Perfect score sees Norway take out top spot on transparency

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Government Pension Fund Global, has topped the list of the most transparent funds according to the Global Pension Transparency Benchmark’s 2024 findings, scoring a perfect 100 out of 100.

In the four years the GPTB has been measuring transparency of global funds, the Government Pension Fund Global has improved its score by 27 points from 73 in 2020 to 100 in 2024.

Executive leadership at the Government Pension Fund Global have put transparency front and centre over the past few years and the improvements in the score reflect that dedication. [See Why transparency is strategic initiative for Norway’s SWF]

The GPTB, a collaboration between Top1000funds.com and CEM Benchmarking aimed at measuring the transparency of disclosures across cost, governance, performance and responsible investment in a bid to improve the industry transparency, asks binary questions: does a fund disclose something, or not.

Edsart Heuberger, CEM Benchmarking’s product lead for transparency benchmarking, says the GPTB measures the completeness of the disclosure, but not necessarily the quality.

“Mind you, in our experience, the leading funds clearly have higher quality disclosures, and the Government Pension Fund Global has best-in-class reporting. Their materials are a joy to read,” he says.

“Addressing gaps in reporting isn’t always trivial. In some cases, the data needs to be sourced internally or by third parties. We understand the Government Pension Fund Global had to lobby the Ministry of Finance this year to provide more transparency on governance to achieve their new score.”

Like last year, CPP Investments was ranked second, only narrowly beaten by Government Pension Fund Global. CPP Investments, which topped the benchmark in the first and second editions, improved its score from 88 last year to 96 in 2024.

CalPERS was in third spot this year, jumping from fourth in 2023 and displacing AustralianSuper, which slipped to equal seventh.

This year the top 10 funds globally were particularly competitive, with an average score improvement of 10 points. So, while AustralianSuper scored two points higher than it did last year, it was leapfrogged by others with greater improvements.

The fourth edition of the GPTB again reveals that increased scrutiny on public disclosures is driving measurable transparency improvements. Last year, 77 per cent of the reviewed organisations improved their total transparency scores, while this year 69 per cent of funds scored higher.

In 2024, the average fund scored 63 out of 100, versus 60 last year, and 55 in 2022. The funds at the top of the rankings continue to improve the most.

This year 19 funds scored over 80, compared to nine last year, and six scored over 90. Further, nine of the top 10 most-transparent funds scored the same or higher than the most-transparent fund last year.

“For leading funds, the GPTB methodology has become a roadmap for improving transparency. These funds have addressed the gaps in their score,” Heuberger says.

But while there have been huge improvements in transparency at the top end of the fund rankings, there remains a big gap between the leaders and the laggards. The lowest-ranked fund scored only 14 overall.

“Surprisingly, we continue to see few improvements from funds that were laggards in the first edition of this benchmark,” Heuberger says.

“The laggards then are still the laggards now. The gap between the best and the laggard funds is increasing, which is unusual for most benchmarks.”