Institutions such as retirement or pension funds refer to employers or employees who pay a certain percentage of wages on a regular basis. After retirement, they can receive a retirement pension paid in a lump sum or on a monthly basis.

Before the 1980s, the operations of this type of fund were simple, that is, they were mainly used to purchase government bonds and deposit them in banks to earn interest; after the 1980s, as the problem of population aging in Western countries became more and more prominent, they relied entirely on increasing the burden on enterprises and individuals to raise funds.

It is becoming more and more difficult to generate sufficient pension funds. Therefore, from the 1980s to the early 1990s, pension fund operations began to shift towards stock marketization, that is, more and more pension funds invested in corporate stocks and bonds; since the 1990s, pension fund operations began to become international.

, that is, the proportion of pension funds invested in overseas securities markets continues to increase. This is because the return rate on overseas investments is higher than that in the domestic market.