Austrian pension fund assets increased by €800m in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA).

This equates to an increase of 3.03 per cent, compared to the previous quarter, with total assets hitting €27.8bn at the end of Q1 2024.

This is the first time pension funds have surpassed the previous record result of €26.98bn at the end of 2021, taking more than three years to at least nominally compensate for the consequences of the multiple shocks and crises, the FMA said.

Broken down, €2.33bn is attributable to occupational pension funds and €24.85bn to inter-company pension funds. In the reporting period, there were around 1.08 million beneficiaries (+1.19 per cent compared to the previous quarter).

The investment performance of the pension funds, as calculated by Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB), amounted to 2.70 per cent in Q1 2024, with the inter-company pension funds performing better (2.76 per cent) than the company pension funds (2.02 per cent).

The average performance over the past three years was 1.39 per cent, over the past five years 2.93 per cent and over the past 10 years +3.29 per cent. A total of eight pension funds were active on the Austrian market, five inter-company and three company pension funds.

Around 95.79 per cent of the assets managed by the pension funds were held indirectly via investment funds.

With regard to the various investment categories, the assets under management were predominantly invested in shares (40.52 per cent) and bonds (33.34 per cent). The remainder was divided between real estate (6.14 per cent), bank balances (5.70 per cent), loans and credits (2.82 per cent) and other assets (11.48 per cent). 33.53 per cent of assets under management – after hedging transactions – were held in foreign currency.

At the end of the year, the total assets managed by pension funds corresponded to 5.53 per cent of Austria's gross domestic product (GDP).

---