The municipal pension fund for Norway’s capital region, Oslo Pensjonsforsikring (OPF), has thanked its active management for the overall returns it posted for 2019, saying its global equities portfolio beat its benchmark by 2.67% a year since OPF started managing the sub-fund internally in 2017.

In its fourth quarter financial report, OPF – Norway’s largest independent municipal pension fund – reported a 10.3% overall return on investments for the whole of 2019, up from 2% the year before.

Åmund Lunde, the pension provider’s chief executive officer, said: “The excess return from our internally-managed equity portfolio alone has given our customers NOK615m (€61m) more than if the money had been invested in an index fund.”

OPF attributed these excess returns largely to the fund’s “solid” active management and long-term investment strategy, and said the 10.3% investment return equated to NOK8.7bn in financial income.

The pension fund reported a pre-tax consolidated profit of NOK1bn in 2019, compared with NOK791m the year before, which, it said, was due to strong non-life insurance results and revenue generated from the group’s capital.

Total assets grew to NOK104.6bn at the end of 2019 from NOK95.2bn a year before.

OPF caters for a number of Oslo’s municipal companies and organisations including public transport operators Sporveien and Ruter, the city’s University Hospital and the Oslo New Theatre.

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