This year saw the first major fall in pension funds for more than a decade.

Swedbank, which holds the majority of Estonian pensioners' savings, had an annual return of over 10 percent negative for all pension funds.

"It has been a very difficult and turbulent year, with both bond and equity markets under pressure, and obviously this is reflected in the performance of our pension funds. The results in the short term were not encouraging, with no positive returns from the year," said Age Petter, head of the bank's investment funds.

SEB had an equally bad year. The bank has the third biggest share of pension funds. The annual returns of the second pillar were negative by more than 10 percent. 

SEB's Endriko Võrklaev told Friday's "Aktuaalne kaamera" the long-term outlook is "still good" and equity pension fund returns have been done well over the last 20 years.

But there were problems this year.

"Since the beginning of this year, indeed, most of the funds are in the red, and what's perhaps special about this year is that, quite a lot of the lower-risk bond funds are also in the red," he said.

However, the Estonian bank LHV had a slightly better experience.

"We have managed to increase our clients' assets by just over €35 million across our three largest funds. People sometimes say that we compare active management with passive management, but in the case of LHV, we have only 25 percent in equities, the rest is private equity, real estate, loans to local companies, bonds, which are now back in the investment class again," said Vahur Vallistu, head of LHV Varahaldus.

Luminor's pension fund asset volumes fell by nearly 20 percent.

Second pillar pension funds total €4 billion.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!