No less than five mandatory private pension funds (pillar II) have announced plans to sell their portfolios in the past month. Now that the official campaign has ended, the question is; which fund will be next to join the list?
The 5 funds that are now seeking buyers attracted over 102,000 customers during the four-month campaign, and the lottery, which took place in early March.
Omniasig, OTP, Prima Pensie, Zepter and Marfin are five funds in search of the best possible prices to sell their customer portfolios. The first deal has already been sealed between OTP and BT Aegon, at a price put at over 3m euros, namely 150 euros per participant.
According to estimates made by major pension fund management companies, the price per participant that most deals will be signed at will range between 150 and 200 euros.
Although the legal requirements for pension funds require at least 50,000 contributors within the first three years, pension firms currently estimate the minimum threshold needed to survive stands at almost 150,000 contributors.
Radu Vasilescu, CEO of ING Fond de Pensii, estimates that a fund can stay on the market provided it has 150,000 customers, namely a market share of at least 3.6%. Several months ago, his estimate pointed to 100,000 customers. Why was the threshold pushed up? Because of the lower expectations regarding contributions transferred to private funds, and the higher-than-expected number of empty accounts in the system.
According to the estimates made by CNPAS (National Pensions and Social Security Office), the number of empty accounts is expected to range between one and one and a half million.
In other words, all the funds with less than 150,000 participants should find ways to attract more customers, either through a merger, the acquisition of another fund, or the sale of the customer portfolio and withdrawal from the market.
For now, Omniasig is the biggest pension fund on the market that has expressed its intention to sell. Omniasig ranks tenth with more than 63,000 customers.
Practically, all pension funds from the second half of the ranking (positions 9-18) will be considering the future of their pension funds. Out of the 9 funds, at least 5 have already decided to sell their customer portfolios. For the time being, in principle, there can only be only discussions, while potential agreements between funds, on the sale of customer portfolios, cannot take a legal form given the absence of ruling on transferring portfolios.
However, the Pensions Commission could adopt such a norm over the next two months. Market consolidation is a process experienced by all Central and East-European states that have introduced mandatory private pensions.
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