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 were 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, 2022. In cases where no information was available from the fund, or the data were older than June 30, 2022, 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. Plan sponsors were asked how much they paid in fees to external money managers in the most recent plan year for their defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Farmland and agriculture was added as a stand-alone category within the alternative assets section for DB plans. Real estate was also added as a stand-alone category within the question of how much of a DB plan’s assets was managed internally. Lastly, digital assets/cryptocurrency was added as a category for DC plan assets.
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 are ©2023 Crain Communications Inc. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
