August was not particularly a good month for RSA Pension funds as a good number of them ended the month with negative performances. Of the 19 RSA pension funds, 8 of them ended the month in the red with Sigma RSA pension fund losing the month with a negative 1.02% return.
All but one Retiree fund, on the other hand, posted positive returns for the month with Investment One Retiree fund being the only one that recorded a negative performance return of 0.64%.
Among the RSA funds the highest positive return for the month was recoded by Veritas Glanvills RSA Pension fund with 0.86% while Trustfund Retiree pension fund toped the Retiree funds with August performance of 2.03%. Those are quite laudable performances given that the pension index shed 7.55% of its performance in August meaning that all the retirement funds beat the index in August.
On a year to date basis, YTD, which also forms the basis of our ranking, all the RSA and Retiree funds made positive returns building on prior periods positive performances. By so doing, they all beat the pension index which has a negative YTD performance of 6.92%.
It is not clear, however, if the index is a good bench mark for the pension funds given that the index is a predominantly equity based while the pension funds are over weight in fixed income securities. Be that as it may, below are the first 5 RSA and 5 Retiree funds.
 Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: Premium Pension RSA Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 8.03%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.3
2nd Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: AXA Mansard Pension RSA Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 7.76%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.2
3rd Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: Veritas Glanvills Pension RSA Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 7.42%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.19
4th Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: Legacy Pension RSA Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 7.07%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.24
5th Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: AIICO Pension RSA Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 7.00%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.20
The Retiree pension funds proved that asset allocation is the key to investment performance as all of them recorded positive performance in August and they all relatively higher YTD performance then RSA funds which have more exposure to the faltering equity market. Here are the first 5 best performing Retiree funds on a YTD basis:
Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: Stanbic IBTC Retiree Pension Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 10.85%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.34
2nd Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: AXA Mansard Pension Retiree Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 10.4%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.25
3rd Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: ARM Pension Retiree Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 9.98%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.29
4th Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: AIICO Retiree Pension Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 9.39%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.26
5th Best Performing Fund:
Name of Fund: OAK Retiree Pension Fund
YTD Performance %:Â 9.35%
YTD Gain per unit:Â N0.27
Gratuity pension funds which are only managed by Pension Alliance, PAL, made good returns as the Pension Alliance Guinness Fund returned 9.26% while the Pension Alliance Emenite Fund returned 8.71%, on a YTD basis as at August 31, 2018.
It would be appropriate, if all the rankings are shared here.
Thank You.