Swiss pension GastroSocial allocates 2% to ILS as it revises portfolio strategy

The Swiss GastroSocial pension fund has invested 2% of its roughly CHF 11 billion of assets under management into insurance-linked securities (ILS), as it adopted a new investment strategy in 2025 with a more significant focus on private assets.

GastroSocial is an organisation that manages both a compensation fund and a pension fund for the hotel and catering industry in Switzerland.

The pension fund manager has revised its investment strategy and implemented that in 2025, resulting in an above-average market share of private investments in its portfolio, one of which is insurance-linked securities (ILS). We believe the ILS allocation has been made this year, as it had not been reported in the portfolio disclosure of previous periods.

GastroSocial has been looking for ways to reduce volatility in the portfolio of its pension fund and also sees diversifying asset classes as a positive way to combat financial market uncertainty caused by geopolitics and other external factors.

At a 2% of assets allocation, it suggests GastroSocial has a little more than US $265 million allocated to its ILS investment at this time, at current exchange rates.

The pension fund has an allowable allocation range for ILS of between 0% and as much as 4%, suggesting room to build on the size of its initial ILS investment should it choose to.

The pension fund significantly reduced its investments into foreign equities this year, while allocating to private equity, private debt, infrastructure and ILS, in the search of a more balanced approach to generating returns through financial market uncertainty and cycles, while also benefiting from diversification in its portfolio.

Having only begun its revised investment strategy this year, the GastroSocial Pensionskasse has already seen benefits from its more diversified strategy with greater emphasis on private market assets.

Commenting on how the pension performed in recent months, a period with financial market volatility due to the geopolitical environment, the pension explained, “The investment strategy and tactical positioning of the GastroSocial Pensionskasse has also proven itself in this challenging market environment. Although we were not able to completely evade the general development and had a slightly negative return at the end of April, this was above our benchmark and all relevant external benchmarks. In mid-May, the markets have also recovered to such an extent that our return is already clearly in the positive area again.

“In view of the continued increased market uncertainties, we are sticking to our strategic, less offensive tactical focus – with a focus on stability, sustainability and long-term investment success.”

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