The investments made by the Pension Fund Administrators (AFP) abroad have had a better performance than those made in the domestic market, as just revealed by the Colombian Association of Pension and Severance Fund Administrators (Asofondos) after pointing out that if 100 pesos had been invested in international shares in the last two years, today they would have 143 pesos and if the option had been fixed income abroad they would have 117 pesos.
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Said Santiago Montenegro, president of Asofondos, in response to the invitation of the President Gustavo Petro so that the AFPs return the pension savings of Colombians to local investments.
However, the trade union spokesperson said that if those same 100 pesos were invested in local shares in that same period, they would have 89 pesos, that is, 11 pesos of possible earnings would have been lost and if they had been allocated to TES, only 84 would have been obtained. pesos, 16 pesos less for savers.
“The primary objective of the administrators with the savings of the workers, is to maximize their benefits and to grow. The strategy is to make a series of diversified investments, which are regulated and supervised that have allowed that today close to 70 percent of the total of the 360 trillion are explained by that diversification“The entity said in a statement.
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It is this diversification and management that has allowed today more than 18.5 million Colombians affiliated with the AFPs to have accumulated savings of 360 billion pesos, of which 67 percent corresponds to returns.
According to the Asofondos directives, the logic of investments here and in any market is common sense: you invest in multiple assets, under well-designed strategies and in expert hands. Thus, in the face of a situation of falls in local assets, the portfolios abroad have made it possible to offset and even generate higher returns.
And they added that “pension funds should not play roulette like in a casino, nor make decisions based on political criteria, nor hasty or short-term actions. The investment of members’ resources must be done with the long term in mind and in the best risk-return ratio. We have seen a devaluation of 35% in the last two years, and in times of recession this tends to increase, which also justifies the diversification of pension fund assets.”
“Having the eggs in a single basket would jeopardize the now and tomorrow of the old futures,” they highlight.
The investments made by the AFPs are regulated by the investments decree 2555 of 2010, whose modification occurred in 2011 (Decree 857 of March 23, 2011), with the creation of Multifunds, followed by multiple modifying decrees. “This has been a regulation created with the highest standards in search of the protection of affiliates,” he warned in the union of private administrators.
Montenegro also ruled out that the bankruptcy crisis ofl Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the United States may have some repercussion on the AFPs and their investments and recalled what was expressed yesterday by the Financial Superintendence in the sense that: “In the AFPs and other institutions: There are no direct investments in SVB. The AFPs have some investments in funds that follow stock indices that may affect their valuation, but are funds that are admissible by regulation as long as they have adequate levels of diversification.
The exposure of the AFPs to venture capital funds is practically nil, therefore, an impact on this industry would not be expected either.”
*Porvenir is part of the business group that controls the Editorial House Society EL TIEMPO
