Where Is My Pension?

Workers in nine Latin American countries have managed to save around $500 billion through their pension systems, but they do not know who they have been financing throughout the years.

Their pension funds are managed, through individual accounts, mostly by private firms. These companies receive a commission for making the money profitable through their investment decisions. The dissemination of this mechanism began in Chile 40 years ago.

Those private firms are known as AFPs in Chile, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic; as AFAPs in Uruguay; Afore in Mexico; and as OPCs in Costa Rica. Only in Panama are individual accounts managed by the state.

Where Is My Pension? reveals cases of companies that you probably would not have wanted to finance with if you had a say in it: environmental violators, labor violators, and companies investigated for corruption. The project reveals the role of workers as forced financiers of their governments.

To visit the Spanish-language interactive website A dónde va mi Pensión, click here.

The project’s dedicated website provides a multitude of related information. A quiz allows readers to calculate pension earnings in multiple countries and see where those funds have been invested. Investigative stories include: 

• “BlackRock, The Global Conglomerate That Expands In Latin America” by Claudia Ocaranza and Queletzú Aspra (regional)
• “Pensions, How Workers Finance Big Businesses That Break The Law” by Paulette Desormeaux, Constanza Pérez, and Gabriela Pizarro (Chile) 
• “We Know What You Did With Our Pensions” by Cuestión Pública (Colombia) 
• “Financing Blindly” by Luisa García Téllez and Lilia Saúl Rodríguez (regional)
• “ROP Investments and Government Bonds: The Forced Link That Impacts Your Pension” by María Fernanda Cisneros and Hulda Miranda (Costa Rica)
• “Fruitless Endeavors: The Low Profitability Of The Pension System” by Javier Orellana (El Salvador)
• “No Solutions to Improper Transfers In Afores” by Vanessa Cisneros (Mexico)
• “Aging Against The Clock: Pensions With An Expiration Date” by José Arcía (Panama)
• “The AFPs and The Million-dollar 'Phantom Commissions'” by Hernán P. Floríndez (Peru)
• “Obstacles In A Concentrated Industry” by Suhelis Tejero Puntes (Dominican Republic)
• “Uruguay, The Country of Confidential Investments” by Fabián Werner (Uruguay)