Pension funds increase investments in real economy
Non-governmental pension funds (NPFs) have demonstrated increased interest in investments in securities of businesses and organisations. According to the Bank of Russia data for the first nine months of this year, investments by NPFs in bank assets are down to rank second in pension savings portfolio.
Over the period from 1 June, the date of receiving by the NPFs of the pension savings after a two-year freeze, to 1 October the corporate bond exposure grew by 9 percentage points (157.3 billion rubles) to 39.2% of portfolio interest, the equity exposure grew by 4.5 percentage points (77.4 billion rubles) to 13%, investment in the government securities of the Russian Federation by 2.3 percentage points (38.9 billion rubles) to 6.1%. Investments in bank deposits, bank account balances, cash on brokerage accounts are down by almost 300 billion rubles to 28.7% of portfolio interest.
PJSC FHC RusHydro, JSC Atomenergoprom, PJSC Rosseti, PJSC SPC United Wagon Company, OJSC Transneft, PJSC Magnit, PJSC Rostelecom, LLC MOS-SPB Trunk Road, PJSOC Bashneft, OJSC Novolipetsk NLMK, etc., are among the companies, in which the non-governmental pension funds invest.
‘We rate the result as positive’, Philip Gabuniya, director of the Collective Investment and Trust Management Department, says, ‘it is now possible thanks to the implementation of a whole range of measures: cancellation of break-even investment rule for pension savings, Bank of Russia decision on stage-by-stage reduction of authorised investment in the banking sector, joint efforts of the non-governmental pension funds, the Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and companies of the real sector of the economy to find instruments for efficient investments’.
The Bank of Russia is hopeful that further legislative improvements (possibility to make an investment portfolio of held-to-maturity securities, changes in the NPF compensation system) will encourage investments of the pension savings in long-term assets with positive effective yield.