The trend of consolidation seen in the Austrian pensions market in recent years has come to an end, the Austrian Financial Market Authority has observed.

In its 2025 report, The State of Austrian Pensionskassen (PK), noted that the pension fund market is highly concentrated, with three PKs investing around 80 per cent of assets out of eight pension funds in total.

“Although at a low level, the number of PKs has remained unchanged for several years. In Austria, eight pension funds (five inter-company and three company pension funds) manage the assets of future beneficiaries (AWB) and current beneficiaries (LB),” the report said.

The FMA said the reason for the low number of pension funds is partly due to economic conditions and partly due to the regulatory minimum requirements for operating an independent pension fund.

“For some employers, outsourcing to an inter-company pension fund is therefore more profitable than operating their own company pension fund,” it stated.

As of 31 December 2024, the largest pension funds are VBV-Pensionskasse AG (VBV), Valida Pension AG (Valida) and APK Pensionskasse AG (APK).

The remaining five pension funds each have assets of less than €2bn. The number of beneficiaries of these pension funds is less than 60,000 in each case, with the exception of Bundespensionskasse AG (BPK), which manages commitments for around 242,000 beneficiaries, both future and current (AWLB).

As of 30 June 2025, Austrian PKs managed commitments for 1,120,386 beneficiaries. Of these, around 14 per cent are LBs and 86 per cent of beneficiaries are AWBs, which corresponds to approximately one quarter (24 per cent) of the employed population in Austria.

“The high proportion of AWBs in relation to LBs also means that contribution payments of €1,691m exceed pension benefits of €1,361m. Only 2 per cent of all beneficiaries have a defined benefit (DB) pension fund commitment. However, these account for 17 per cent of the coverage provision for all beneficiaries,” the report stated.

As of 31 December 2024, of the 1,099,263 AWB and LB, 586,975 were men and 512,288 were women, which corresponds to a ratio of 53 per cent to 47 per cent.

The most recent results for Austrian PKs revealed that assets remained "virtually unchanged" at the end of the second quarter at €28.6bn.

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