Like most occupational benefits institutions in Switzerland, the Fund benefited from the strong rally in equity markets, posting a gain of 9.0% in 2024 while its strategic benchmark rose by 10.3%. The Fund therefore underperformed its benchmark by 1.3 points. This was due to the Fund’s illiquid investments, particularly those in unlisted equities (also known as private-equity investments), which performed less well than the listed benchmark in 2024. However, over the long term, returns from the Fund’s investments in unlisted equities, net of fees, have beaten the benchmark by around 2 points per year, and so their inclusion in our investment strategy is fully justified.

In assessing the Fund’s performance relative to its peers – i.e. other occupational benefits institutions in Switzerland – we use several indices including the peer-group index put together by our investment consultant PPCmetrics: for more details, please see the definitions in the notes to the table below. The Fund outperformed the median of that peer group by 0.9 points in 2024 and has outperformed it by 0.2 points since performance measurements began on 1 July 2013. As a result, the Fund’s returns put it close to the top quartile of its peer group over that 11.5-year period. For institutional investors such as the Fund, these long-term comparisons are the ones that are most relevant.