The number of customers will have a crucial impact on the contribution accumulation pace and implicitly on these funds' early performance, say management companies.
These have recently upwardly revised their estimates related to the number of customers to be attracted, with their optimism being based on the higher-than-expected sales pace. ING Pensii even estimates the overall number of participants could get close to 4 million.
"In the next month, 60-70% of customers on the market will have probably already joined a fund. So far, sales have topped our initial estimates. Under the circumstances, the total number of participants could go above our expectations, to almost 4 million customers," Bram Boon, ING Fond de Pensii's chairman of the board, told ZF.
According to its own statements, ING Pensii had signed over 400,000 unique participation contracts by last Thursday. For the entire four-month period, ING targets over one million customers.
Allianz-Tiriac Pensii Private, which had sealed over 320,000 contracts by last Thursday, has a similar target. However, the company's management is not as upbeat regarding the number of participants that can be drawn in by private pension funds. According to the data held by the National Pensions Office (CNPAS), the total theoretical market at this moment includes 4.2 million eligible people, aged below 45 and making pension contributions.
The most pessimistic estimates on the number of people to join mandatory private pensions come from the Finance Ministry itself, which took into account a number of 2.3 million participants when drafting the 2008 budget, lower even than the one forecast by the most conservative managers of mandatory private pensions.
According to a ZF survey, drawn on the basis of data provided by the National Forecast Commission and of managers' estimates, contributions to be transferred to private pension funds next year will range between 181 and 401 million euros, depending on the number of contributors and the contribution collection period.
A worst-case scenario, namely 2.5 million participants and a collection period of just seven months, would see the funds raising only 181m euros in contributions. An optimistic scenario takes into account 4 million participants and 10 months of contributions, with transferred sums likely to hit 401m euros. A moderate scenario points to contributions of 291m euros. As a matter of fact, Finance Ministry representatives stated a budgetary impact of between 250-300m euros was the most likely scenario.
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