The four largest private earnings-related pension companies in Finland had combined invested assets of €183.6bn at the end of June 2026, analysis from the Finnish Pension Alliance (Tela) has shown.

Varma had the highest investment value with €71.4bn, followed closely by Ilmarinen with €70.4bn, while Elo had €36.3bn of invested assets and Veritas had €5.5bn.

Meanwhile, the local government pension fund Keva had €79.3bn of invested assets and the state pension fund VER had €27.2bn.

On average, the private earnings-related pension companies had 58.7 per cent of their investments in equities, while 21.3 per cent were in fixed income assets.

Alternative investments made up 11.9 per cent of invested assets and real estate averaged 8 per cent.

Elo had the highest percentage of equity investment at 60.5 per cent, followed by Varma (60 per cent), Ilmarinen (56.8 per cent) and Veritas (54.4 per cent).

Recent reforms in Finland have allowed pension companies to take on greater investment risk, resulting in higher allocations to equities.

Ilmarinen had the greatest proportion of invested assets in fixed income (25.6 per cent), followed by Veritas (21.9 per cent), Varma (18.6 per cent) and Elo (18.4 per cent).

Varma had the highest allocation to alternatives (15.3 per cent), while Elo had the most exposure to real estate (10.7 per cent).

In H1 2026, the average return from private earnings-related pension companies was 5.6 per cent, while Keva returned 7.3 per cent and VER returned 7.6 per cent.

Among the private pension companies, Veritas reported the highest return in H1 (6.6 per cent), followed by Elo (6.4 per cent), while both Ilmarinen and Varma returned 5.3 per cent.

Equities were the asset class with the highest average return in H1 (8.3 per cent), followed by alternatives (4.9 per cent), fixed income (1.3 per cent), and real estate (0.2 per cent).

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