The German Riester market has grown 6.8% in the last 12 months, with investment funds growing 6.4%, the German investment association Bundesverband Investment und Asset Management (BVI) has said.

Riester-Rente is the colloquial term for a government grant-aided privately-funded pension scheme in Germany, which is named after politician Walter Riester, who was responsible for introducing it.

It is possible to ‘riester’ with investment funds, endowment policies, bank savings plans or home pension schemes. In total almost 15 million Germans paid money into such products at the end of June 2011, compared to only 5.6 million in 2005.

The number of investment funds has grown from 2,815,000 to 2,883,301 in the first half, while the number of home pension schemes has grown from 491,000 to 641,000. The number of endowment policies grew from 10,380,000 at the end of 2010 to 10,555,000 as of 30 June 2011, while the number of bank savings plans went up from 711,000 to 719,000.

“Even in times of growth, slowdown in growth rate is not unusual. So, we want to make people aware of the need of supplementary old-age provisions as well as opportunities offered by investment funds as means of long-term private asset management and retirement pension plans,” BVI said.

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