Public pension funds collectively manage more than $2.3 trillion in assets on behalf of 13.8 million members across the United States (NCPERS 2024 Public Retirement Systems Study, February 2024). For most of investment history, what those funds actually paid their managers was nearly impossible to see from the outside. Fee schedules changed that.
What a Fee Schedule Actually Is
A fee schedule is a periodic disclosure report published by a public pension fund that details the fees it paid to each external investment manager during a given fiscal period. Most funds publish them annually, some semi-annually.
Knowing that a certain pension pays 10 bps in management fees for U.S. equity strategies gives managers a directional benchmark: Am I in the right ballpark? How do I need to tailor our fee proposal?
Beyond headline rates, fee schedules show how pensions structure fees across strategies. Are they using performance-only fees anywhere? What are they paying for active equities versus passive? How do fees differ by sleeve? They also show how fees change as ticket sizes increase — where fee breaks occur and how investment firms are pricing for scale. For a broader view of how pensions are approaching private markets, see our Public Pension Private Markets Report: 2025 Review and Outlook.
Taken together, fee schedules offer a realistic, market-driven view of pricing — not theoretical targets, but what's actually getting done.
Why Public Funds Are Required to Disclose This
Public pensions are government entities, and their investment activities are subject to open records laws in most states. Beneficiaries and taxpayers have a right to know what their money is paying for.
ILPA released its first fee reporting template in 2016 and updated it to Version 2.0 in January 2025, now the expected standard for funds in their investment period as of Q1 2026 or commencing operations after January 1, 2026 (ILPA, January 2025). The update was designed partly to fill the transparency gap left by the SEC's vacated Private Funds Adviser Rules. CalPERS put it plainly: "Transparency is vital to ensure that investors are fulfilling their fiduciary duty on behalf of their members" (Chief Investment Officer, January 2025).
Why the Data Is Hard to Access at Scale
Fee schedules are published by individual funds on individual websites, in individual formats, on individual schedules. One fund publishes a clean fee table in its CAFR. Another buries the same information across 200 pages of narrative. A third reports alternative investment expenses net of income, making its apparent cost look lower than a peer that reports the same expenses separately, with no actual financial difference.
Monitoring 1,493+ U.S. public pension funds to extract, normalize, and compare fee data is not something most managers attempt. The result: most managers, especially emerging ones, set fees with almost no information about what comparable managers are actually charging.
What Dakota's Fee Schedules Data Contains
Dakota Marketplace aggregates fee schedule data from public pension funds at scale across more than 35,000 investments, covering strategy, funding date, and fund balance details at the individual manager level.
Fee benchmarking. See what comparable managers are charging the specific funds on your target list — not a category average, but actual fees paid by actual funds.
Competitive intelligence. If a fund has paid three other credit managers in the 80-100 bps range for five years, that changes your negotiating position.
RFP preparation. When a consultant asks how your fees compare to market, answer with evidence instead of assertion.
Relationship research. Fee payment history implies mandate retention. Knowing a manager has collected fees from a fund for eight consecutive years tells you something before you decide whether to pursue the same fund.
Why This Matters Most for Emerging Managers
Stanford GSB research found that 61% of private market funds cluster investors into two fee tiers, and that managers without an established track record are 13 percentage points more likely to use tiered structures than established managers (Stanford GSB, Begenau and Siriwardane, 2022). An emerging manager walking into a negotiation without knowing what the fund has paid comparable managers is not starting from a neutral position.
Fee schedule data narrows that gap. A first-time fund negotiating a credit mandate with a large state pension can now see what that fund has paid other credit managers, at what mandate sizes, over what periods.
Where to Find Fee Schedules
Within Dakota Marketplace, fee schedules sit alongside the pensions themselves on the Documents tab, making them easy to filter and locate. As new documents are added each quarter, they paint a more current picture of how pensions approach manager compensation across strategies and ticket sizes. For more on how fee data fits into the research process, see our guide on how to optimize your public pension fund research.
Fee schedules are not about finding the "lowest" fee. They're about understanding what's realistic, competitive, and aligned — helping managers price more effectively, prepare for diligence conversations, and engage allocators with a clearer understanding of how fees are actually negotiated.
Dakota Marketplace tracks 1,493 public pension funds across the U.S., including fee schedule data covering manager-level fees by strategy, asset class, mandate size, and geography. Book a demo.
