“2018 was a negative year for the financial markets and especially for the stock markets. The returns on pension funds have also been affected after a decade in which they were more than positive on average”. Thus, stated the president of COVIP Mario Padula, in an important passage of the report for the year 2018, on 12 June. How much are these negative effects? “The occupational pension funds and the open funds – continued Padula – lost on average, respectively, 2,5% and 4,5%; for 'new' class III PIPs, the drop was 6,5%''. As a result, in 2018, supplementary pensions have lost their classic challenge – almost existential – with the severance indemnity (the transfer of which is the main source of financing for private pension schemes) which has appreciated, net of taxes, by 1,9%. A similar result (due only to the law) took shape only in the midst of the Great Crisis.
So what happened last year? Have the fund management bodies made the wrong investments, tried their luck with risky speculations? Let's look at the allocation of investments to find some explanation for a phenomenon that does not encourage the slow emergence of a funded second pillar in order to ensure greater adequacy of pensions. A good family man would no longer be prudent in placing his hard-earned savings. 41% of pension fund investments (excluding the mathematical reserves and the resources of pre-existing funds within a company or an entity) are allocated in government bonds (21,4% are Italian public debt bonds, the others debt securities amount to 17,1%). Equity securities decreased by 16,4% (from 17,7%). the units of UCITS (forms of collective investment schemes) went from 12,6% to 11,9%.
Overall, the value of pension fund investments in the Italian economy is equal to 36,7 billion, 27,7% of assets. Government bonds represent the largest share: 28,3 billion. Commitments in securities of Italian companies are marginal (less than 3%) and are mainly aimed at bonds (only 1,2 billion in shares). Up to here the neutral, even a little reticent photography of the situation. But it is not the COVIP president's job to analyze the reasons why 2018 was a negative year on the financial markets, in particular the stock markets (which in the case of pension funds have an almost marginal interest). It's up to us to ask ourselves how they could accumulate negative returns from financial institutions that "secure" their assets with government bonds. This is where the consequences of the irresponsible policy of the yellow-green government emerge – even in the pension savings sector, all “talk and badge".
The big names have done more damage with shenanigans, rash statements, oblivious to changes in the spread and rising interest rates. Moreover, the prospect is not particularly brilliant: to maintain the current situation asset location it will be necessary to renew the securities burdened by higher rates. When it is said – it is the prime minister himself who reminds his deputies – that in the event of a clear violation of the rules and open conflict with the European institutions, the savings of Italians are at risk, in the end there is also confirmation: the perception gives way to reality. Supplementary pension provision is a supervised sectorwhere situations are monitored. But it doesn't take much imagination to think that all forms of savings have been penalised.
Now, in view of a budget maneuver deemed unsustainable - both for the old accounts to be settled and for the new measures that the government (namely Matteo Salvini) intends to promote - we do not want anything to aggravate our condition, to make us even less credible, to arouse growing concern among our interlocutors. After the carnival of minibots it was really necessary that Paolo Savona, from the top of Consob, the supervisory authority on the financial markets, let himself go into a sort of school case on an imaginary country that could also bear a debt equal to 200% of GDP, at pact to achieve economic growth greater than the increase in debt itself?
Because Italy is not in such conditions it didn't make any sense venturing into considerations that are taken as indifference and underestimation of a public debt like ours, supervised by the whole world. With impromptu, almost provocative releases like this, in an official forum, it is normal and justified that there are "prejudices" about Italy. After all, nobody denies our role in the European and world economy. On the other hand, the (pre)judgment on the government is different.
