The key objective of this project is to gather information on design, performance, and challenges of pension systems in Denmark, Iceland, and the Netherlands. These countries have advanced three-pillar pension systems, which have attracted considerable attention across the world.

Besides giving an overview of the pension systems in the three countries, we will describe which elements to include in the measurement of the performance of a country’s pension system. The context is the well-known Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index, which nowadays serves as a benchmark for international comparisons of pension systems.

Drawing on the experiences of the three countries, we will study how to build a funded pension system from scratch.