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FIAP > Boletín – Recientes > Pension Notes – No. 55 Performance of the Latin American pension funds in 2020 – July 2021
23 September, 2021

Pension Notes – No. 55 Performance of the Latin American pension funds in 2020 – July 2021

This document analyzes relevant statistics regarding contributors, coverage, pension funds and investment portfolios in pension systems, within the context of the 2020 global health crisis.

  • Contributors: The first reduction in the number of contributors in at least 10 years was observed between 2019 and 2020, amounting to 3.6%. The only countries that recorded increases were Costa Rica and Panama, with 3.5% and 7%, respectively. Contributors per 100 members also dropped from 41.3 to 38.3 between 2019 and 2020.
  • Coverage: Coverage measured as the ratio of enrolled members to the Economically Active Population (EAP) increased by 5.5 percentage points between 2019 and 2020, rising from 81.5% to 87%. In turn, it was found that coverage measured as the ratio of contributors to the EAP, dropped by 0.3 percentage points between 2019 and 2020, interrupting the continuous gradual increase since 2010. It was also observed that only three countries increased their coverage of contributors between 2019 and 2020: Costa Rica (2.6 pp), Panama (0.8 pp) and Mexico (0.3 pp). Among the remaining countries, the four that recorded the highest drops in this coverage were: El Salvador (1.3 pp), Peru (1.3 pp), the Dominican Republic (0.8 pp) and Chile (0.5 pp).
  • Pension funds: The funds increased by USD 21,675 million in the 2019-2020 period, from 26% of GDP to 27%, less than the growth observed in the previous period. This stagnation in the growth of the funds is mainly due to lower returns and the drop in the number of contributors due to the health crisis, as well as the pension fund withdrawals that occurred in Chile and Peru. Due to these withdrawals, they are the only two countries in the study that saw their funds diminish between 2019 and 2020.
  • Investment portfolio: On studying the weighted average participation of pension funds by economic sector for the years 2020 and 2019, it was observed that there have been increases in the government and foreign sectors, with reductions in the corporate and financial sectors. The government and foreign sectors continue to be the most preferred sectors in the countries under study in 2020, with 37% and 33% of the total portfolio, respectively.

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