September 2026
23Sep

US. NYC Pensions Eye Private Markets in $5 Billion Green Allocation

New York City Comptroller Mark Levine unveiled a plan to steer billions of dollars into private markets, characterizing the move as a shift designed to help the investor meet its climate-related goals while safeguarding returns. The Comptroller's Office's Bureau of Asset Management said the proposal targets three of the City's public pension funds: New York City Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), Employees' Retirement System (NYCERS) and Board of Education Retirement System (BERS), according to a statement on Wednesday. In all, the...

September 23, 2026
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22Sep

US. Average Number of Retirement Plan Investment Options Growing

The average number of investment options in a retirement plan lineup has been increasing slowly over the last few years, according to data from PSCA’s Annual Survey. For years, the conversation was around reducing the number of options available so as to not overwhelm employees with too many choices which can lead to them not making a choice at all. The average number slowly decreased and then hovered at about 19 options for many years — about five years ago...

September 22, 2026
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21Sep

US. AI Boom Forces Pension Funds and Sovereign Wealth Funds to Reassess Portfolio Exposure

The AI rally is disrupting traditional diversification strategies at pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, with risk spreading beyond technology stocks into private equity, corporate bonds, and infrastructure. According to ChainCatcher, institutional investors are now re-evaluating their overall portfolio exposure to AI. Goldman Sachs estimated that AI infrastructure-related companies account for about 40% of the S&P 500's total market value, while Apollo data showed AI-related issuance has made up nearly half of investment-grade bond issuance this year and 87% of...

September 21, 2026
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18Sep

US. NYC pension funds make $300M affordable housing investment to help solve apartment shortage

Four New York City municipal pension funds are investing $300 million into a trust connected to the country’s biggest alliance of labor unions in an attempt to address a dire housing shortage in the five boroughs, Comptroller Mark Levine announced Thursday. The new investment in the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust marks the first allocation of its kind since Levine announced a plan to direct $4 billion in city pension funds over the next four years to build more apartments. “This is...

September 18, 2026
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17Sep

US. Corporate Pension Funding Inches Up in August

Consulting firms reported relatively small increases to their pension funding ratios last month, which resulted in corporate defined benefit pension funds continuing to achieve new surplus milestones. The funded status of the 100 largest U.S. corporate defined benefit plans “inched ahead” to 112.2% in August, just 0.1 percentage points higher than July’s figure, according to Milliman Inc.’s Pension Funding Index. The market value of PFI plan assets rose by $5 billion due to August’s 0.92% investment return, greater than Milliman’s...

September 17, 2026
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15Sep

US. AFSCME and labor allies say ‘no’ to crypto in our pensions

AFSCME, other labor unions and pro-retiree allies are fighting back against the cryptocurrency lobby’s efforts to pass a dangerous measure called the CLARITY Act. This bill would make it easier for highly unstable and unregulated cryptocurrency to infect millions of workers’ pensions and 401(k) accounts – even if the workers don’t intend to invest in crypto. The CLARITY Act is a serious threat to our retirements and a threat to our entire economy. By making it easier for the crypto industry...

September 15, 2026
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14Sep

US. Why Pensions Still Provide Key Income for Many Retirees Even as Access Declines

Traditional pensions, where employers guarantee their workers a fixed monthly paycheck for life in retirement based on their salary and years of service, are widely considered a thing of the past. But the reality is more complicated. While these highly sought-after defined benefit (DB) plans are no longer an option for most of today's workers, for retirees, they remain a common source of income. Pensions Are Much Less Common for Workers Today Only 29% of American workers have an employer-sponsored DB pension,...

September 14, 2026
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11Sep

Pensions and Turbulence: Automatic Adjustment, Risk, and Fairness in Long-Term Pension Design

By Peter A. Diamond Public pension systems are long-term social contracts operating under persistent economic, demographic, and political uncertainty. Periods of turbulence, marked by financial shocks, changes in longevity, and shifting labour markets, test the capacity of pension institutions to adapt while maintaining adequacy, equity, and legitimacy. Building on earlier joint work on pension economics and reform with Nicholas Barr, this chapter analyses the role of automatic and semi-automatic adjustment mechanisms in public pension design. Drawing on comparative experience from...

September 11, 2026
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10Sep

US’s Solo Aging Crisis Is Here

Most people spend decades planning for the financial risks of retirement. Almost no one plans for the social ones. Yet the risk that derails the final chapter of life is rarely running out of money. It is running out of people. Roughly 28% of Americans age 65 and older now live alone, according to Census and KFF Health News data, up from about 10% in 1950. More than 38 million Americans of all ages currently live alone, the highest share...

September 10, 2026
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09Sep

US. Explaining the Rise in Alternative Investments in Public Pension Plans

In recent decades, public pension plans in the United States have changed how they take on risk. At the turn of the century, their risky investments were primarily in public equities, whereas alternative assets – like private equity, real estate, and hedge funds – accounted for just 14 percent of all risky investments. By 2021, the share of risky assets in alternatives had grown to 39 percent. Equally interesting, the adoption of alternatives has varied enormously across plans. What...

September 9, 2026
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