During April, 169,176 workers acknowledged that they have an account with one of the 10 retirement fund administrators (afore), that is, they signed a contract with an administrator to manage the resources of their individual account. The lowest figure so far in 2022.
The amount of the fourth month represented an annual contraction of 22.6% given that in April of last year 218,774 accounts were recorded, according to data from the National Commission of the Retirement Savings System (Consar).
Likewise, the data showed that they add six consecutive months to the decline in terms of the number of workers who have signed a contract with an Afore.
In the accumulated of the first quarter of the year, 750,727 accounts recognized by the workers were recorded, this represented an annual decrease of 0.05% or 376 fewer accounts.
Although there are more than 70.8 million accounts registered in the Retirement Savings System (SAR), only 52.6 million have been recognized by workers. In other words, there are more than 18 million people who do not know that they have an Afore account.
Moisés Pérez Peñaloza, head of retirement & financial wellbeing for Latam at Aon, explained that the lack of interest of workers in knowing whether or not they have an Afore account hinders the work of the regulator and the administrators themselves.
“There is little they can do (the Consar and the Afores) if there is no interest and initiative of the individual who, in the end, is the owner of the resource (…) it is a problem that must be attacked with pension education” He commented in an interview.
Almost 25 years after the SAR began to operate, there is still enormous ignorance because it is not known how it works, it is not understood how the workers’ savings will grow, Iván Pliego Moreno commented a few weeks ago at the inauguration of the Afores Fair Merida 2022.
The Consar explained that if a worker contributes to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and has not chosen an Afore account, one of the administrators that have generated the highest returns will be assigned. Accounts are assigned once a year.
In the event that the account remains in the assigned Afore for two years and the worker has not requested registration with the administrator of their choice, Consar will reassign the account to the Afore that has the best performance at that time.
Being in order is a benefit
In the last two years of the pandemic, the Afores have helped workers through partial unemployment withdrawals, however, to enjoy this right, workers need to have their papers in order.
“People in the pandemic began to become more aware of the Afore account they have for partial withdrawals for unemployment (…) the worker had to approach the administrator, sign the contract and open the digital file (…) and if you don’t have all the documentation, you can’t withdraw the money,” explained Pérez Peñaloza.
The National Commission of the Retirement Savings System announced that more than 1.9 million workers made unemployment withdrawals from their Afore during 2021. Meanwhile, 1.8 million people did so in 2020.
Partial unemployment withdrawals reached 22,042 million pesos in 2021, this was 4% more than in 2020, when 20,060 million pesos were withdrawn.
