OREANDA-NEWS. February 12, 2008. The single operator at the 2nd level of pensions in Latvia having plans, which have provided positive profitability in all the segments (both conservative and balanced and active) since the beginning of this year, is the daughter company of Latvijas Krajbanka - Astra Krajfondi, reported the press-centre of Latvijas Krajbanka.

Furthermore, only pension plans "Komforts" and "Ekstra Plus" administrated by Astra Krajfondi among various balanced and active pension plans have started this year with a plus mark.

Komforts provided by Astra Krajfondi is a leader among other balanced plans in the sense of profitability already since the beginning of its performance, while "Ekstra" takes 3rd place among all the active plans.

Currently, more than 90% of pension stock resources are invested into obligations and deposits, for which a sharp increase is being prognosticated in the future. Both increased shares of obligations and deposits in Astra Krajfondi pension plans and current market situation providing opportunity to purchase obligations for a comparatively low price, create, in common, a high degree of reliability that during the next two years pension plans provided by Latvijas Krajbanka will experience a significant increase in profitability.

When we look back at the previous year, share value of all the four pension plans provided by Latvijas Krajbanka daughter company Astra Krajfondi, have increased. During the first half of the year, pension plans by Astra Krajfondi were among the branch leaders in the sense of profitability. During the second half of the year, our results were not so brilliant, which may be explained by the situation that, taking into account the predictable negative changes on the stock market, the administrators of pension funds offered by Latvijas Krajbanka have made a decision to reduce the proportion of shares in the portfolio of funds to the advantage of the tools having stated income - obligations and deposits. It provided an opportunity to increase the persistent part of pension plans.

A decrease in share position in favour of obligations temporarily reduced our indices of profitability. However, we have chosen a successful strategy for the current unstable market conditions - it allowed us to avoid a negative effect by the sharp decrease in the market value of shares. Currently, many obligations offer even higher profitability rates than it might be warranted by incomes from deposits.

Currently, the profitability of the balanced and active plans is lower than that of conservative plans. However, if we consider the situation from the long-term point of view, the chosen strategy of the pension plans indicates to the fact that in future larger profitability is provided for active and balanced plans.