The four largest private earnings-related pension companies in Finland returned an average of 6.9 per cent in the first nine months of 2026, the Finnish Pension Alliance (Tela) has revealed.

Based on their quarterly reports, Veritas saw the highest return at 8.1 per cent, closely followed by Elo at 8 per cent.

Varma returned 6.9 per cent over the first three quarters, while Ilmarinen returned 6.2 per cent.

Across asset classes, equities performed strongest with an average return of 11.1 per cent, while alternatives returned 5.8 per cent.

Real estate returned an average of 1.3 per cent, although fixed income investments saw a negative return of -0.7 per cent.

Varma had the highest investment value with €71.4bn, followed closely by Ilmarinen with €70.4bn, while Elo had €36.3bn of invested assets and Veritas had €5.5bn.

Meanwhile, the local government pension fund Keva had €79.3bn of invested assets and the state pension fund VER had €27.2bn.

On average, the private earnings-related pension companies held 58.7 per cent of their investments in equities, while 21.3 per cent were in fixed income assets.

Alternative investments made up 11.9 per cent of invested assets and real estate averaged 8 per cent.

Elo had the highest percentage of equity investment at 60.5 per cent, followed by Varma (60 per cent), Ilmarinen (56.8 per cent) and Veritas (54.4 per cent).

Recent reforms in Finland have allowed pension companies to take on greater investment risk, resulting in higher allocations to equities.

Ilmarinen had the greatest proportion of invested assets in fixed income (25.6 per cent), followed by Veritas (21.9 per cent), Varma (18.6 per cent) and Elo (18.4 per cent).

Varma had the highest allocation to alternatives (15.3 per cent), while Elo had the most exposure to real estate (10.7 per cent).

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