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We would like to give you a general picture of the company in the following pages.
While the pension obligations fell by 0.5% in 2024 at an almost constant discount rate, plan assets increased by ten billion euros to 309 billion euros. The coverage ratio thus reached a new high of around 80%. Almost half of the capital is invested in bonds. The equity ratio has remained relatively constant overall at around 21%, although there were companies with both increasing and decreasing equity exposure. Real estate accounts for a good 6% of investments, while alternatives increased slightly to just under 8%. The remainder is invested in insurance contracts, derivatives and liquidity. The 38 DAX/MDAX companies with a minimum investment volume of EUR 500 million achieved a return of just over 5% in 2024 (capital-weighted value 5.1%, equally weighted mean 5.4%, median 4.8%). The results ranged from -1.3% to +14.7%.
The investment capital of the 91 pension funds for liberal professions increased by a further EUR 13 billion to over EUR 285 billion in 2023. The institutions reduced the weight of bonds the most during the low-interest phase, meaning that they had the greatest need to increase their bond volume in the course of the interest rate turnaround. In 2023, many Versorgungswerke focused on direct bond investments and net new investments of around EUR 6 billion increased the ratio by almost 2% to just under 22%. The total bond ratio including bond funds and mortgage loans rose to just over 41%. By contrast, the equity ratio fell significantly for the second year in a row to less than 16%. The real estate ratio also fell by around one per cent to just under 23%, which was partly due to necessary write-downs. By contrast, the alternatives ratio rose further to almost 19%.
Due to the short duration of usually less than five years, savings banks suffered particularly quickly from the low interest rate phase in the direct fixed-interest investments. In 2023, however, the 100 largest savings banks with total assets of around EUR 935 billion and a Depot A securities volume of around EUR 165 billion generated interest income of almost EUR 2 billion in direct investments. This is more than three times the value of 2021 or roughly the level of 2014. With special funds of well over EUR 55 billion, they achieved a performance of 4% on average, based on market values.
In 2023, the capital volume of company pension funds increased by around EUR 6 billion at book values and also rose again to well over EUR 200 billion at market values. Investments in direct bonds gained in importance again in the second year. While the equity allocation fell further below 10% despite the favourable environment and the real estate allocation remained at a good 13%, the weighting of alternatives increased further to 11%. After a historically difficult 2022, the company pension funds once again generated a good Performance of around 6%.
The investment volume of the 46 health insurance companies increased by 4% to around 360 billion euros at book values in 2023. As the hidden burdens halved, particularly in the area of bond investments, market values recovered significantly, resulting in a positive market value return of around 6% (previous year -18%). Although the volume of new investments in direct bonds increased significantly, the ratio continued to fall to around 50% due to maturing bonds. The overall ratio of fixed-interest investments fell further to around 78%. Despite the favourable market environment, the equity ratio fell somewhat surprisingly to around 5% in 2023. Real estate (7%) and alternatives (9%), on the other hand, continued to grow.