The net assets of the Bulgarian private pension funds registered the largest drop since March 2020 - by 3.9% QoQ (-BGN 753m) while staying flat on annual basis at BGN 18.5bn as of end-June, according to data released by the Financial Supervision Commission. The reasons for the decline were the negative returns on most investments while the contributions during the quarter amounted to BGN 538m. The total number of insured individuals in all 4 types of pension funds was 4.9m at end-June, +0.2% QoQ and +1.2% YoY. The amount of the investments was down by BGN 283m to BGN 16.7bn over the quarter and the uninvested cash declined by BGN 425m to BGN 1.7bn or 9% of the net assets. Equity investments were the main reason for the investments’ drop as they registered BGN 357m fall in the quarter, reaching BGN 6.3bn and accounting for 34.3% of the net assets. The investments in government bonds added BGN 88m and reached BGN 8.5bn or 46.1% of the net assets. Corporate bonds were down by BGN 45m to 7.8% of net assets. H1’22 revenue of the pension insurance companies surged 26.3% on annual basis to BGN 143.4m while the net income added 11.4% YoY to BGN 37.5m. The annual weighted-average nominal rate of return for the last 24 months period as of end-June dropped to -0.73% for UPF (+4.11% as of end-March), +0.48% for PPF (+4.67% as of end-March) and +1.56% for VPF (+6.10% as of end-March).