It rose quarter-on-quarter from 104.7% in December last year to 112.6% in March this year.
Pension assets continued to grow in the first quarter of this year with a positive return of almost 4%, while corporate bonds rebounded to move away from the 0% mark. As a result, pension obligations fell by 3.6%, WTW said.
This led companies’ balance sheets to reach their healthiest level since the introduction of the WTW pension fund index.
Adam Casey, head of corporate retirement consulting at WTW in Zurich, said that Pensionskassen recorded average returns of 20% as of 31 March this year.
“The main reason for the generally strong improvement in pension positions on corporate balance sheets over the past year is the remarkable recovery [of the value] of assets since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in a decline in assets at the beginning of 2020,” he said.