The assets captured in IPE’s annual study of the leading European retirement asset pools total €7.04trn, up from €6.74 last year – an increase of 4.45%. Yet this growth in assets masks a varied picture. The three large occupational pensions markets – the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK – account for about half of the assets between them, yet a growing market like Italy accounts for less than 3% of the total, and a sizeable number of countries barely trouble the bottom rungs of our tables.
Our ranking of retirement assets includes a sizeable pool of first-pillar pension assets, including Germany’s Versorgungswerke and Finland’s mutual pension insurers. We also include sovereign funds where the mandate of these is directly related to the pension system, including Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global – which itself accounts for over 12% of the total pool of assets in our study – but also the likes of Belgium’s Zilverfonds, France’s FRR, Spain’s Fondo de Reserva de la Seguridad Social, the Swedish AP funds and Switzerland’s Compenswiss.
