It had seemed that the beginning of 2018 would mark a big milestone in the way the Mexican Pension Plans, or Afores, invest. At the end of 2017, the ‘Comisión Nacional del Sistema de Ahorro para el Retiro’ (CONSAR), or National Commission for the Retirement Savings System decided, among other things, such as making CERPI more flexible or including SPACs, to include Mutual Funds with active strategies as an additional investment vehicle. This decision was published in the official bulletin in January 2018.
As Carlos Ramírez, President of the CONSAR, commented, “When looking to invest with an international asset manager, we look for better yields and this is what we have seen with the mandates that have paid a good return… Mutual funds are a reflection of the mandates and what we are really doing is opening another option for investing abroad, especially with the small and medium Afores in mind.”
However, in a recent interview with Funds Society, which will be available in the printed magazine this October, Ramírez commented that, unfortunately, this resolution has as yet not been implemented waiting for its authorization in a pending CAR, or Risk Committee meeting, “which would formally give life to mutual funds, and which to date was unable to be held for various reasons. I hope it can be achieved before the end of the administration so that we can see closure on an issue that we have been working on for a long time, which is a very deep analysis of the benefits of Afores being able to invest in mutual funds, and which we hope to be able to complete before this administration ends. It‘s practically ready, all that’s missing is that CAR meeting.”
Meanwhile, Carlos Noriega Curtis, President of AMAFORE, told us prior to the Third Afores Convention that this meeting will most likely not go ahead until the next administration is in power: “If during the transition stage, within the next two months, there is communication between the incoming and outgoing governments, the CAR will meet, if not, it will meet as soon as it is able to do so following the transition.” The executive added that they are watching very closely how the situation develops. “All the information has been prepared. We, as an association, have been supporting the importance, the necessity, and the convenience of being able to invest in mutual funds… we are convinced of this, and we are doing everything possible to achieve it,” concluded Noriega.