Strong returns for Pension Plan Portfolios despite a volatile environment at the end of June 2025

This is a supplementary report to the performance report of inbestMe portfolios at the end of 2025, focused on pension plan portfolios.

Most of inbestMe’s portfolios have performed positively during the first half of 2025, and the pension plan portfolios have been no exception.

Strong performance of standard pension plan portfolios in 2025

As shown in the chart above, returns have ranged from 0.5% for profile 0 to 2.7% for profile 10, with an average return (profile 1 to 10) of 1.8%. This result is especially positive given the volatile environment marked by the tariff war initiated by Trump in April 2025.

Our core portfolios, both index funds (and ETFs) and pension plans, have partial (though significant) currency hedging, which has allowed them to perform well despite the depreciation of the dollar. Many managed portfolios from our direct competitors and the industry in general do not implement such hedging, which has caused large discrepancies in performance in favor of our portfolios.

“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked,” as Warren Buffett says.

More moderate returns for ISR pension plan portfolios as of June 2025

ISR pension plan portfolios have shown a more moderate performance overall, especially for higher-risk profiles. The average return (Profile 1 to 10) has been 0.3%, or 1.5 percentage points below the standard pension plan portfolios.

As already mentioned in our analysis of ISR portfolios, the main reason is that the return of the global ISR equity index has been around 3 percentage points below the general index.

Returns of pension plan portfolios since inception

At inbestMe, we promote medium- to long-term investing. Our investment portfolios (whether index funds or pension plans) are specifically designed for investment horizons of at least 3 years or more. Focusing on the medium and long term allows us to analyze with a better perspective and make the most of the benefits of index investing offered by our portfolios. This is especially true for pension plan portfolios, whose main objective is retirement, generally with long time horizons.

As shown in the chart above, our portfolios accumulate returns ranging from 2.7% for profile 0 to 46.4% for profile 10. On average (profile 1 to 10), our portfolios accumulate a return of 24%, which is 9.2 percentage points more than the average return of investment funds, according to Inverco. The average investor profile at inbestMe (profile 7 out of 10) accumulates a return of 32.6%, or 14.4 percentage points more than the Inverco average (14.7%).

As shown in the chart above, our pension plan portfolios obtain annualized returns (CAGRs) ranging from 0.5% for profile 0 to 7.2% for profile 10. On average (profile 1 to 10), they achieve a TAE of 4.2%, or 1.7 percentage points above the average TAE for investment funds, which has been 2.5% in this period according to Inverco. The average inbestMe investor (profile 7 out of 10) achieves a TAE of 5.3%, or 3.2 percentage points more than the reference (2.1%).

Although our pension plans began just at the start of the COVID crisis (January 2020), thanks to the recovery in 2023 and 2024 and strong returns in 2025, the annualized returns (TAEs) of our pension plan portfolios are approaching expected levels for higher-risk profiles, still slightly below for lower-risk profiles due to their exceptional impact in 2022 (caused by the sudden rise in interest rates which devalued fixed income).

Important notes

Data

This data has been prepared using information from the pension plan manager, GVC Gaesco Pensiones, the manager administering the indexed pension plans created by inbestMe, and which are audited annually.

You can find the fact sheets and data for our pension plans at the following links:

• inbestMe Equity Pension Plan
• inbestMe Fixed Income Pension Plan
• inbestMe ISR Equity Pension Plan

We have detected that in most data providers, such as Qué Fondos, and even Bloomberg, the information regarding the inbestMe Fixed Income Pension Plan is incorrect, despite having informed them.

The issue arises because they do not reflect the pension fund change made in March 2021, which involved resetting the net asset value to 10. This reset had no impact on the participants’ returns, as their units were adjusted proportionally. On these platforms, this adjustment mistakenly appears as a drop in performance, when it is in fact just the effect of the reference value reset (it seems these platforms lack the functionality to reflect such events in pension plans).

Note on Benchmark Indices

During 2024, we streamlined the use of benchmark indices as previously announced. As a result, for pension plan portfolios we use the returns of the different categories from Inverco’s investment fund statistics as benchmark indices for pension plans.