February 2026
10Feb

The fund winners storming into 2026

Last year turned out to be pretty good for investors, even though US President Donald Trump’s unorthodox approach to trade negotiations did not make it plain sailing. There was also an uneasy geopolitical backdrop, with major wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, alongside persistent conflicts across parts of Africa and Asia. However, all the major stock markets that we regularly monitor made annual gains. The best performer was the Brazilian Ibovespa, which delivered a one-year return of 34%. Closer...

February 10, 2026
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06Feb

Liability-Driven Portfolio Choice for Pension Funds under Regime-Switching Inflation

By Myung Jun Kim, Hyeontae Jo & Bong-Gyu Jang This paper studies optimal portfolio choice for a pension fund with inflation-linked liabilities under regime-switching market dynamics. We consider a fund manager who invests in stocks, inflation-indexed bonds (IIBs), and a risk-free asset to maximize expected utility of the terminal funding ratio, subject to a Value-at-Risk (VaR) constraint. Asset returns and inflation expectations follow a two-state Markov chain representing high and low inflation regimes. The main methodological challenge is solving the...

February 6, 2026
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05Feb

South Africa. Government Pensions Agency under fire over R145 million in irregular spending

The Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) is under fire after audits reportedly revealed R145 million in irregular and wasteful spending, including payments for work that was never done. The findings, reportedly linked to over R2 billion in irregular transactions, have drawn sharp criticism from the Public Servants Association (PSA) and raised concerns in Parliament about governance failures at the agency, which manages pensions for 1.7 million government employees. Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, Jan de Villiers, said the findings are...

February 5, 2026
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04Feb

Australia warns $3.2 trillion pension fund industry to lift systems investment

Australia's corporate regulator has warned the nation's A$4.5 trillion ($3.16 trillion) pension fund industry it needs to invest more in systems and technology to better prepare for the future and avoid becoming troubled like stock market operator ASX (ASX.AX), opens new tab. Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Commissioner Simone Constant said the pension fund industry, known locally as superannuation, was on track to be worth A$6 trillion by 2030. At that size, she said, it would be larger than Australia's banking...

February 4, 2026
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04Feb

US. Mark Levine’s Priorities at the NYC Pension System

New York City Comptroller Mark Levine wants to increase the city’s pension investments in affordable housing, and will not slow down on the city’s sustainability initiatives, Levine said in an interview with CIO.  As comptroller, Levine oversees the five New York City pension systems—the Teachers’ Retirement System, Employees Retirement System, Police Pension Fund, Fire Pension Fund, and the Board of Education Retirement System—which collectively manage $311.35 billion in assets. “My No. 1 obligation in this role is to protect the retirement assets of the three-quarters of a million people who...

February 4, 2026
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January 2026
29Jan

JPMorgan (JPM) Buys UK Pensions Platform WealthOS

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) is one of the 11 Most Profitable Cheap Stocks to Invest In Now. On January 22, Reuters reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) has completed a deal to acquire WealthOS, a UK-based pensions technology platform. This information comes from an internal memo seen by Reuters. This transaction is expected to strengthen JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s (NYSE:JPM) presence in the pensions industry and position the company to benefit from the growing demand for retirement planning products...

January 29, 2026
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23Jan

Decoding Pension Funds: Sustainability Indicators for Annual Report Analysis

By Leticia Martins Medeiros, Clea Beatriz Macagnan & Rosane Maria Seibert Pension funds’ growth highlights the need to emphasize fiduciary duty and investment sustainability, considering the current and future participants’ interests (priority stakeholders) and systemic risk reduction (environmental, social, economic, and governance effects). Therefore, this study builds sustainability indicators based on the interests of pension fund stakeholders. The methodology comprised five stages: the first consisted of analyzing Annual Information Reports to create a preliminary list of indicators; the second involved...

January 23, 2026
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23Jan

Global Pension Assets Study – 2025

By Thinking Ahead Institute The Global Pension Assets Study estimates global pension fund assets across 22 major pension markets (the P22). These geographies now stand at US$58.5 trillion in pension assets and account for 68% of the GDP of these economies. The study, conducted by WTW and the Thinking Ahead Institute since the 1990s, includes an analysis of the seven largest markets (the P7): Australia, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and the US, which comprise 91% of total pension assets. Pension...

January 23, 2026
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16Jan

South Korea. National Pension Fund Surpasses 1,500 Trillion Won Mark

The National Pension Fund, which surpassed 1,400 trillion won at the end of last year, is understood to have broken through 1,500 trillion won in just two weeks, riding on KOSPI’s rally, which broke all-time highs for 10 consecutive trading days. According to investment banking (IB) industry sources on Jan. 15, the National Pension Fund’s asset management scale recently exceeded 1,500 trillion won. This represents an increase of nearly 30 trillion won this year from the provisional figure of approximately...

January 16, 2026
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15Jan

UK. Pensions administration to become ‘core’ governance function by 2030

Pensions administration is set to move from a back-office operation to a core element of scheme governance by the end of the decade, driven by regulatory pressure, technological change, and heightened risk awareness, LCP has predicted. Writing in a blog post, LCP senior consultant, Ella Holloway, said the revised administration guidance from The Pensions Regulator (TPR) had clarified expectations for trustees and signalled a shift in how administration should be viewed, placing it firmly at the centre of effective governance rather than...

January 15, 2026
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