Pensions & Investments gathered information for this report, published annually since 1974, in three steps.
Questionnaires were sent to more than 1,300 fund sponsors in P&I’s database. The largest 1,000 were identified from completed questionnaires, follow-up phone calls and emails, and database searches.
Data for sponsoring entities that did not respond was culled from published annual or quarterly reports and Form 5500s filed with the Department of Labor.
P&I’s survey generally covers the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2024. In cases where no information was available from the fund, or the data was older than June 30, 2024, P&I, along with its partner Cognition Solutions, calculated estimates to Sept. 30.
There were a few new questions added to the survey this year. Stand-alone India and Brazil equity and debt breakouts were added for defined benefit plans. Private credit allocations were further broken out into options of direct lending, distressed debt, mezzanine debt and other. Growth equity and co-investments were also added to the private equity categories.
On the defined contribution side, questions about personalized target-date funds and decumulation strategies were added.
Lastly, “enhanced” equity and bond categories were eliminated, leaving only active and passive as options.
Dollar amounts generally are rounded to the nearest million; in certain tables and charts, they are rounded to billions. The aggregate asset mixes represent the weighted averages of all reported allocations for the respective funds.
All data in this special report is ©2025 Crain Communications Inc. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
