The stories that helped you do your jobs better in 2024

In 2024, readers embraced our in-depth analysis and Investor Profiles as we continue our quest for a deeper understanding of institutional investment best practice and driving the industry to produce better outcomes for stakeholders. Thank you to all our interview subjects, readers and supporters over the last year. Below is a look at the most popular stories of 2024.

One of our defining characteristics and main objectives at Top1000funds.com is to provide behind-the-scenes insight into the strategy and implementation of the world’s largest investors. Our access to senior investment professionals globally and our understanding of the context of their decisions is unequalled.

In 2024, we continued to deliver in-depth Investor Profiles showcasing the thinking of global CIOs, and we focused in on improving our research-based initiatives. We now have readers at asset owners from 95 countries, with combined assets of $48 trillion, and we are also pleased to say that in 2024 we significantly increased our pageviews and our user base with our readers spending more time on our site.

stories you loved

Investor profiles continue to be core to our indepth understanding of asset owners around the globe and this year readers were interested in a geographical mix including South Africa’s GEPF as it prepares for a two-pot system, staff at Ohio STRS losing their bonuses due to infighting, an interview with OMERS’ CEO on his view of the Canadian Maple 8, Japan’s GPIF as it expands its manager pool and more recently the chaos at AIMCo as politicians take control of the fund sacking the board and CEO.

When you put this latter story alongside a write-up of a session we did from our Toronto event this year where four luminaries of the Canadian system – Claude Lamoureux, Keith Ambachtsheer, Mark Wiseman and John Graham – discussed if the founding principles of the Canadian system are under attack, one wonders if this is the tip of the iceberg for the much-revered Canadian Model. You can be sure this will be on our list of stories to investigate in 2025.

In 2024 we tackled some big features, sharing with investors what their peers around the world are doing about AI, which we think is the challenge and opportunity of a lifetime for asset owners, why climate investing is so difficult, and why investment teams need to be cognitively diverse.

expanding perspectives

Our research initiatives continued to improve and expand and now include the Asset Owner Directory, the Global Pension Transparency Benchmark and the recently launched Research Hub.

The Asset Owner Directory is an interactive tool to give readers an insight into the world of global asset owners.  It includes key information for the largest asset owners around the world, such as key personnel, asset allocation and performance, and also includes an archive of all the stories that have been written by Top1000funds.com allowing readers to better understand the strategy, governance and investment decisions of these important asset owners.

The Global Pension Transparency Benchmark measures and ranks the transparency of 75 asset owners from 15 countries. This year funds across the board, especially the leading funds, demonstrated vast improvement in their transparency scores. The benchmark has been the catalyst for an increased focus and marked improvement in the transparency of public disclosures by pension funds across costs, governance, performance and responsible investment. Remarkably, this year Norges Bank ranked first with a perfect score and to get there, the fund made huge gains through a concerted effort that among other things required advocating the government to make governance changes.

In 2024 we launched the Top1000funds.com Research Hub, bringing leading academic research to investors to deepen their knowledge on subjects that will broaden their perspectives on future macro-economic drivers and support better decision making.

The research hub links our events and our content with our Fiduciary Investors Symposium event series built on a close association with academia. For nearly 15  years we have been hosting the events on leading university campuses, giving delegates an immersive educational experience and challenging them to think bigger.

Now we have developed this research hub, which brings investors the academic papers written by the university professors that have been such an integral part of our programs. The research hub allows you to search academic papers and related Top1000funds.com content by name of academic or university, or by subject.

Its aim is to provide investors with deeper knowledge, based on robust data and research, on subjects that will broaden your perspective and support better decision-making.

All of our initiatives are aimed at providing a deeper understanding of best practice and driving the industry to produce better outcomes for stakeholders.

I have the pleasure of speaking with you – our global investors – every day and as I have calls with many of you at the end of the year I know it’s been a big year for many of you.

Thank you for being a reader, a delegate, sponsor or speaker, we really appreciate your engagement. And as the world gets more complex sharing your insights with your peers is invaluable.

We’re going to do it all again next year and kick off our event calendar with the Fiduciary Investors Symposium in Singapore from March 18-20.

Hope to see you there.

Until then, happy holidays.