96% of fixed income pension funds do not exceed the Selic, says survey

The preferred option for Brazilians to invest their retirement has not even been able to surpass the Selic rate: 96% of fixed income pension funds have earned less than the CDI for more than ten years.

The data is part of a survey published first hand for the CNN by the Spiti analysis house. To arrive at the result, the study considered 179 of the 198 funds available on the market, or all open-end fixed income pension funds on the market, which add up to an equity of R$306.9 billion.

The comparison of income was made with the CDI, which is a rate very close to the Selic and used as a reference for the average income of fixed income in the country.

In other words, it is as if Brazilians were investing their lifetime income, the money saved to guarantee the dream of a peaceful retirement, in products that yield less than the most conservative Treasury Direct bond, the Selic Treasury. This security guarantees a yield of 100% of the basic rate, which 96% of funds have not been able to do, as the survey shows.

“These fixed income funds concentrate more than 80% of private pension investments in the country. It’s a giant portion of resources invested in funds that are very bad. And this is precisely the longer-term money, where the greatest diversification could be”, says Luciana Seabra, CEO and founder of Spiti.

Diversification

Although many investors are unaware of the various fund options, pension plans can apply to fixed income, multimarket, and stock funds. The same range of fund options available for investments in general today is also available for provident funds.

Luciana therefore recommends that investors not only have one pension product. “Today there are multimarket pension funds from managers like SPX, Kinea, Gávea, which are very traditional. Investors can diversify their retirement, for example, by investing 40% in hedges, 30% in stocks – or less, if you are more conservative – and 30% in fixed income. Typically, people jump right into the plan offered by the company, but it’s good to at least take a peek at these other options,” she says.

With pension plans with yields that do not even exceed the Selic, another option highly recommended by finance specialists for retirement is the IPCA Treasury, a public bond that pays the variation of inflation plus an interest rate. Among the securities available today at Treasury Direct, there are Treasury IPCA options that pay IPCA plus a rate of 5.73%.

The difference between investing on your own, in a government bond, or in a fund, is that the pension fund can generate a lower Income Tax charge and brings more convenience, since a professional manager chooses the investments for the investor. But this practicality has a cost, since when investing through a pension plan, the saver pays fees, which does not happen when investing in the Treasury, for example.

“The pension product has a lot of built-in tax savings. It is possible to reach an Income Tax of 10%, lower than that of Treasury bonds, which allow reaching an Income Tax of at least 15%. But some funds, such as those with fixed income, have very high fees for what they do, which is an unsophisticated investment,” says Luciana.

portability

To identify whether the fund is advantageous or not, Spiti’s CEO recommends researching the product on websites that compare investments and which are available for consultation free of charge. “If your fund earns less than the CDI, pension funds have a great benefit, which is the possibility of carrying out portability and migrating resources to another fund”, she says.

The possibility of portability of pension plans emerged in 2001, with the creation of the Complementary Pension Law. The law started to allow the transfer of funds from private pension plans from one bank to another, without the investor having to redeem the amounts and reinvest – which would lead to the collection of taxes.