SEOUL, May 16 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's retirement pension funds posted a double-digit growth last year amid the higher return on investment, government data showed Thursday.
Corporate retirement pension funds under management grew 13.8 percent over the year to 382.4 trillion won (283.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, according to joint data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
For the past five years, the retirement pension funds doubled from 190 trillion won (141.1 billion dollars) in 2018.
The funds' annual average return on investment surged to 5.26 percent in 2023 from 0.02 percent in the prior year.
The annual return on investment for the past five years came in at 2.35 percent, while the 10-year average reached 2.07 percent.
The ratio of cost, such as management commission, to the retirement pension funds stood at 0.372 percent in 2023, down 0.02 percentage points compared to the previous year.
Separating from the national pension program, the corporate retirement pension program was adopted in 2005 to allow employees to receive the post-retirement pension in a lump-sum payment or a monthly installment. ■
