An interesting article highlighting the major trends in asset allocation for pension funds in the Netherlands.

There has been a clear shift across Europe towards investing in illiquid real assets in the infrastructre space, due to the longevity benefits which are attractive to the needs of pension scheme investing.

Emerging market debt is also increasingly being favoured over more developed markets, such as Europe, due to lower interest rates and higher returns.

These shifts have been also become increasingly visible across the UK pensions market also and will likely continue over the next few years. Most notably perhaps, Dutch pension funds are diversifying their spread of assets by increasing allocations into the Dutch mortgages market, a trend which mirrors the UK's investment into assets like equity release mortgages.