Only two of the seven AFPs (Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones, Chile's private pension fund managers) operating in Chile have 100% Chilean owners, according to El Mostrador. The rest are held by foreign capital, mostly from the United States. One is run from Colombia and another from Italy.
The outlet reviewed who owns the fund managers after funds D and E suffered losses running into the millions. Those losses came from swap operations in the United States. A swap is a contract in which two parties exchange cash flows, for example to protect themselves against swings in the dollar.
According to El Mostrador, the same three investment managers keep appearing behind several AFPs: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. These firms invest other people's money and are listed as major shareholders of the insurers that control the AFPs.
Why should it matter to you who the owner is? The seven AFPs manage US$250,554 million, equivalent to 65.9% of Chile's GDP. That is almost two thirds of everything the country produces in a year. In addition, as shareholders in the large companies traded on the stock exchange, they elect directors who carry weight across a good part of the economy.
According to the outlet, the two fully Chilean-owned cases belong to businessman Andrés Navarro, owner of Sonda, and to Ignacio Álvarez, former manager of Cuprum. Álvarez is married to one of the daughters of José Said Saffie, of the family that controls Parque Arauco.
At AFP Habitat, ownership is split equally, 40.29% each, between the Cámara Chilena de la Construcción (CChC, Chile's construction industry association) and the US insurer Prudential Financial, according to data from the Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF), the regulator of banks, the stock market and insurance. Smaller shareholders include Inversiones Unión Española, with 3.70%, and several brokerage firms with stakes of between 1.79% and 0.83%.
The CChC chairs its board through Raimundo Rencoret Ríos, owner of the construction company Rencoret. Its past president, Alfredo Echavarría, is now vice president of the Confederación de la Producción y del Comercio (CPC, Chile's main business confederation), a post he took after the departure of Daniel Mas, who was appointed joint minister of Economy and Mining.
Prudential is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its three largest investors are, once again, Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. El Mostrador estimates that Vanguard manages about 12.8 trillion dollars, State Street about 6.3 trillion and BlackRock around 15.5 trillion.
The outlet notes that in 2025 the SEC (the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the equivalent of the CMF) fined Vanguard 106 million dollars for providing misleading information about its capital gains. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the three managers of colluding in the energy market, a case that ended with a fine of 29.5 million dollars.
AFP Provida, meanwhile, is majority-owned by MetLife, the world's largest insurer, which operates in Chile through three companies. The Superintendencia de Pensiones (Chile's pension regulator) has already opened sanction proceedings against all seven AFPs to determine whether they breached their duties of loyalty and diligence when investing in swaps.
