Independent insights for institutional investors - improving the lives of stakeholders, including pensioners worldwide.
Trusted by the world's leading funds
We work with over 500 institutional investors across more than 25 countries, from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds to endowments, foundations, and family offices representing more than 100 million pension fund members worldwide.
Our relationships span the world’s most influential funds, including leading institutions across Australia, the Netherlands, and the Middle East. On an extended and uninterrupted basis, we have worked with 150 of the 300 largest plans globally.
Questions that bring you to us
Our subscribers are leaders across investment, finance, strategy, and administration — as well as fiduciaries — who are committed to improving their institution’s performance in concrete, measurable ways. If that sounds like you, here’s what we help you answer:
How does our cost base and performance compare to relevant peers?
What is driving our under- or over-performance across different time horizons?
What actions can we take to improve?
Nobody is better placed to answer these questions than CEM. We’ve spent over three decades building the world’s most extensive institutional investor database, earning the trust of the world’s leading funds.
What makes our insights different
For more than 30 years, institutional investors and pension administrators around the world have voluntarily contributed proprietary data to CEM—creating a benchmarking dataset unmatched in depth, continuity, and reliability. Clients contribute their data through our online surveys, with the process made easier through pre-population and industry-standard templates. Every submission passes multiple levels of screening before entering our databases.
Not publicly available
Data contributed directly by participating institutions, covering areas of performance, cost, and operations that are never publicly reported.
Multi-layered analysis
Data spans total fund, asset class, and mandate levels for investments, and follows four member journeys across 15 service areas.
Comprehensive coverage
Benchmarking includes front, middle, and back-office functions, providing a complete view of how organizations operate.
Standardized & continuous
Standardized definitions enable meaningful comparisons, supported by uninterrupted data collected consistently over multiple decades.
How we work with you
Our subscriptions are designed to meet institutional investors wherever they are in their performance journey, from understanding where they stand, to learning from peers, to uncovering the answers to their most pressing questions. We offer three distinct but complementary product families:
Benchmarking subscriptions
An annual analysis of an institution’s performance against a curated and highly relevant peer group. Subscriptions are available for:
- Investment performance and cost & FTE: For all types of Institutional Investors, including pension funds, superannuation funds, endowments and foundations.
- Administration performance & cost: For pension funds specifically, with separate subscriptions for DB and DC funds.
Community subscriptions
Groups of like-minded leaders at peer institutions meet regularly to discuss market insights, best practices and custom research findings. We have global and regional Communities organized around Investments & Operations, Data & Systems and Pension Administration.
Research & analytics
Bespoke efforts that answer industry or fund-level questions through deeper querying of our databases and network. Our dedicated team of researchers produces industry white papers, custom data sets and forecasting tools to answer deeper questions on performance, cost and FTEs.
Experiences that speak for themselves
CEM’s Global Pension Administration Conference is THE annual event for leaders in Administration. The conference brings together the foremost leaders in administration to discuss their most pressing issues in a safe and confidential environment. Every year, I leave with insights that I would not have received anywhere else
“Partnering with Finovate was a game-changer for us. They took the time to understand our challenges and helped us streamline our operations for success.”
“I hired Finovate for a small project & was very happy. He not only answered all my questions, but he didn’t treat me like a “small project”.
I was very satisfied & would recommend.”
