The past year was above average for pension funds just like 2023, it was stated today at a press conference of the Association of Pension Fund Management Companies and Pension Insurance Companies (UMFO). By the end of 2024, mandatory pension funds managed assets worth a total of 23.22 billion euros, which represents an increase of three billion euros or 14.8 percent compared to the previous year. Additionally, pension funds have earned a total of 9.3 billion euros in added value for their members.
The results of the pension funds’ operations were demonstrated by this association using the example of the personal account balance of a member of category B at the end of 2024. It was stated that over 23 years of pension savings in the B category fund, assuming that the member consistently earned a salary equal to the average salary in the Republic of Croatia, the member contributed a total of 14,911 euros, while the fund earned an additional 11,275 euros on average. After 23 years of saving, the member of the B category fund had a total of 26,186 euros in their account, with earnings from the pension fund’s investments accounting for 43 percent of the total account balance.
In category A, an average return of 13.27 percent was achieved, or an average of 7.74 percent since inception, while in category B the return was 9.68 percent, and the average return since inception is 5.40 percent. For category C, the return in 2024 was 3.55 percent, while the average return since inception is 3.36 percent.
At the end of 2024, all mandatory pension funds together had more than 2.33 million members, which is an increase of 85 thousand members compared to the end of 2023. In the most numerous B category, there were 1.8 million members at the end of 2024, category A had 430 thousand, while category C had 95 thousand members.
The investments of all mandatory pension funds in bonds at the end of December 2024 amounted to 14.1 billion euros (60.8 percent of assets), and their share decreased by 2.2 percentage points on an annual basis. The representation of investments in stocks in the assets of mandatory pension funds increased by 0.9 percentage points during 2024, and at the end of the year, they accounted for 23.1 percent of the assets of mandatory pension funds (5.4 billion euros). Domestic stocks accounted for 14.3 percent of the assets of mandatory pension funds, while foreign stocks accounted for 8.9 percent of the assets. Investments of mandatory pension funds in UCITS and alternative investment funds at the end of 2024 amounted to 2.4 billion euros (10.5 percent of assets), and their share in total assets decreased by 0.2 percentage points during 2024.
