This chapter provided an overview of the pension fund industry. Pension funds provide a way of accumulating retirement funds similar to life insurance contracts and mutual funds. Pension funds, however, have a tax advantage in that an employee's contributions to pension funds are exempt from current taxation. The chapter reviewed the types of funds offered by private companies (financial institutions) and by federal and state or local governments. Given the problems with the funding of public pension funds and the phenomenal increase in stock market values, growth in private pension funds has been larger than any other type of financial institution in the 1990s. We looked at the distribution of asset investments for both private and public pension funds and highlighted their differences. The chapter also reviewed the major piece of regulation governing the industry, ERISA, and the role played by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC).