January-May: Afore profits grow 49% compared to 2024

Profits for Retirement Fund Administrators (Afores) grew 49% in the first five months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, reaching their highest level since the National Commission for the Retirement Savings System (Consar) has records.

At the end of May, the Afores had accumulated a net profit of 6.302 billion pesos, according to data from Consar.

This is the largest profit obtained by the Afores at the end of May since 2013, the year for which the Commission has statistics.

Mari Nieves Lanzagorta, vice president of the Mexican Association of Pension Fund Administrators (Amafore), explained that the increase in the Afores' net profit is explained by a statistical distortion caused by the high capital gains they recorded in May.

According to Consar, the Afores achieved capital gains of 175.474 billion pesos in May 2025, the best returns since August 2024.

Lanzagorta explained that by law, Afores must maintain a financial reserve so that, in the event that the administrators suffer losses due to a violation of the investment regime, workers' savings can be reimbursed.

This financial reserve moves as capital gains or losses occur in the Afores, as it is also invested like the rest of the managed resources.

"Since the reserve is invested in the same way as the Afores' resources and there was a significant capital gain in May, this is considered pure profit. However, it is only a movement of the Afores' reserves," he said.

In that sense, he stated that a better indicator of earnings is commission income and gross profit.

Commission income

Consar reported that in the first five months of 2025, Afore commission income amounted to 16.094 billion pesos, a 13% increase compared to last year and also the highest figure Consar has on record.

In this regard, César Islas, general coordinator of Economic Studies, Statistics, and Special Projects at Consar, stated that Afore commission income has fallen 17% in real terms compared to 2021, before the reform to lower commissions was implemented.

It's worth remembering that the 2020 reform to the Retirement Savings System capped the fees charged by Afores, ensuring they couldn't exceed the average charged by the pension systems in the United States, Chile, and Colombia.

Result of the reform

Following the reform implemented in 2020, which went into effect in December 2021, the fees charged by Afores increased from more than 0.80% on managed balances in 2021 to 0.57% starting in 2022.

For 2025, regulators approved a 0.55% fee on managed balances, the lowest in the SAR's 28-year history.

The 2020 reform was accompanied by a progressive increase in mandatory employer contributions to workers' retirement savings accounts.

Before the reform, employer contributions were 5.15% of the worker's salary.

Starting in 2022, they began to rise, reaching 9.51% of a worker's salary in 2025.

The goal is for contributions to retirement savings accounts to reach 15% of a worker's salary by 2030, with the aim of ensuring that workers have a better pension for retirement.

Regarding this, Moisés Pérez Peñaloza, founder of the consulting firm Yo Jubilado, said, "We could say that before the 2020 reforms, the Afores received fewer contributions. Now there's more money to manage."

For the specialist, with these increases in contributions, the inflow of funds into the Afores has increased considerably, explained Moisés Pérez.

This, in turn, has caused their investment and capital gains portfolios to grow, and naturally, the balances they manage have also increased in recent years, so that now the commissions (although reduced) are charged on a larger base.