Assets held by Greece’s funded pension funds have grown rapidly in recent years, albeit from a low base, according to the latest report by the OECD.
At the end of 2025, assets held by funded pension funds were up 20% year on year, reaching €3.2bn, or 1.3% of GDP. The launch of TEKA (the Auxiliary Capitalisation Insurance Fund) in 2022 and the establishment of many new occupational pension funds (TEAs) over the past seven years contributed to the rapid growth in assets. These remain low, however, compared with those of other OECD countries with a much longer tradition of funded pensions.
Across OECD countries, assets held by funded pension funds rose by almost 12% last year, to $70.4tn, or 95.7% of GDP, with the US accounting for two-thirds of the total.
Funded pension funds began operating in Greece on a modest scale about 20 years ago, under Law 3029 of 2002, which established voluntary occupational insurance as a supplement to the state’s main pension. Assets held by occupational pension funds amounted to just €25mn in 2007, while they had only a few thousand members.
The first boost to occupational pension funds came in 2013, when four public supplementary pension funds began operating as mandatory occupational pension funds:
- The Occupational Pension Fund for Insurance Agents and Employees of Insurance Companies.
- The Occupational Pension Fund for Pharmaceutical Industry Employees.
- The Occupational Pension Fund for Food Trade Employees.
- The Occupational Supplementary Pension Fund for Employees of Petroleum Companies.
The establishment of these four funds drove assets held by occupational pension funds to close to €1bn in 2013. Their assets grew further in recent years as the number of voluntary occupational pension funds rose gradually to 28, two-thirds of which were established from 2019 onwards. Banks, other companies and professional sectors set up occupational pension funds, and the share of the workforce covered by them rose to 6% of the labour force.
The establishment of TEKA
The funded pension system received another significant boost in 2022, when TEKA was established to provide a state supplementary pension to newly insured members. Those who were insured earlier continue to receive their supplementary pension from the Unified Auxiliary Social Security Fund under the pay-as-you-go system, as is the case with the state’s main pension. According to TEKA data, its reserves reached €630mn in June 2026 and the number of its members exceeded 780,000.
Investment returns of 4.9% in 2025
Investing employer and employee contributions in funded pension funds is crucial to increasing their assets and, in turn, the pensions they pay for a given level of contributions. The OECD notes that returns on funds invested by pension funds have generally been positive, except during periods of international crisis. It also says that, to achieve better long-term returns and therefore higher pensions, some of the available funds should also be invested in equities.
In Greece, the nominal return on investments by funded pension funds was 4.9% in 2025, while the real return, after inflation, was 2.3%. As for the investment mix of Greek funded pension funds, more than half of their investments in 2025 were in bonds and treasury bills (36.2%) and cash and deposits (17.4%), while 15.3% was invested in equities.
Source: ANA-MPA