Assets earmarked for retirement reached a record $69.8T across OECD countries at end-2024, including $63.1T managed by pension providers and $6.7T held in public pension reserve funds. The OECD additionally tracks $2.9T of pension assets in non-OECD jurisdictions. Pension capital is now too large to be treated as a niche retirement issue — it is one of the major forces in global capital markets.
Commercial insight
For asset managers, infrastructure platforms, private-credit firms, consultants and sovereign capital partners, pensions are not just clients. They are the gravitational centre of institutional allocation. Any serious capital-formation strategy has to understand public pension governance, liquidity pressure, political accountability and board-level risk tolerance.
Allocator insight
The question is not simply how pensions allocate capital. It is whether the governance model behind $70T of retirement assets is robust enough for a world of private markets, AI infrastructure, climate adaptation, geopolitical fragmentation and rising fiscal pressure.
Source: OECD, Pension Markets in Focus 2025.