The National Commission of the Retirement Savings System (Consar) reported that none of the 10 administrators of retirement funds (afores), through the Specialized Investment Companies (siefores), has made investments for more than 35% of net assets in the case of mutual funds with active strategies that have as underlying shares of Mexican companies.
In a request for information made by El Economista, Consar specified that until July 7, no siefore had used the regulatory change published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on March 29 of this year.
The change was to article 29 of the “General provisions on financial matters of retirement savings systems”, which establishes that the Investment Committee (of each siefore) may authorize participation percentages greater than 35% of net assets in the case of mutual funds with active strategies that have as underlying shares of Mexican companies and that meet the criteria approved by the Risk Analysis Committee (CAR).
In order to approve percentages of participation greater than 35% of the net assets, in the case of mutual funds with active strategies that have as underlying shares of Mexican companies, the independent directors have a specific weight.
The SAR Law details that the fund administrators must include independent directors in their Board of Directors, who must be experts in financial, economic, legal or social security matters, and must not have any patrimonial nexus with the administrators, or employment relationship with the shareholders.
Among the issues that require the approval of the majority of the members of the Board of Directors and the approval vote of the independent directors, is the self-regulation program of the Afore.
The guidelines are very clear. If an independent expert meets certain characteristics that we define and if the administrators assign them as their independent expert, they have the power to self-regulate and if they meet all the criteria, the Afores can invest,” Eric Osio Cerón said in an interview. general director of risk management at Consar.
Although the change in mutual funds with active strategies is based on the idea of supporting small and medium-sized companies, there are still no vehicles authorized by an independent advisor and therefore there is no investment, summarized Osio Cerón.
It should be remembered that Afores can invest in authorized vehicles, such as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Mutual Funds, Derivatives, Investment Mandates or direct purchase of the asset.
Mutual funds manage 1.07% of the total
At the end of May 2022, mutual funds only manage 23 instruments, which can be shares or debt, with an investment of 54,506 million pesos, just 1.07%, of the net assets of the Retirement Savings System (SAR).
For its part, the participation of the ETFs, which are funds listed on the stock exchange that replicate an index, is 643,550 million pesos, that is, 12.64% of the total managed.
Given these data, Osio Cerón added that a factor for which the use of mutual funds has not been promoted has to do with the fact that in 2019 they came into operation together with the scheme of the 10 generational siefores.
“Just when mutual funds come in is when the change in generational siefores comes in. So, the workload at Consar, as in the administrators, was focused on the generational siefores”, he said.
