Pension Fund Governance and the Notification of Article 44of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran

The experiences of many countries show that public pension schemes or social security projects have been recognized as one of the fundamental socio-economic issues since many years ago. In Iran, the Iranian state is legally responsible for managing financial resources of Social Security Organization and other public pension funds. Of course, until several decades ago the pension funds gave pensioners moneys received from policyholders but nowadays,considering changes made in demographical trend and retiredpolicyholder ratio, the issue of investing pension fund's financial resources as well as of methods for providing incomes for retired in retirement period has become one of the most important challenges of these pension funds. While studying the before-mentioned issue and other issues related to Iranian pension fund's investments mentioned in notification of Article 44 of the Iranian Constitution for determining the maximum investment for pension funds, this paper reviews some good experiences of such countries as Canada, Ireland, and Norway in pension fund's investments as well as in designing a proper governance structure for these funds. This paper also suggestssome solutions for accountability, ransparency, and honesty in pension funds in order to achieve social security goals as well as to try safeguarding interested partie's interests in pension funds and managing their own moneys in Iran.