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. 

London-based £26.5 billion ($35.3 billion) LPPI, one of the smallest Local Government Pension Scheme pools, has emerged as one of the big winners in the UK government’s drive to reduce the number of LGPS pools which collectively manage £392 billion ($522 billion).

Drawing on inspiration from the Canadian model, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has driven policy to reduce the number of pools from eight to six in a bid to boost efficiency and scale, and enable big-ticket investment in the UK economy.

LPPI stands to scoop up an estimated £19 billion ($25 billion) of additional assets from five local authority schemes forced to find a new asset manager after sister pool Brunel Pension Partnership failed to win government approval under Reeves’ ‘Fit for the Future’ criteria.

Leeds-based £65 billion ($86.7 billion) Border to Coast is another winner, with its assets likely to swell to £110 billion ($146 billion) as it welcomes an additional seven partner funds (to make a total of 18) from the other disbanded pool, ACCESS.

Assets under management at LGPS Central, which will also take on assets from ACCESS and Brunel, are forecast to rise to £100 billion ($133 billion).

“Our partnership will be strengthened by the addition of these funds. In coming together, we can use our scale to be more effective, more resilient, and more impactful. Together we will build on our collective strengths and continue to make a difference for the LGPS,” said Rachel Elwell, Border to Coast’s chief executive officer.

cost concerns emerge again

In recently published minutes from its September board meeting, councillors at the £6 billion ($8 billion) Avon Pension Fund moving from Brunel to LPPI, shared their concerns that “there will be material one-off costs incurred in closing down Brunel and moving the fund’s assets into the new joint pool, which should be mitigated over time by lower ongoing costs.”

The minutes also revealed that Avon believed both LGPS Central and LPPI would be “excellent pool partners” and “both pools score very similarly on the majority of criteria”.

Councillors voiced their appreciation for Brunel’s expertise in private markets, climate strategy and responsible investments, and said it was important for all Brunel funds to depart simultaneously, regardless of their pool destination, to share the burden of exiting Brunel in an orderly way in a process that will take 18-24 months.

Separately, the £4 billion ($5.3 billion) Dorset County Pension Fund also stated its reasons for moving to LPPI.

“This is a positive step towards securing the long-term sustainability of the Dorset County Pension Fund. LPPI is a well-established, well-regulated investment pool with a strong track record of performance, advice, responsible investment and collaboration, and we are confident that this new partnership will deliver long-term benefits for our scheme members, their employers and the wider community,” said vice-chair Councillor Andy Todd in a statement.

The £3 billion ($4 billion) Somerset Pension Fund, another of Brunel’s former partners joining LPPI, voiced its disappointment that the government did not believe Brunel could meet its ambitions, and that Brunel funds would have to seek new pools.

“The Pension Fund Committee and officers of the Somerset Fund, and the other nine funds involved, had worked very hard to build Brunel into a successful pool and transition in excess of 95 per cent of our fund’s investments to Brunel.  It feels much of this effort has now been wasted and we have to start our pooling journey again,” said pension fund committee chair, councillor Simon Coles.

Governance and legal work to bring the funds into their new pools is set to be completed by 31 March 2026.

In another development, the Wales Pension Partnership Investment Management Company (WPP IM Co) set up to manage the £25 billion ($33 billion) assets of Wales’s eight local government pension schemes representing 412,000 members, has just appointed its first chief executive, Rob Lamb.

Calling WPP a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a standalone, regulated investment company in Wales that will benefit all stakeholders Lamb said WPP IM Co will invest to “promote economic growth, create jobs, support clean energy, and enhance infrastructure for the benefit of everyone in Wales.”

Writing on LinkedIn, Lamb said the company’s purpose goes beyond protecting pensions.

“We’re building an institution that reflects Welsh ambition, invests responsibly, and creates lasting economic, social, and environmental impact,” he says.

*Chief investment officer of LPPI Richard Tomlinson and chief investment officer of Border to Coast Joe McDonnell will be speaking at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium Oxford between November 4-6, 2025. Register here today.

Fordham University’s $1.1 billion endowment is culling real estate and private credit in favour of higher venture capital and growth equity allocations as the fund looks to juice up performance. 

With an annual spending rate of 4.5 per cent and an ambition to reach $2 billion in assets “as soon as possible”, chief investment officer Geeta Kapadia concedes that the endowment “really needs return” and must lean into risks.  

The portfolio is underpinned by a significant chunk in private equity (31 per cent) and more moderate exposures to real assets (16 per cent) and private credit (7 per cent), according to financial reports as at June 2024. The private markets allocations are at similar levels now, Kapadia says, although she declines to disclose more recent figures. 

“We’re blessed with the ability to take longevity risk, so we should use it to our advantage and be willing to lock up our capital for the chance of earning more return,” she says in an interview with Top1000funds.com in Singapore.  

“Real estate and private credit – that’s just not going to be able to provide us with the return that we need [compared to venture and growth equity].” 

Kapadia also has reservations about private credit as an asset class. The fund’s current allocation consists of core private credit funds with some non-US strategies, which Kapadia mostly inherited from the previous CIO.  

“I’ve never been a huge fan of private credit even way back. Particularly given the change in interest rates, private credit managers’ ability to just financially engineer solutions [is made less likely] by the cost of capital,” Kapadia says. 

The speed at which capital is flowing into private credit has slowed down globally: fundraising activity this year is on track to fall 30 per cent short of the 2024 level ($219.2 billion) and hit the lowest number of funds closed in over a decade, according to PitchBook. 

“The end to that era of free money is truly changing the landscape of private credit managers’ ability to do really well, so if those returns compress and the cost of debt increases, I have a hard time identifying why I want to put more money to work there,” she says.  

“The fees are not as high as private equity, but they’re still high. I would rather pay the fees in private equity and make returns there than lock my money up in private credit.” 

Tight roster 

Kapadia joined the Fordham endowment after a 13-year tenure as assistant treasurer and investment director at Yale New Haven Health, the largest healthcare system in Connecticut. Three years since taking over the university’s top investment job, Kapadia made her mark by condensing the manager roster from 50 or so names to 30-40 – a sweet spot, she says, for the fund’s current size.  

With only five people in the investment team, the fund wants to develop deeper relationships and demonstrate its commitment by handing over more capital to partners it has high conviction in, “as opposed to spreading it far and wide and hoping that some of them will rise to the top”. 

“Maybe when we’re $3 billion. We may have a different conversation, but we don’t see the reason to really expand,” she says, adding that its manager appointments are driven by bottom-up views rather than a top-down quota.  

“I remember long ago, when I was working at my former institution, one of our board members said ‘I’m not going to put money in my 70th best idea, because that’s not a winning strategy for us’. 

“We would much rather have one manager that we feel real conviction about and give them more money than hire three managers and give them only a third of that same dollar amount. For us, it’s a sheer numbers game.” 

Kapadia is generally “not a huge fan of buying a bunch of strategies” but its absolute return hedge fund book, which represented almost 18 per cent of the total portfolio in the June 2024 disclosure, is somewhat of an exception.  

The portfolio is tasked with mitigating potential downturn in equities and is a diversifying return source. While the capital is still tightly allocated to a small group of managers, they represent a wide array of strategies – Kapadia is keen to explore more event-driven and macro opportunities to take advantage of big picture economic developments, but less so for long/short where the fund already has significant European and US exposures.  

It’s important to the fund that the manager stays in its lane, and there are no sudden changes in investment strategy. Transparency and communication are also critical, and she says investor relations staff hindering access to portfolio managers or simply not returning calls are instant red flags.  

“We want to get married to these managers, like we want to really feel like we have a relationship,” she says.  

Kapadia flags that the endowment will conduct a more careful evaluation of private markets manager relationships too. As the exit environment continues to look depressed, she expects investors like herself to be more scrutinising when deploying capital in the space.  

“The fact is that funds keep extending their terms, distributions are at an all-time low, and the terms are not becoming more friendly to us yet. From the LP’s perspective, we’re being asked a lot,” she says.  

“I do think that long-term, we have to have a significant amount of exposure [in private markets]. But over the shorter to medium term, there’s going to be some sort of reassessment of our landscape, the opportunity set, and the managers that we want to partner with. 

“It’s not just putting a bunch of money to work and it should be okay. You have to be much more selective and much more discerning about where you’re going to go.”