This chapter provides indicators on the trends in pension fund assets, investments, membership, and revenues and expenditure up to December 2007. The performance of private pension systems over the coming years will be strongly influenced by the evolution of the financial crisis and the depth of the economic recession. Some indicators, like pension fund net income flows will show a marked deterioration in 2008. The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution is likely to be accentuated in the years to come. Investment policies are also experiencing change, leading to lower equity allocations even after markets recover. Funds in emerging economies will grow in importance over the coming decades, so selected non-OECD countries are included too. While Chapter 1 looked at all types of private pension arrangements, this Chapter focuses exclusively on pension funds, for which detailed indicators are available. The Chapter therefore excludes data pertaining to: ? book reserve systems (as they exist in countries like Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Spain, and Sweden); ? pension insurance contracts (such arrangements exist in all OECD countries, the main exceptions being the Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and the Slovak Republic) and; ? funds managed as part of financial institutions (often banks or investment companies), such as the Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) in the United States and other countries. The full description of data coverage can be found in Chapter 5 in the table entitled “Overview of private pension system by type of plan and financing vehicle”, provided for each individual OECD country. This table describes existing pension plans in the country and gives the correspondence with the OECD classification in terms of pension plan type and financing vehicle. Pension plans included in the data are also flagged in this table.