Independent insights for institutional investors
Enabling institutions to validate their performance and make decisions for the benefit of their stakeholders, most notably pensioners.
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 the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East & Africa. 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: For all types of Institutional Investors, including pension funds, superannuation funds, endowments and foundations.
- Administration performance and cost: For pension funds specifically, with separate subscriptions for DB and DC plans.
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 talent.
Experiences that speak for themselves
CEM provides our board and management with a fact-supported analysis that identifies and contextualizes the value generated by our organization, and ties costs to the investment and operating decisions we make for our members. Their unique data and insights are instrumental in calibrating our performance objectives across the fund.
CEM is an integral and valued partner in ensuring we provide members, employers and trustees with quality service at a competitive cost. While we have benchmarked with CEM for over two decades, our relationship runs deeper. They deliver strategic insights across the Canadian pension administration community, contribute to our trustee education program and connect our leaders to relevant peers internationally. We value their commitment to improving the lives of pension plan members through comprehensive, actionable data and analysis.
CEM’s benchmarking provides a distinctive, data-driven view of how large asset owners implement their strategies – capturing their costs, staffing levels, and the outcomes they deliver. This enables Nest Invest to assess our position relative to peers and clearly demonstrates that we are highly competitive in both investment costs and performance.
CEM’s benchmarking services provide CalPERS with clear, data-driven insights that help guide strategic decision-making and strengthen long-term performance. It offers an objective lens on where we stand and where we can improve in customer service, investments and transparency.
