Assets managed by mandatory pension funds - up 18.4% at end-April

The total assets managed by the seven mandatory pension funds amounted to 61.87 billion lei at the end of April 2020, up by 18.4% compared to April 2019 and by 192.46% more than the value registered five years ago, according to an analysis made by the financial information platform about investment funds in Romania - SmartFin.ro. The total number of participants in the seven funds was 7.53 million at the end of April 2020, and their average monthly contribution to private mandatory pension funds was 182.36 lei / month. As to the investments of the private mandatory pension funds, the shares represented on average 18.2% of the assets. The minimum percentage of shares is registered in the Metropolitan Life fund (16.3%), and the maximum percentage in Aripi (25.7%). The rest of the funds' investments are mainly made in fixed income instruments: 64% in government securities, 9.7% in bonds and 2.8% in bank deposits. Also, a percentage of 2.8% of the total assets was placed in the units of some investment funds. According to the analysis, at the end of April 2020, a number of seven private mandatory pension funds were authorized in Romania (Pillar II). On the other hand, in the last 12 months, voluntary private pension funds had an average of the earnings of 0.9% and a median of 1.6%. The best performing fund in the last 12 months was My Pension with a performance of 2.3%, and the lowest performance was registered by the NN Activ fund (-2.5%). The average earnings in the last five years was only 11.3% (or 2.17% annualized). In the last ten years, the average cumulative earnings have been 56.5% or 4.58% annualized. The ten optional pension funds managed total assets of 2.44 billion lei at the end of April 2020, and the total number of participants in them was 516,340. The assets of the ten funds have increased by 12.92% in the last 12 months and by 118.92% in the last five years. AGERPRES (RO - author: George Banciulea, editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - author: Bogdan Gabaroi, editor: Simona Iacob)