AFIAA

AFIAA is governed by a foundation board elected from its 33 member pension funds. Day-to-day investment and asset-management decisions are executed by the executive management team in Zurich, with local oversight from the New York subsidiary for the Americas portfolio. Investment strategy, country allocations, and major acquisitions require board approval, ensuring the member institutions retain direct fiduciary control over the foundation's direction.

AFIAA is neither a family office nor a conventional investment manager. It is a Swiss investment foundation — a collective, non-profit legal structure unique to Swiss pension provision. This means it pools capital exclusively from member Swiss pension funds and invests directly in foreign real estate, carrying no external profit motive or commercial fund sponsor.

AFIAA sources through a combination of JV partnerships with local operators in core markets, bilateral negotiations using its New York and Zurich teams, and off-market intros from advisory networks built over decades. The foundation's permanent-capital structure allows it to move quickly on acquisitions without the fundraising cycle constraints of a closed-end fund.

AFIAA invests directly in real estate assets, not through third-party fund commitments. It sometimes uses joint-venture structures and club deals to co-invest alongside like-minded institutional partners, particularly in Australia where it has partnered with local superannuation funds. The foundation does not allocate to externally managed commingled real estate funds.

AFIAA systematically hedges foreign-currency exposure back to the Swiss franc across its portfolio, given that its liabilities to member pension funds are CHF-denominated. The foundation invests actively in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, with the hedging overlay managed as a core risk function rather than a tactical overlay.

AFIAA is a direct extension of the Swiss second-pillar occupational pension system. Its 33 member institutions are Swiss pension funds and social-security funds that collectively own and govern the foundation. AFIAA's sole purpose is to provide these members with diversified foreign real estate exposure, managed within the investment regulations Swiss pension law imposes on tax-exempt collective schemes.

AFIAA will co-invest with domestic institutional partners in certain markets — notably with Australian superannuation funds — but it does not serve as a passive LP in externally sponsored vehicles. The foundation's preference is to retain direct control over asset selection and management, even within co-ownership structures, rather than delegating investment discretion to a third-party GP.