Japan¡¯s Government Pension Investment Fund, one of the world¡¯s largest retirement funds, is about to increase its unusually small staff as the assets it oversees balloon.
GPIF, which managed ?260 trillion ($1.8 trillion) in assets at the end of June, only has 187 employees, versus 676 at Norway¡¯s Government Pension Fund Global, which oversaw the equivalent of $1.92 trillion at the end of 2024. Similarly, large retirement funds in Canada and California manage less than a third of what GPIF does, but each has more than 2,000 people on payroll.
GPIF¡¯s small staff size stems from its early days after its founding in 2006, when the organization outsourced most of its investments and put a majority of its funds in domestic bonds. Reflecting a global shift by pension plans toward riskier investments to bolster returns, Tokyo-based GPIF now earmarks about half of its funds to Japanese and foreign shares, and it also puts money in alternative assets such as private equity.
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