The combined net assets of mandatory pension funds totaled 130.9 billion kuna (€17.4 billion) at the end of May 2022, which is 4.5 percent up year-on-year, from 125.3 billion kuna (€16.7 billion) in May 2021.

Fina said that the May figure was 0.4 percent down from the previous month.

“The escalation of geopolitical tension in the second half of February, namely Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, caused an additional external shock to prices of shares and bonds on international markets, as a result of which the net assets of the Croatian mandatory pension funds dropped by 3.1 billion kuna that month. Their value somewhat recovered in March, increasing by 2.1 billion kuna month-on-month, but then dropped again, by 717.8 million kuna in April, and by 515.3 million kuna in May,” Hina said.

In May 2022, the mandatory pension funds had 2,128,591 paying members, which is 0.15 percent up from April and 2.8 percent up from May 2021.

“The structure of the mandatory pension funds shows that bonds continued to be the predominant form of investment, with 83.5 billion kuna invested and a share of 63.8%. Their share decreased by 1.07 percentage points from the previous month,” Hina said

“On the other hand, the proportion of investment in shares increased by 0.04 percentage points, reaching 27.1 billion kuna and representing 20.7% of the assets of the mandatory pension funds. Investment in investment funds was the third most common form of investing in mandatory pensions funds, with 14.6 billion kuna invested and accounting for 11.1% of the assets of these funds,” Hina said that Fina said.

At the end of May, eight open-ended voluntary pension funds and 20 closed-ended voluntary pension funds operated in Croatia. The open-ended funds had 361,475 members and the closed-ended ones had 46,035 members.

Total monthly payments into the voluntary pension funds amounted to 64.1 million kuna, an increase of 15.6 percent compared with April 2022, while monthly disbursements totaled 26.4 million kuna, down by 2.2%.

The net assets of the voluntary pension funds reached 7.65 billion kuna in May, decreasing by 9.2 million from the previous month. The bulk of the investments were made in bonds (53.7% of the total net assets), followed by shares (25.6%) and investment funds (10.9%).

(€1 = 7.52 kuna)