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Research Outline

Prepared for Robert H. | Delivered February 18, 2021

Assets Held in Institutional Investment Firms

Goals

To provide a breakdown of assets held in Institutional Investment Firms by Pension Funds, Insurance Companies, Endowments, Mutal Funds and any other categories.

Early Findings

Initial Findings
  • Essentially, it has proved extremely difficult to locate the requested information.
  • The specific requirement (as is my understanding) is for the size (i.e. the value) of institutional investments in the US, broken down by the different investment categories, such as pension funds, insurance companies etc.
  • Data of this granularity does not appear to exist online.
What information is available
  • The US industry is reportedly worth $45 trillion. The closest available information to what was requested is found on Page 4 of this published document 'Issues Facing the U.S. Money Management Industry'. Here a breakdown of the industry sources of assets under management for 2018 is found. However the chart has no clear scale and several categories (such as government pensions) are omitted.
  • Page 5 shows a similar composition of assets, to scale, but this time several of the categories have been aggregated.
  • The 'Institutional Investor Study 2020' is an annual study which analyses the investment perspectives of 650 institutional investors, collectively responsible for $25.9 trillion in assets and from 26 locations across the world. Information such as trends, growth and returns are displayed here.
  • The most detailed statistics come from the Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has already been identified as a source of information.
  •  Pitchbook provide an online service supplying global data and insights on over 32,000 institutional investors. There is a free trial available.