Learning from Australia: Mercer are making co-investments work for UK pensions - Corporate Adviser

A Corporate Adviser article headlined "Learning from Australia: Mercer are making co-investments work for UK pensions" addresses how Mercer is working to structure co-investment arrangements for UK pension schemes, drawing on lessons from Australia's superannuation sector. The headline indicates that Australian models are being presented as a reference point for UK defined benefit and defined contribution schemes seeking to access private-market co-investment alongside managers. The full article could not be retrieved, so specific deal structures, participating schemes and quantitative details cannot be confirmed here.

The article's context sits alongside Mercer's broader pensions research. The Marsh CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2026, which Mercer's report materials reference, now covers 55 pension systems, including newly added Dominican Republic, Kenya and Qatar, representing 66% of the world's population. The index scores systems on Adequacy (40%), Sustainability (35%) and Integrity (25%). Kuwait, the Netherlands and France rank top for adequacy; Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands lead on sustainability; and Finland, Norway and Singapore lead on integrity.

The same research flags demographic pressure as a central theme for 2026, noting that aging populations raise pension provision costs, create funding strains as working-age populations shrink, and shift pension fund investment toward defensive positioning across the roughly US$70 trillion in global pension assets. Readers should treat the co-investment specifics in the Corporate Adviser piece as unverified until the full text is reviewed.