Following the boost that worker-owned savings arose for the last quarter of 2022, the results at the end of last January contributed to accentuate the growing trend that these resources brought since, only in that month, they recorded profits of 14 billion pesos.
According to figures from Asofondos, total savings, which are owned by more than 18.5 million contributing workers, reached 360 billion pesos. The profits weigh close to 70 percent within the total of the worker savings.
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«The data from recent months have given a positive turn to the behavior of pension funds in the midst of a cycle challenged by various internal and external factors. This type of situation can affect in the short term, but for longer periods they have contributed to generate excellent returns«says Santiago Montenegro, president of Asofondos.
For the economist, this saving is the only guarantee that workers have for their pensions, as shown by the experience of other countries that have built important pension reserves.
The data from recent months have given a positive turn to the behavior of pension funds in the midst of a cycle challenged by various factors
Montenegro reiterated that, in order to assess the performance of long-term savings, such as pension savings, «It is always convenient to look at the returns in appropriate time windows»and highlighted that in 28 years of operation of private funds in Colombia, the AFPs have been managing these resources with efficiency and responsibility, both in good times and in volatile cycles in the markets.
According to the most recent Pension Markets in Focus report prepared by the OECD, Colombia once again registered the highest long-term profitability (20-year window), while for the 10-year period the average annual profitability exceeded that of the 68 percent of the countries studied, including United States, Norway and Chile.
Faced with these results, Santiago Montenegro explained that these data revealed by the OECD ratify the good management that the AFPs have made of the resources owned by the more than 18.5 million affiliates in almost 30 years of operation in the country.
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The study showed that Colombian pension funds (managed by Colfondos, Porvenir, Protección and Skandia) had a average annual real return of 6.2 percent in the last 20 years, the best result among 18 countries analyzed that report this indicator to the OECD. Colombia was followed by Denmark (4.6 percent) and Peru (4.6 percent).
The organization will also highlight the continued growth of pension savings among its member countries. In the case of Colombia, savings in pension funds went from representing 5.3 percent of GDP in 2001 to 31.2 percent in 2021.
«Although this saving is low when compared to that of other countries such as Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and even Chile, here in the region these resources that have been built in our country since the operation of the pension funds , constituting the support of millions of workers for their old ageand at the same time an important source of financing for companies and even for the government itself”, explained Montenegro.
