In today’s post-industrial economy, where intangible assets increasingly drive corporate value, human capital is a critical determinant of long-term performance. Yet most pension funds lack a structured, comparable view of how their portfolio companies perform on social and human capital dimensions.
Denominator is addressing this gap directly. Building on its work analyzing human capital performance across Nordic pension funds, Denominator invites pension funds globally to participate in the first industry benchmark for human capital. Every participating fund will receive insights on its own portfolio's human capital performance at no cost.
To participate in the benchmark and access human capital insights on your portfolio, get in contact here. Our team will contact you shortly.
To learn more about Denominator's work with pension funds, visit Denominator's Pension page.
Human Capital and Social Data for Pension Funds
Pension funds manage capital on behalf of millions of beneficiaries, typically across multi-decade investment horizons. Over that time, the human capital risks embedded in a portfolio, including poor labour practices, governance failures, and workforce inequality, have a measurable bearing on long-term financial performance and resilience.
While portfolio analytics tools such as Nasdaq eVestment™, S&P Portfolio Analytics and Morningstar Direct offer broad ESG portfolio analytics, these tools typically produce composite scores across environmental, social, and governance factors on a portfolio level. They rarely provide the granularity needed to identify which specific companies are driving human capital risk exposure in a portfolio, and why.
Denominator addresses this gap by providing company-level human capital data at global scale. The platform covers more than 10 million public and private companies across195 countries and 85 industries, delivering standardized and comparable human capital metrics at board, executive, and company level. This enables investors and institutions to move beyond portfolio averages and understand performance, risk, and variation at the level where it originates: the company.
From Nordic Analysis to a Global Benchmark
Denominator's engagement with the pension sector began with a first-of-its-kind human capital assessment of the largest Nordic equity pension portfolios. By establishing a robust baseline and revealing meaningful differences across countries and sectors, the Nordic benchmark demonstrated how market-wide insight can enhance stewardship, strengthen risk management, and guide long-term investment decisions.
Building on that foundation, Denominator partnered with Smart Pension to conduct the first public human capital analysis of a UK pension fund portfolio. Smart Pension became the first UK pension fund to publicly assess human capital performance across its entire investment portfolio, covering GBP 4.4 billion inAUM across 1,751 holdings in 51 countries and 66 industries.
The analysis gave Smart Pension a company-level view of social and human capital performance. With this data, the fund is better positioned to prioritize stewardship efforts on companies and issues that stand out, integrate human capital factors into voting policies, and support the development of investment products aligned with long-term social performance. Full details are available in the Smart Pension report and in Smart Moves, the data-provider view report by Denominator.
“Denominator’s analysis on human capital within the companies in our portfolio offers valuable insight into long-term sustainability and governance practices. This data can be an indicator of a company's risk management and resilience. We look forward to using these insights to empower us to engage more effectively and drive meaningful change.”
– Fiona Smith, Head of Responsible Investment at Smart Pension
The next step is to scale this work into a shared global benchmark.
Why a Human Capital Benchmark is needed
While environmental benchmarks have become a cornerstone of sustainable investing, there is no widely accepted equivalent for social and human capital performance in the pension sector. Without it, asset owners lack a consistent reference point for evaluating workforce practices, leadership composition, pay equity,and labour rights across their portfolios.
A global human capital benchmark for pension funds would:
· Provide a comparative foundation to assess portfolio performance overtime
· Increase accountability among investee companies
· Support consistent expectations across stewardship and engagement
· Empower investors to act on material social risks with confidence
· Shift social metrics from qualitative ambition to quantifiable impact
How to Participate
The benchmark cannot be built in isolation. It requires collaboration across the asset owner community, including pension funds, insurers, consultants, asset managers, and regulators, to shape its structure, data inputs, and use cases.
Pension funds can share their portfolios with Denominator and participate in the benchmark. Results will be anonymized, as the purpose is not to rank pension funds against each other but to create a shared reference point for comparison. There is no cost to participate, and every participating fund will receive insights on its own portfolio's human capital performance.
While this initiative is primarily aimed at pension funds, Denominator welcomes interest from other stakeholders who wish to collaborate or participate in advancing this work.
Pension funds looking for a more comprehensive view of their portfolio's social and human capital performance can access Denominator's Analyzer, a dedicated tool that provides a full analysis across all human capital dimensions at company, executive, and board level. Get in contact with our team to learn more.
To participate in the benchmark get in touch here and our team will contact you shortly.
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