GERMANY - German insurance giant Allianz says the private retirement field is a “massive market”.

“We're finding that in the European markets, people are becoming increasingly confronted with the necessity of arranging private retirement provision,” said chief financial officer Helmut Perlet. “This is a massive market."

“Since our business is currently growing 11% annually, we are well positioned to take advantage of this boom,” Perlet said in an interview on Allianz’s website.

Earlier this week IPE reported there were indications that the Riester pensions market were taking off.

Last week, Allianz released a study that found Europe’s market for occupational and private pensions would double to €16.4trn in 2015 from €7.4trn currently.

The study said that of the estimated €9trn in new pension assets, no less than 80% would be concentrated in France, Germany and Italy.

Allianz chief executive Michael Dieckmann said: “We are already the market leader in Europe due to our strong position in Germany, Italy and France.”

“We aim to show that we are so well positioned on the sales side that we can benefit from this huge growth and actively participate in the shift of assets to private pensions,” Dieckmann added in a separate interview on the site.

Asked about Allianz’s prospects in the US, Dieckmann said they were promising due to robust demand for the insurer’s index-linked private pensions, namely those geared toward equities.

Allianz Global Investors, Allianz’s asset management arm, recorded investor inflows of €17bn during the first quarter of 2005.

The inflows helped to bring AGI’s total third-party assets to €624bn. AGI added that institutional assets accounted for 60.1% of the total figure.

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