In brief
- Shares bought by private pension funds move into a new risk band of 30%, which did not exist before in the investment rule.
- Fund managers get 90 calendar days, instead of the 60 provided by the initial form of the rule, to bring the fund back within the risk grade declared in the prospectus.
- The rule enters into force upon publication, on 10 July 2026, with no transition period, even though the risk grade is calculated daily.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 567 of 10 July 2026
In force from: 10 July 2026
The Financial Supervisory Authority has changed the way the risk of private pension funds is measured, the funds where millions of members of Pillar II and Pillar III build up their pension savings. Rule no. 14/2026, adopted on 29 June 2026 and published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 567 of 10 July 2026, amends Rule no. 11/2011 on the investment and valuation of private pension fund assets. It is the second intervention of the summer on the rules of the private pension system, after the one by which ASF established who will actually pay the Pillar II pensions.
The amended rule was approved by Decision no. 22/2011 of the Private Pension System Supervisory Commission and published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 8 of 5 January 2012. It establishes what a private pension fund may invest in, within what limits, and how the fund’s risk grade is calculated.
The act contains five amendments and enters into force on the date of publication, according to Article II. It was issued on the basis of Law no. 411/2004 on privately managed pension funds and Law no. 204/2006 on voluntary pensions, following the deliberations of the ASF Board in its meeting of 24 June 2026.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is the appearance of a new weighting band. In Article 51 paragraph (1), letter c1) is introduced, according to which the weighting of 30% applies to the assets provided for in Article 12 paragraph (1) letter d) point (i). Annex B, replaced by the same act, shows what this is about: shares and rights traded on regulated markets in Romania, in Member States of the European Union or belonging to the European Economic Area, with an applicable weighting of 30%.
The second effect concerns the arithmetic of risk. The weightings in Article 51 serve to calculate the risk-weighted asset value, and from this results the fund’s risk grade. The higher the weighting of an asset class, the more the risk-weighted asset value rises, so the risk grade calculated for the funds holding those assets rises as well. For a fund with large exposure to shares, the measurement changes without the portfolio having changed at all.
The third effect is more time for correction. Article 52 paragraph (1) is rewritten: the fund manager has the obligation to correct, including through active measures, the deviation from the risk grade declared in the pension scheme prospectus, within a maximum of 90 calendar days from the date of the passive rise above or fall below the limits attached to the declared risk grade. In the initial form of the rule, published in 2012, the deadline was 60 calendar days.
The fourth effect concerns what gets counted. In Article 50 paragraph (31), after letter b) a letter c) is introduced, “dividends receivable”. This is an addition to the content of a list that the act does not reproduce, so the practical effect depends on the text of that paragraph, which is not to be found in the amending rule.
The fifth effect is a simplification. In Article 51 paragraph (1) letter d), point 4 is repealed, and Annex B is rewritten in full, with nine asset categories and their weightings, from 75% for reverse repo agreements down to 0% for “other assets”.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The most visible change is the scale of the weightings. In the initial form of Rule no. 11/2011, Article 51 paragraph (1) knew five steps: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 0%. The 30% band did not exist, and shares and rights traded on regulated markets were placed in the 25% step. The rule no longer has today the form it had in 2012, because it has been amended several times in the meantime, but the appearance of a letter c1) between letters c) and d) shows that the 30% step is being inserted, not substituted.
The second change is the correction deadline, raised by half: 90 calendar days, compared with 60 in the initial form. The deadline runs from the date of the passive rise above or fall below the limits of the declared risk grade, and in the 2012 form the deviation produced by the collection of contributions or by member transfers was not considered a passive deviation.
The third change concerns the fund managers’ working instrument itself. Annex B is not corrected point by point, it is replaced with a new table in which each asset category corresponds to a single weighting: 75% for reverse repo agreements and for units classified as money market funds, 50% for those classified as bond funds, 30% for shares and rights, 25% for the remaining units, for real estate funds, for tradable securities of the ETF and ETC type and for unrated corporate bonds of issuers from Romania, and 0% for any other asset.
What does not change is the architecture of the system. Funds remain classified by risk grades declared in the pension scheme prospectus, and the risk grade remains a figure calculated daily, not a commercial label.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The risk of shares is recognised as being higher than that of the other assets in the 25% step, which brings the measurement closer to the reality of the market.
- The new step avoids the abrupt jump from 25% to 50% and gives the weighting scale a finer gradation.
- The 90 days leave the fund manager time to correct the deviation without forced sales, which would hit the members themselves.
- Annex B, redrafted in full, puts all the weightings in a single table, so they no longer have to be reconstructed from successive amendments.
What remains a problem
- The rule enters into force upon publication, even though the risk grade is calculated daily, so the change of weighting produces effects from the first day.
- The act does not say how to treat the deviation caused by the new weighting itself, which is neither a market movement nor a decision of the fund manager.
- The 90 days are counted from the date of the passive rise above the limits, but the text does not specify who establishes that date and how it is proved.
- The addition to Article 50 paragraph (31) cannot be assessed from the amending act, because the completed paragraph is not reproduced.
Practical advice
- If you are a member of Pillar II or III, check the risk grade declared in the prospectus of the scheme you contribute to. That is the benchmark against which deviations are measured, not the return on display.
- Do not confuse the risk grade with performance. A fund may stay in the same risk category even after the weighting of shares has risen, if its exposure to shares is small.
- If you manage a fund, recalculate the risk-weighted asset value with the new 30% weighting for shares and rights from the date of publication, not from the end of the month.
- Watch the fund manager’s periodic reports to see whether the fund has entered the correction procedure and from when the 90 days are running.
- For the full list of weightings, use Annex B in its new form. The old weightings, scattered through successive amendments, are no longer a safe benchmark.
Frequently asked questions
What is the risk grade of a private pension fund?
What changes for shares?
How much time does the fund manager have to correct a deviation?
From when do the new rules apply?
Will my pension fall because of this rule?
What does passive deviation mean?
What happens to assets that do not appear in Annex B?
Editorial analysis
The five amendments look technical and unrelated to one another. They are not. Two of them read together and tell the same story: ASF raises the weighting of shares, so the measured risk grade of the funds holding shares rises, and, in the same act, it extends from 60 to 90 days the deadline within which the fund manager has to bring the fund back within the declared limits. The first provision produces deviations, the second gives time for them to be corrected. The order in which they appear in the text, point 2 and point 4, hides the fact that they answer each other.
How the increase was made is interesting too. ASF did not move shares from one existing step to another, it created a new step, of 30%, through a letter c1) inserted between c) and d). The result is a scale with six steps, 100, 75, 50, 30, 25 and 0, instead of the five in the initial form of the rule. The difference is not cosmetic: an intermediate step allows finer future adjustments, but it also makes it harder to track where each asset class sits, especially in a text amended many times since its publication, in January 2012.
One question remains that the act does not touch. The risk grade is calculated daily, and the rule enters into force on the very day of publication. A fund which, on 9 July 2026, was within the limits of the declared risk grade may fall outside them on 10 July without having bought or sold anything, purely because the weighting of shares has changed. The 90 day deadline runs, according to Article 52 paragraph (1), from the date of the passive rise above the limits, but a deviation produced by the change of the calculation rule is neither a market movement nor a decision of the fund manager. The text does not say whether it falls into the category of passive deviations and, consequently, nor from when the deadline starts to run.
Finally, an observation about what cannot be learned from the act. The first amendment adds “dividends receivable” to a list in Article 50 paragraph (31), a paragraph that is not reproduced anywhere in the amending rule. The reader, the fund member included, cannot assess the effect of this addition without opening the consolidated version of the rule. For an act that changes the way the risk of the pension money of a few million people is measured, that is a wide gap between what gets published and what can be understood from what gets published.
What should be changed
- It should be stated expressly how the deviation produced by the change of weightings is treated. Either by including it among the passive deviations, or through a deadline of its own, counted from the entry into force.
- A rule that changes the way risk is calculated should provide for a deadline for entry into force, not immediate application. Even a few days would allow fund managers to recalculate beforehand rather than afterwards.
- Point amendments should be accompanied by the text of the completed paragraph. “Dividends receivable” says nothing on its own, and the rule is not written only for those who have the consolidated version at hand.
- Republishing Rule no. 11/2011 would be useful. After so many successive interventions, a single text would make verifiable, in one reading, the scale of weightings on which the classification of funds by risk grade rests.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 567 of 10 July 2026 16 pages PDF, 111 KB the act starts on page 15
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.