Private mandatory pension funds made a 97 million lei profit for their members

The value of net assets for mandatory private pension funds (Second Pillar) has reached 1.7 billion lei (404.8 million Euros) at the end of July, up 8.2% over the beginning of the first semester, according to a press release by the Romanian Association for Private Pensions (APAPR).

The total number of subscribers to the mandatory pension funds has reached 4.8 million, out of which almost 4.4 million have received in their individual account at least one monthly payment out of the 15 that were required so far. Thus, the number of empty accounts in the system (for which no payment was made) dropped to less than 406,000, meaning 8.5% of the total.

APAPR stated that the balance between the gross payments made and the net assets managed by the funds leads to a net profit of 97 million lei, for subscribers, after subtracting of all the fees and adding the earnings from investments.

Mandatory private pension funds returned on average 8.89% over the first seven months of the year, 13.98% in the previous year and an average annual return of 13.98% since their inception in May 2008.

As part of the Second Pillar, ING manages 665.9 million lei in assets, with a market share of 39.1%, followed by Allianz Ţiriac (403 million lei in assets and a 23.6% market share) and Generali (135.4 million lei in assets and a 7.9% market share). The three abovementioned companies also have the largest number of subscribers.

The assets of voluntary pension funds (Third pillar) exceeded 150 million lei (35.68 million Euros), at the end of July, after the total number of subscribers exceeded 173,000, a 3,500 subscriber increase since the beginning of the year and over 22,000 by the beginning of this year. In the past year, voluntary pension funds have received almost 56,000 subscribers, according to APAPR.

Voluntary pension funds have returned 8.75% on average over the first seven months of 2009, 9.28% a year in 2008, and an average annualized return of 6.37% since their inception in May 2007.