Country hailed for governance and investing performance
Canada topped the list of countries for the Global Pension Transparency Benchmark (GPTB) this year. It garnered the score of 83, only 8 points away from The Netherlands. They were followed by Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
The 5 Canadian funds that were assessed were featured in the top 10 and showed a noticeable 8-point improvement from their score in the previous year.
“Leading countries excel in different areas.” said Edsart Heuberger, CEM Benchmarking product lead for transparency benchmarking. “Canadians have terrific reporting on governance and investment performance, the Dutch are world-class on costs, and the Nordics excel in responsible investing.”
According to the ranking, Canadian funds were collectively deemed as the best funds for disclosure around governance and performance. The Netherlands took the spot for collectively providing the best disclosure on cost and responsible investing.
In the past three years, gains in transparency have been seen across all factors but it can still be improved, especially when it comes to disclosure transparency regarding costs.
The pension fund that took the highest spot is Government Pension Fund Global from Norway with an overall score of 89, followed by CPP Investments from Canada with 88 points. They are followed by AustralianSuper from Australia. CalPERS from USA and CDPQ from Canada both took the 4th spot with Public Sector Pension Investment Board—also from Canada—taking the last spot on the top 5.
The GPTB is a collaboration between Top1000funds.com and CEM Benchmarking which ranks countries depending on their public disclosures of key value-generation elements for their five largest pension fund organizations within each nation. It measures their transparency through value-generating measures of cost, governance, performance, and responsible investments. Overall scores and rankings are measured through the assessment of underlying components and more than 13,000 data points.
This year marks the third ranking of countries with 75 underlying funds’ scores being published for the second time this year.
