Morningstar Aims to Clock Pension, Foundation & Endowment Performance

May 24, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Morningstar, Inc. and the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) are teaming to create a database that allows pension plans, foundations and endowments to see how their performance stacks up to that of their peers.

According to a press release  from Morningstar, the research firm is asking the pension, endowment and foundation community how willing it would be to provide periodic performance information.

“Though corporate and public pension plans, endowments, and foundations in the United States manage trillions of dollars, it is still a challenge to find objective, comprehensive information on performance, expenses, risk, and holdings of these institutions,” said Steve Deutsch, head of development for institutional investment data, in the press release.

According to Deutsch, a pension, endowment and foundation database is an attempt to bring a greater level of transparency toadministrators, managers, trustees, consultants, plan participants, annuitants, taxpayers, shareholders, and donors.

The two collaborators have already completed a preliminary analysis of NCPERS’ member plans, which found thaton a dollar-weighted basis – accounting for all cash inflows and outflows from purchases and sales and the growth in fund assets – participating NCPERS member plans outperformed mutual funds over several time periods.

Pension, endowment, and foundation representatives can indicate their interest in participating in the database by going to   http://corporate.morningstar.com/MStarPEFDatabase .

The deadline for response is June 29.

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