Peer Intelligence | Winter 2023

By Edsart Heuberger

Transparency and effective communication are two critically important success factors for pension funds. Together they build trust, improve strategic focus and stakeholder relationships, increase engagement with plan members and employees, and drive better member outcomes.

In 2021, CEM introduced a Global Pension Transparency Benchmark in collaboration with top1000funds.com. The Transparency Benchmark rates the public disclosures of the five largest pension fund organizations in fifteen countries.
CEMers spent 2,500 hours assessing the quality of public disclosures.

Figure 1: The most transparent countries in the world

In 2022, CEMers spent 2,500 hours assessing the quality of public disclosures.

Each review focused on four factors: responsible investing, performance, cost, and governance. This month, we feature a performance reporting best practice from one of the most transparent funds in the world: the Government Pension Fund of Norway (GPF Norway).

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) hosts an outstanding interactive dashboard on their website on behalf of GPF Norway that demonstrates how websites can be used to provide enhanced performance disclosures. Total fund and asset class returns from current to long-term were provided along with links to additional information such as costs, inflation rates, net real returns, and a range of risk and risk adjusted return metrics. The metrics are also downloadable to accommodate those who want to do their own analysis with the data. NBIM also discloses that it calculates returns in accordance with the CFA Institute’s Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) and provides a link to more detailed information. 

Figure 2: NBIM investment performance dashboard

Being transparent also means effectively communicating your results to your stakeholders and dashboards provide more insight than annual reports. We encourage you to take a closer look at NBIM's investment performance dashboard.

CEM’s Transparency Benchmarking Subscription features many more performance, cost, responsible investing, and governance reporting best practices. To learn more about our subscription click here.