CPF earns Asia-Pacific's first A in global ranking of pension systems

S'pore joins the Netherlands, Iceland, Israel and Denmark in top league of Mercer index

- Chor Khieng Yuit Senior Business Correspondent

Singapore's Central Provident Fund (CPF) has become the first in the Asia-Pacific to earn an A rating in an annual global ranking of pension systems

CPF climbed from a B+ in 2023 and 2024 to join the Netherlands, Iceland, Denmark and Israel in the A-league of the 2025 Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index. This is the first time CPF attained an A in the index's 17 years.

"First-class" retirement income systems that are robust, sustainable, deliver good benefits and have a high level of integrity get an A from Mercer.

The pension expert, which has been tracking global pension systems with the CFA Institute since 2009, said on Oct 15 that CPF's improvement can be attributed to gains in the sustainability and integrity sub-indexes.

These offset a slight drop in the adequacy sub-index, which measures whether a pension system provides a sufficient level of income for retirees to maintain a decent standard of living.

Meanwhile, the sustainability sub-index assesses the pension system's long-term viability and its ability to meet future pension obligations, while the integrity sub-index indicates the level of trust in the pension system.

A total of 52 retirement income systems were reviewed for the 2025 index, with eight of them, including Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, showing improvement.

Mercer noted that no pension systems were downgraded.

This shows that retirement income provision is improving on a global scale, which is important as people live longer and birth rates continue to decline, it added.