Global Reporting Principles

In 2022, we undertook a multi-year effort to create CEM's Global Reporting Principles (GRP). These principles were launched in 2024.

Prior to creating GRP, we observed that standards and templates exist in specific countries, like Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK. However, the global institutional investment industry lacked a single, consistent set of principles that span performance, cost, and timing. We worked with seven leading global pension funds to create these principles.

The complete list of GRP principles can be found below:
Investments Pension Administration
1. Disclose asset value on the appropriate basis for calculating costs.
2. Disclose costs that are offset against revenues.
3. Look through and include costs incurred in all investment tiers.
4. Disclose costs for the same period in which revenues are earned.
5. Include indirect taxes that are implicit in the price of a product or service in total costs.
6. Include non-recurring costs in total costs.
7. Include costs incurred by related parties in total costs.
8. Disclose costs in your local currency.
9. Disclose investment costs and performance by composite or mandate.
10. Disclose if returns are fully gross-of-fees or, if not, disclose what costs are netted from the return.
11. Disclose time-weighted returns.
12. Use appropriate benchmarks.
13. Returns for less than one year must not be annualized.
14. Use and explain estimates when alignment to these principles is neither practical nor timely.
15. Disclosures should be available for stakeholders in time to fulfill their reporting and decision-making needs.
CEM’s Global Reporting Principles will evolve over time. The release schedule was designed to allow for both feedback from market participants as well as for institutional investors to develop the systems, data, and personnel to action on. The future releases, currently slated for 2026 and 2029, are shared here.

CEM's benchmarking survey definitions provide detailed guidance on each of these principles.