Pension assets around the world increased more rapidly in 2025 than the year before, with financial markets rewarding pension funds with high equity allocations and punishing high long-term bond weightings and US dollar exposure, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Publishing preliminary data ahead of the November release of its 2025 Pension Markets in Focus report, the Paris-based international organisation said assets in pension plans grew by 11.7% in the 38 OECD countries last year, reaching $70.3trn (€61.8trn) – compared with 8.2% growth seen in 2024.
“This growth was mainly driven by the expansion in some of the largest pension markets in local currency (e.g. Australia, UK, US), alongside a depreciation of the US dollar against other major currencies, which inflates growth rates when values are expressed in US dollars,” it said in the initial report released last month.
In local currency terms, pension assets increased in most reporting jurisdictions, it said, except in the Netherlands where total assets had contracted over the course of last year by -2.8%.
Real investment returns were positive for pension funds in most jurisdictions in 2025, the organisation said, citing three factors behind the investment performance of pension providers.
“The robust performance of global equities, challenging bond market conditions and the marked depreciation of the US dollar, created different valuation effects across jurisdictions depending on their currency exposure and investment strategies,” the report stated.
Pension asset allocations continued to differ across jurisdictions in 2025, it said, noting “significant heterogeneity” within the OECD in terms of equity allocations, with Poland’s 90.4% equity weighting contrasting at the other end of the scale with Germany’s 8.3% and Korea’s 0.1%.
“The data on pension assets for 2025 are broadly consistent with a pattern in which jurisdictions with higher equity exposure benefited more from the strong performance of global equity markets, while jurisdictions with portfolios with higher fixed-income faced headwinds from yield curve and rising long-term rate,” the report said.
Explaining the anomaly of last year’s pension asset contraction in the Netherlands, the OECD said it mainly reflected losses on Dutch pension funds’ bond portfolios and “the amplifying effect of interest rate hedging strategies, as pension funds maintained high hedge ratios ahead of the transition to the new pension system under the Future Pensions Act”.
Australia and Sweden were highlighted as examples of pension assets having grown from a combination of strong contributions and favourable market conditions.
In Australia, an increase in mandatory employer contribution rates to 11.5% from 11.0% on 1 July 2024 and a 10% nominal investment return helped pension assets reach $2.6trn by June 2025, according to the report.
“In Sweden, collective investment schemes and equity investments played a central role, with equity exposures delivering positive gains and contributing to an overall growth of pension assets of 6.8%,” it said, adding that a marked increase in unit-linked products in the Nordic country had also reflected a continued structural shift to DC.
Lithuania’s pension assets also saw solid growth last year, it said, backed by “continued pension contributions” and positive investment performance following the growth of equity market indices.
Overall, pension assets in the 38 non-OECD jurisdictions also surveyed recorded stronger growth than OECD countries in US dollars, at 23.7%, according to the report. However, the total volume of pension assets in those countries is much smaller, at $2.0trn at the end of 2025.
