“Pension funds should not play roulette like in a casino, nor make decisions based on political criteria or hasty or short-term actions.”
Such was the response of Santiago Montenegro, President of Asofondosunion of private funds (AFP), to the proposal of President Gustavo Petro to bring the resources that these funds have abroad to invest them in the local market and thus protect them from a possible crisis, regarding the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which rocked the markets on Monday of this week.
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While President Petro says that 55 percent of the resources managed by the AFPs are invested abroad, from Asofondos they point out that it is 52 percent.
However, they will warn that this percentage is the one that has made it possible to shield the portfolios in moments of uncertainty and volatility.
If in the last two years 100 pesos will have been invested in international stocks, today they would have 143 pesos, and if the option had been fixed income abroad, they would have 117 pesos, explains Montenegro, who immediately points out that if those same 100 pesos had been invested in local shares in the 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 pesos would have been obtained, 16 pesos less for savers.
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“The primary objective of the administrators with the worker savings is to maximize your profits and grow. The strategy is to make a series of diversified investments, which are regulated and supervised, which have allowed today about 70 percent of the total of 360 billion pesos to be explained by this diversification”, insisted the union spokesperson.
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, warns Montenegro.
This is shared by some analysts. Andrés Langebaek, director of Grupo Bolívar Economic Studies, He says that whoever makes a very short-term decision, with very preliminary news and without relevant information about a situational phenomenon, can make important mistakes.
“Having the eggs in a single basket would jeopardize the now and tomorrow of the old futures”, they say in Asofondos, and they emphasize that it is this diversification and management that have allowed today more than 18.5 million Colombians AFP affiliates they will have savings of 360 billion pesos, of which 67 percent corresponds only to yields.
