Industry News

In November 2022, the Pensions & Investments (P&I) Research Center published its report, Public Pension Plan Benchmarks. The report covers the overall and asset class benchmarks selected by the 50 largest U.S. public defined benefit (DB) plans. P&I indicates that the top 50 plans are based on their reported U.S. defined benefit asset totals in their 2021 survey. The report focuses on U.S. equities, core fixed-income, private equity, real estate and hedge funds. However, it notes that 11 of the plans did not disclose sufficient detailed information and 10 plans had a fiscal year other than June 30th.

According to P&I, “Due to the complexity of public plan reporting and different approaches to subasset classes, asset allocation and performance ranges can be too broad for meaningful comparison, and thus comparing the asset allocation and benchmarking of different plans can be reductive with adequate context.” It adds that the “report aims to help investment professionals understand the complexity and potential opportunities in the U.S. public DB landscape so that they can select or even create fund choices that better match investment goals and mandates.”

The report is available here.