The United Nations General Assembly requested in 2022 (resolution A/RES/76/246) that OIM should conduct a comparison of the UN Pension Fund's investment performance with other global pension funds. To this end, OIM engaged CEM Benchmarking, a leader in global pension fund analysis, to use their peer review that compares the results of the Fund’s performance in relation to other global pension funds.
The 2022 CEM Benchmarking analysis, that has just been released, compared the UN Pension Fund's performance and total cost of investments against:
- A global universe of 277 pension funds, with assets ranging from $0.1 to $1,740.3 billion, representing a total of USD $11.6 trillion. The median fund size is $8.6 billion.
- A peer group of 19 global funds with assets under management ranging from $48.3 to $127.8 billion, with a median size of $82.4 billion.
The main findings of the 2022 CEM Benchmarking analysis confirmed the Fund's:
- Effectiveness: The 5-year net total nominal return of the portfolio was 4.2%, surpassing both the global median of 3.3% and the peer median of 3.9%.
- Efficiency: The 2022 total investment cost of 32.7 basis points was lower than the theoretical benchmark cost of 34.0 basis points, indicating that the Fund incurred lower costs for services compared to its peers. In absolute terms, the Fund's total investment cost was 29% lower than the peer median of 45.8 basis points.
- Safety: The asset risk of the portfolio was 10.8%, slightly higher than the peer average of 10.1%. The asset-liability risk was 11.8%, close to the peer average of 11.7%.
The 2021 CEM benchmarking report, published earlier this year, similarly highlighted the UN Pension Fund's positive returns on investments and lower management costs compared to its peers (see here).
Performance Analysis versus Benchmark (2022 CEM Investment Benchmarking Analysis) can be found here.
To download the 2022 CEM Investment Benchmarking Analysis, click here.
