowments and family offices. This is seen as an important feature of a well-performing plan,” she said.  

In what would be one of the final rounds of commitments under the old governance structure, the board approved eight private equity, one private credit, one real estate and one real assets fund – the largest mandate being an injection of up to $300 million into a Blackstone private equity fund.  

Portfolio finetuning 

SBI investment staff also presented the results of its five-yearly asset allocation study, conducted over the past 18 months with external consultant Aon.   

It led to the decision to reduce the cash allocation from 5 to 3 per cent, shifting the capital to core and core plus bonds as well as “return-seeking” income in a slight increase to risk. The fund will also focus on shorter maturity securities in its Treasury protection portfolio to lower interest rate sensitivity and improve stress-period liquidity.  

In a bid to have better control of diversification in private markets and understand the underlying exposure, SBI introduced sub-asset class weightings which saw private equity occupy the lion’s share of private assets with an 18 per cent of total fund allocation.  

SBI investment staff said in a meeting memo that it has “compelling reasons” to believe the asset class’s return premium relative to public markets will persist, but perhaps at a lower level due to increased competition for deal flow.  

The fund will also target a 3 per cent allocation in private credit, and 2 per cent each in real estate and real assets. The return target for the private markets’ asset class will be a composite of sub-asset class benchmarks weighted by their market values.  

Domestic equities and international equities’ target allocations remain unchanged (33.5 per cent and 16.5 per cent respectively). 

“Overall, the proposed changes move the portfolio in a positive direction and reflect important enhancements to portfolio implementation,” said deputy CIO Erol Sonderegger, adding that the changes have a modest impact on expected return and volatility.  

“The recommendations from the study reflect incremental changes focused more on improving portfolio execution than on proposing large changes to asset class weightings.” 

The board meeting was held virtually as pro-Palestinian protests were organised in front of the SBI building, with demonstrators demanding that the agency divest from Israel bonds over the country’s role in the ongoing Gaza war. Some advocates spoke during the public comment period, but the board did not make any official comment regarding the exposure.