Marchenko points at Kazakhstan private pension funds' mistakes

Chairman of Kazakhstan National Bank Gregory Marchenko told Russia 24 about mistakes made by Kazakhstan's pension funds. Answering the question about reforming Russia's pension system and about a better way to manage funds of Russian retired people, Marchenko said: "By forming a portfolio diversified by countries, by asset classes and by currencies." The Chairman of the National Bank said that Kazakhstan's pension funds failed to sufficiently diversify their assets. "According to the regulations currently in effect, private pension funds in Kazakhstan have to invest at least 20 percent of their assets into Kazakhstan's public securities. But in fact they invested 50.5 percent. They were playing it on the safe side. Of course, this lowered their risks, but damaged the profitability as well. According to our regulations, they were allowed to invest up to 40 percent of their assets abroad. But in practice they were investing only 9 percent abroad. This means that private pension funds were over-investing in (low-yield) public securities inside Kazakhstan and under-investing (in higher risk and higher yield assets) abroad," Marchenko said. However, he added that this was not the reason behind the idea of creation of the Single Pension Fund in Kazakhstan. All the pension savings of Kazakhstan citizens have to be consolidated into the Single Pension Fund by July 1, 2013. The government of the country will be running the fund and the assets will be managed by the National Bank in line with its investment strategy.