22 Apr
15:00 - 18:10

Pension Seminar 2021

<CENTER>PENSION: ‘OUTSIDE IN’<br /> How European is the (Dutch) pension participant?

On Thursday 22 April 2021 the tenth edition of the Maastricht Pension Seminar took place. Due to the Coronapandemic it was the first time that this seminar was organized in an online setting and therefore unfortunately not at Maastricht University itself. The theme of the seminar was “Pension: 'Outside In'. How European is the (Dutch) pension participant?”.

Pension information, with the science field of pension communication, became during the last years more and more important in the pension industry. This has led to a huge amount of developments in the field of pension information. However, these developments – like the domain of pensions in general – are mainly characterized by a national focus. Therefore, the aim of the Pension Seminar was to perceive pensions through the lens of the European dimension and mobile participants pension information position. Perceived through this lens, the developments concerning the in 2019 concluded Dutch Pension Agreement (Pensioenakkoord) were evaluated.[1] Against that background the question emerges how European the (Dutch) pension participant in the new Pension Agreement is?

Taking the “Outside in” approach of this Pension Seminar into account, the most important question that was answered during the seminar was what the Netherlands can learn from Europe and what – the Member States in Europe – can learn from the Netherlands. According to Janwillem Bouma (Chair PensionsEurope), there is a meaning in Europe that the Dutch pension system has first to change from DB (uitkeringsovereenkomst) to a DC (premieovereenkomst) contract before – the Member States in – Europe can learn from the Netherlands. That's rather a harsh conclusion according to Bouma, because the Netherlands has – according to the Mercer Global Pension Index – at this moment the best pension system in the world.[2] However, the new Dutch Pension Agreement shows a fundamental shift from a DB to a DC contract. In this manner it is important to investigate in which manner the pension participant is at the heart of the Dutch Pension reform. The central question that will be answered during the four presentations is: What can the Netherlands in this respect learn from experience elsewhere? This question forms the starting point of this Pension Seminar.

During the last year a lot of attention has been paid to the creation of a European Tracking Service on Pensions (ETS). For cross-border situations attention can be paid to the TTYPE project (from 2013 until 2016) and the ETS project (from 2019 until now), which will be explained during the first presentation.[3] The second and third presentation were about the member centric communication and shared some interesting results of the (empirical) studies which were conducted by the speakers. The last presentation elaborated on the RESEAVER project. The aim of the first and last presentation was to investigate what the Netherlands can learn from these two projects, in which the philosophy behind the IORP II Directive is being implemented. The central aim of two middle presentations was to elaborate on the questions how individuals reflect upon legislation from an “outside in” (tax) perspective.

[1] For more information about the new Dutch Pension Agreement see also: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/pensioen/toekomst-pensioenstelsel.

[2] See also https://www.mercer.nl/newsroom/nederlandse-pensioenstelsel-voor-derde-jaar-op-rij-beste-ter-wereld.html#.

[3] For more information about these two projects see also: https://www.findyourpension.eu/en/ets/about_ets/.

ETS: How to provide Cross-Border and Cross-Pillar Pension Information for Mobile Citizens in Europe

Claudia Wegner-Wahnschaffe | ETS Project Manager - Head of International affairs at VBL - Chair of the European Association of Public Sector Pension Institutions (EAPSPI)

The first presentation was provided by Claudia Wegner-Wahnschaffe (ETS Project Manager - Head of International affairs at VBL - Chair of the European Association of Public Sector Pension Institutions (EAPSPI).[4] During the first presentations the ETS-project were discussed. The ETS-project focusses on three elements: 1) ETS wants to give access and orientation to the mobile workers, 2) ETS wants to improve the mobile workers understanding or help them understanding different things and 3) ETS wants to foster the engagement. The main question of this presentation was how we should provide cross-border pension information to members that are mobile and what can be learned from this from a Dutch perspective.

Wegner-Wahnschaffe started her presentation by showing some data about the labor mobility in Europe. According to the intra-EU labor mobility report of 2020,[5]  there was again an increase of mobile mobility in Europe. In this respect it is important to distinguish between EU movers and cross-border workers. EU movers are people who have work phases in countries other than their country of residence and who moved to this country. Cross-border workers are people live in one country and work in another country. Cross-border workers stay in their home country. There are 13 million EU movers and 2 million cross-border workers in Europe. Which means that there are much more EU movers then cross-border workers.

When thinking about what kind of information ETS should have to deliver, it is according to Wegner-Wahnschaffe important to investigate what the largest groups of customers are. The ETS-team selected three specific professions and sectors which are the biggest and most mobile group: 1) the construction sector, 2) the health sector and 3) the academics and researchers. During the start of the ETS-project some personas were drafted. One of them, Silvia, is a researcher from Portugal and has worked in Spain, Germany and Austria. She has children and has to be mobile in order to pursue her career. In this example there are already six different pension institutions involved. And even in the best case, if all of them provide information to her – which is not the case – Sylvia has a lot of information and pension statements. According to Wegner-Wahnschaffe there are nowadays many national tracking services and there should be some more in the next ten years. But if you take a look at the information, which exits on personal information, the question is whether mobile workers have access to those data. Not only technical access but also access regarding the language, because of course most of those services are in their domestic language.

At the beginning of the ETS project the ETS-team defined their mission and vision. All European residents should have access to information about their pension entitlements no matter where they were accrued within Europe, and regardless of their country of residence. And this goes not only for individual pension data but also for the general pension information (pension literacy). And in order to fulfil this mission, the ETS-team is working on two different products during the ETS-project. The first product is a pension portal, a ‘one single stop shop point’ to receive general information and personal and tailored information. Wegner-Wahnschaffe thinks it is important that the ETS pension portal should draft holistic and tailored information. The landing page is the starting point of the ETS pension portal. During the presentation Wegner-Wahnschaffe showed the three different functionalities of the pilot version of the ETS pension portal. The first functionality is the tailored (general) information. The second functionality is the “Find your provider service” and help users to find their pension providers. The third functionality is a pension dashboard which is at this moment a kind of sales track function. The second product consists an infrastructure to exchange pension data. At this moment the ETS-project has a consortium of eight members consisting of three supplementary pension pillar systems and two first pension pillar systems.

Wegner-Wahnschaffe thinks that nowadays the customer centric approach is broadly accepted by most of the providers. But with regard to mobile workers, those concepts are oriented to the domestic customers and not to the mobile workers. Besides this, communication is always seen in the light of liability for information and costs. According to Wegner-Wahnschaff, each pension provider has a kind of system related thinking and that means that providers have their own picture of what they want to tell the customer what is necessary and not what the customer wants to know. Legal requirements play a very important role in this. In this respect you have also to take into account that the pillar definition is sometimes different. In addition, we have different pension concepts. Therefore, pension systems and landscapes are – often due to historical reasons – completely different in each country and therefore it's not easy to draft a kind of framework how information on those systems shall be presented. The ETS-team decided therefore that mobile workers do not need a completely detailed overview on all the different pillars in a certain country with all the details. What they need to know, according to Wegner-Wahnschaff, is to have an idea on the pension concept which is find in a certain country and this will make them able to understand pension information from the national pension providers. So, mobile workers need to have holistic and tailored information. But what information do mobile workers need to know? They need basic knowledge on how pensions work and an answer to the question “How much pension will I get?”. The ETS-team founds also out that it’s very important that people know what kind of actions they have to do. So, the customer centric approach – thinking about the customer when drafting pension information – helps to improve the information and therefore Wegner-Wahnschaff would plead to use this approach and take a walk in the customers’ shoes.

The ETS-team did a lot of interviews with for example people who consult persons in the construction sector and in the health sector. In which moment of their career do they address consultants or their employers? In order to attract the user, the ETS pension portal uses different live situations and shows layering information. This is necessary in order to draft tailored information according. In this respect Wegner-Wahnschaff showed during her an example related to the German system “Good to know”, which explains the German pension system.

The ETS-project has different editors for different countries. ETS needs editors from each European country. The service will have an editorial team which is part of the ETS, but the concept is to get the information by people having an overview of the specific countries. In this regard it is, according to Wegner-Wahnschaff, important to draw guidelines about how to draft the information. The ETS-team draft these guidelines together with professor Lisa Brüggen (Maastricht University) and professor Yves Stevens (KU Leuven). The ETS-project is a three years’ project but will probably be prolonged due to the Coronacrisis. At this moment the ETS-team has nearly finalized the technical pilot and the rollout phase can start. During the next phase the national tracking services will be connected and the experiences of the Find Your Pension portal, which is the existing one for mobile researchers, will be changed to the ETS pension portal which will also have the name Find Your Pension. At the end of the project the ETS-team has to found an organization as a holder for the ETS, so an owner of the whole service.

In her closing remarks, Wegner-Wahnschaff answered the overall question of the Pension Seminar: “How European is the Dutch pension participant?”. With regard to the DB/DC system it’s important to have an understanding of the systems and to explain the risk in a way that it is understandable for the participants. It's important to strengthen orientation and basic understanding of the pension topic. If you do not manage to do that, you can do whatever you want, according to Wegner-Wahnschaff. People will not read the information and they will not understand it. So her personal opinion is: don't hang the fruits too high and don't use a too high ambition level in order to explain people the differences and the different types of DB and DC systems. The first step is to give orientation and explain the basics and get people involved and engaged.

[4] VBL is a supplementary pension system for public sector in Germany on the basis of collective agreement.

[2] The annual report on intra-EU labour mobility of 2020 is free available via https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=nl&pubId=8369.

Claudia Wegner-Wahnschaffe

ETS Project Manager - Head of International affairs at VBL - Chair of the European Association of Public Sector Pension Institutions (EAPSPI)

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Pension Communication in the New Pension Agreement: Learnings from DC pension funds in the Netherlands and beyond

Prof. Dr. Lisa Brüggen | Professor for Financial Services UM | SBE

The aim of the second presentation was to share what Lisa Brüggen (professor Financial Services at Maastricht University | School of Business and Economics) has learned not only from DC pension funds in the Netherlands, so “inside out”, but also what she has learned from experience in Europe and in other European Member States. In this regard Brüggen shared during her presentation the results of three sets of research studies that were conducted during the last year.

Brüggen started her (interactive) presentation with the, according to her, most important changes of the new Dutch Pension Agreement. She thinks that one of the most fundamental change is that the retirement income changed from a fixed (DB) to a variable (DC) income. According to Brüggen, also the solidarity reserve is an important component of the new Dutch Pension Agreement. Taking this change into account, Brüggen launched the question whether pension communication for a DC scheme is different from pension communication for a DB scheme and why this should be different. According to the answers of the participant’s pension communication indeed differs because DC entails more risks, no guaranteed or defined outcome, more uncertainty, more individual focused content and relevance, etc.

The second part of her presentation, Brüggen started by sharing the results from four set of studies which were conducted during the last year together with a group of researchers. Brüggen was a member of the scientific Advisory Board to the Minister and was also involved as an expert in the communication work group. In that work group were two qualitative and two quantitative studies conducted. The results of these studies are written in a report[6] which is available through the Federation of the Dutch Pension Funds (Pensioenfederatie). According to Brüggen, the research confirmed again that the basic knowledge level and also the understanding of pension information is limited. And even though the researchers tried to explain people the changes how the new pension scheme would look like in very simple and understandable terms, many still had problems to fully grasp what it actually means. Therefore, it is according to Brüggen important that such text and information has to be super simple. Another research finding was that most of the participants weren't interested in the changes, but only want to know what these changes do in euros to their retirement income. But sometimes they need to hear information to be able to really understand it. One of the key challenges in this respect is to get the participant to listen because if you don't get them to that point then directly one important part of the new Dutch pension scheme could create mistrust or misunderstanding on the side of participants. The research also showed that if the information that were provided is simple, the participants often were asking more questions and wanted to hear more information. So the question is how you get the participants engaged. Therefore, Brüggen believes that the idea of layering information (see also the presentation of Wegner-Wahnschaff) is crucial. What also became clear from the research, is that it's important to base the text on the mental models that people have in their mind and what they know or think that they know. Because the answers to the open-ended questions showed that the concept of pension that participant have in mind were very interesting.  They have different ideas of how things work, how things are arranged, how things are protected and safeguarded. These findings are important because these made clear were you have to base the communication on. So, framing matters. This became also clear from the PhD research of Wiebke Eberhardt.

Brüggen also, together with several researchers, conducted research on DC pension communication. Now the Netherlands are shifting to DC pension communication, the researchers want to identify best practices for DC pension communication. The first part of this research consists the Netherlands and is just finished. The second part of this research consists the international part of the study.

During the first part, 14 qualitative interviews were conducted. The researchers collected also a lot of visuals or screenshots from the pension portals. In this regard Brüggen asks the questions what the most important outcome is that should be measured to assess the effectiveness of pension communication.  According to the participant of the Pension Seminar these should include simplicity, understandability, a clear choice by individual, decisions informed customers, understanding of risk, honest information, a clear overview, etc. Not one response was exactly the same, which shows  directly the challenge. The research showed on the one hand that all of pension providers communicate extremely regularly with the participants. What was interesting according to Brüggen, is that the pension providers didn't measure the effectiveness. Because when you have a set of goals and a set of communication vehicles, then you should measure whether you are effective. This was however not something that prominently come back. According to Brüggen, the results of these study would not spectacular differ if the research was done by DB funds instead of DC funds. Another interesting study result was that there are a lot of differences in the visuals. All of the visuals gave insight into how much capital someone had accrued. Many also showed the relationship between the contributions that someone paid and returning and some also showed the development of capital. However, different ways were used. There are different ways to communicate because there are different target groups. The same goes for the investment information and the expected benefits. There are also a lot of differences in the level of details. The research showed that only a few pension providers use the navigation metaphor that it's now obligatory in the required pension communication, but also they had often a different design. Reflection to the new Dutch pension plan, Brüggen thinks it's a great idea to align more with the risk profiles of people. However, to properly manage the risk preferences and to translate that into an investment strategy is very difficult, according to Brüggen. So from the first part of the study, the conclusion was that there were actually many nice examples, and that the tooling is very advanced. In comprising with the international results (second part of the study), it seems that the pension planners in the Netherlands are quite advanced, have nice visuals and have also good visual information. All of them did also their best to transparently communicate the information. However, there is a lot of diversity. One goal of the research was that more evidence based best practices are developed and that these are shared in the sector, so that the sector together can actually become better and not that everyone has to reinvent the wheel. That would also reduce the costs, increase the efficiency and improve the effectiveness. Therefore, Brüggen thinks there can be a lot to be gained.

During the second part, 16 qualitative online interviews were conducted in Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, Canada, US, Chile and Australia. During the research it became clear that these countries use

frequently mobile apps which provide pension information. During the presentation Brüggen showed one mobile app which is more or less the same as a portal, but offers much more functionality. According to Brüggen, it would be nice to have. However, the effectiveness of it or the way it engaged members was sometimes unclear. Too much engagement may also not be good or could lead to adverse outcomes. The researchers saw also that often the same type of segmentation was used. But at the same time the researchers saw also advanced segmentation. The pension portals that are used in these countries use very few visualizations and generally no empirical basis or evaluation of effectiveness. The researchers thought there would be a lot of differences between countries because a lot depends on national regulations. But overall the results were maybe a bit more similar than you would expect. All are dealing with the same challenge of activating and engaging people.

Across all these studies, the conclusion of Brüggen is that it's important to connect to members to investigate what they know about pensions. Their mindset could be wrong but this determines how they look at it and how they will view also the new Dutch pension contract. In this regard, it’s important to use easy language and careful framing. Therefore, layering information is very important and digitalization can help. The focus should be on what members want to know and uniformity where it can decrease cost and increase effectiveness and efficiency. So, there are differences between DB and DC, but the communication doesn't differ so much because it's a challenge now to engage people and it will remain a challenge to engage them in DC.

[6] Link: https://www.pensioenfederatie.nl/cms/streambin.aspx?documentid=13604.

Prof. Dr. Lisa Brüggen

Professor for Financial Services UM | SBE

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Cross-Border Pension Information: Taxes, the Participant’s Perspective and Paradigm, and Lessons for the New Pension Agreement

Sander Kramer LL.M. | PhD-candidate ITEM/UM

In addition to the first two presentations, the third presentation exams the pension communication in the new Dutch Pension Agreement and the cross-border pension information through a tax perspective. During this presentation, Sander Kramer (PhD-candidate ITEM/UM) made clear what the connection is between taxes, the participants’ perspective and a new Dutch Pension Agreement in light of the cross-border pension information.

Kramer started his presentation by outlining where the need for cross-border pension information comes from. Why should we even provide mobile citizens with sound pension information and maybe even more compared to domestic situations? According to Kramer, over the last years it has become evident that Member States pension systems have been reformed structurally and also in a rapid pace.

In these reforms, certain trends can be observed. The most dominant trend is according to Kramer – like Wegner-Wahnschaff and Brüggen – the shift from DB to DC contract according to the new Dutch Pension Agreement. Another trend is that individuals have more choice options. As an example Kramer mentioned the future possibility as of the 1st of January 2022 in the Netherlands to take a lump sum payment of 10% of the pension entitlements at the date of retirement (the Wet bedrag ineens, RVU en verslofsparen). A third trend is that statutory pension benefits have become less generous over the years. A fourth trend that can be observed is the trend from moving from single pillar retirement saving to multiple pension systems. In that respect the Betriebsrentenstärkungsgesetz is according to Kramer a good example. The bottom line of these trends, is that individuals are increasingly exposed to more risks as regard their retirement income and as a consequence they bear also the responsibility for an adequate pension income at retirement.

After mentioning these trends, Kramer elaborated about the cross-border pension information. When citizens work across different Member States, their future retirement income consists of deviating pension entitlements and rights across several countries. Currently these mobile workers face a lack of total overview of their pension status quo. So, they are unable to find an answer to the question how much pension they will get at retirement. This could hinder these mobile workers in making well informed decisions as regards their retirement savings and also causes them to face a potential risk of inadequacy of their retirement income, which means that they would be unable to finance their standard of living after retirement. Kramer thinks the European internal market for pensions needs to go out not only from a systems perspective but also from a citizens’ perspective.

When providing pension information, the information provider should according to Kramer be aware of the so called behavioural purpose of the information. The general goal of what the behavioural purpose of information would entail can be narrowed down to a few steps. Firstly, people should be able to draw a comparison between a projected amount of future pension income and their current earned income. This will allow them secondly to get a profound understanding of where they stand in terms of their financial and pension situation. Thirdly, this grasp of their financial and pension situation enables them to make more well informed decisions based on the information they already received. Looking to the first step in figure, so allowing for comparison between future pension income and their current income, the question arises whether these amounts should be depicted as gross or as nett amounts of pension income. A substantial body of literature indicates that these amounts should be depicted as net amounts of future retirement income. This will have some severe consequences for practice and information provision. However, research shows that people have proved to be less rational, they are predictably irrational. That is assumed under the rational choice theory which is often used by policymakers, to base their assumptions on people behaviour. With regard to pensions, this implies that people need to put information on a particular amount of future retirement income. They need to put this information in context and therefore they need reference points to evaluate. According to Kramer, the most easily accessible reference point would be the net amount of income since people receive their net income in their pocket, which is then directly used in day-to-day situations. In addition, providing a net amount of future retirement income would make the pension information more salient.

An important point to make is that the results from the empirical study that Kramer allows to get a more profound understanding of what the citizens perspective would entail. What would it mean to look through a citizens’ perspective instead of a systems perspective? The purpose of the empirical study was to expose readers to either a gross amount of future retirement incomes so prior to taxes, or a net amount of future retirement income so after taxes, or a net amount of future retirement income accompanied by a disclaimer. This disclaimer pointed out that the net amount of projected retirement income should be treated with caution, since the calculation of tax liable may deviate in future due to a variety of reasons, for instance tax legislation may be amended in the near future. Respondents were randomly allocated to one of these three treatment groups. First we studied the impact of adjusting information, the information’s informativeness and the perceived trustworthiness of the information. Second we studied the effect of the adjustment of information on peoples expected future financial security and their behavioural expectations. Third, as potential moderators in people’s behaviour, we studied the moderating effect of financial literacy. At the end we also studied their objective pension literacy by five questions that were drawn up by Lusardi, a scholar in the field of pension literacy and the degree of self-efficacy. The population consisted solely of mobile European Union workers.

During the presentation, Kramer shared the results which were listed in a table who shows the effect of the adjustment of information. The first research result was that, as regards ease of comprehension, there is a significant difference between the gross and nett amount group. The disclaimer group they did not differ significantly from the gross and net amount group. This demonstrates that people find a future net amount of retirement income easier to understand. As regards informativeness, no statistical difference was found between the three groups. However, the net amount group reported a higher level of informativeness compared to the gross amount. Interestingly, the net amount disclaimer group report is even the highest degree of informativeness. As regards trustworthiness, a significant difference can be seen in terms of the fact that the net amount group reported a significant lower degree of trustworthiness compared to the gross amount group. Therefore, it seems that people exposed to the net amount have a certain feeling that the net amount that is depicted in the information should be treated with caution and thus they value the trustworthiness lower. The net amount disclaimer group reported a higher degree of trustworthiness. So it seems that including a disclaimer information pointing out that the net amount should be treated with caution for numerous reasons. Interestingly, the study results show, as words expected future financial security, a statistically significant difference between the gross amount group and the net amount disclaimer group. So the respondents exposed to the net amount show a higher degree of expected future financial security. It appears that including a disclaimer also has a beneficial effect on people's reported expected future financial security since it was the highest reported rate of this variable. Lastly, although respondents allocated to the net amount group reported a higher level of behavioural expectations. In a nutshell, these results provide input for tailoring information to people needs and in helping to further shape the citizens perspective. According to Kramer, these results and the theoretical background indicate that for complete retirement planning, people need comparable net figures of their recommended and disparate sources of income. Together with Wegner-Wahnschaff and Brüggen, Kramer thinks that a holistic approach to pension information should be adopted. That means that the world of taxation of pensions and the citizens perspective should be incorporated in drafting law and policy making and should also be incorporated in designing pension information.

In the last part of his presentation, Kramer elaborated on the questions whether regulatory frameworks in place, so governing the taxation of cross border pensions, form an obstacle to the provision of cross border information. This is basically the main question that Kramer will answer in his PhD research. The national regulatory frameworks across Europe and the European Member States are marked by considerable regulatory differences and also a lack of organization in the field of pensions. Also as regards the taxation of pensions, there is no form of harmonisation in the European Union. The European landscape is also characterized by a wide range of pension vehicles, testing methods and relevant types of legislation. There is also no taxonomy of pensions and or pillars. A further obstacle is that there are three levels of legislation, so international tax law, EU law and domestic tax law. So, there is a lack of coherence among national tax systems. In this respect, it turns out that the legal instruments of the European Union (positive and negative integration) fall short of achieving more coherence between national legal orders on the taxation of cross border pension. According to Kramer, the European Commission should do more to achieve coherence through a positive integration approach, so through her communications. The lack of harmonization and the complex interactive processes between different levels of legislation are the most prevalent obstacles to provision of cross border pension information. Another point that could lead to obstacles is that legislation is reminiscent of a perpetuum mobile. The relation between information provision and legislation is of significant importance. These two squares serve appear to be separated vessels or separated spheres instead of communicating vessels were they should be interconnected in order to allow law and policy makers to adopt a more citizen centred approach through taking on empirically informed approach. Kramer thinks that this can be improved, for instance, by involving experts in the field of behavioural sciences in early process of policymaking and information design. In this regard, also Kramer thinks that pension information should be simple. However, he would like to take the position that this not only holds true as regards pension information, but also for the regulatory frameworks so legislation. As closing remark, Kramer would like to call on law and policy makers to adopt a more citizen centred approach, since it has become apparent that the perspective through which the law is designed is lacking a citizens’ perspective.

Sander Kramer LL.M.

PhD-candidate ITEM/UM

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Cross-Border pensions in practice – RESAVER, the international Pension Fund for researchers in Europe

Mr. Johan Huysse | Board member RESAVER pension fund / VSNU policy advisor

The last presentation was provided by Johann Huysse (Board member RESAVER pension fund / VSNU policy advisor). During the presentation, he elaborated on the RESEAVER pension fund, which is a practical example of how mobile workers can be supported across Europe through a single pension vehicle.

Huysse started his presentation by providing background information about the RESEAVER pension fund and how the European Commission is involved. The RESEAVER pension funds organised the pension entitlements for researchers and is located in Belgium. According to Huysse, researchers are considered essential for the economic strength of Europe. Therefore, the European research area were created in which is looked to obstacles for mobile researchers. Cross-border researchers can be confronted to obstacles, due to different social, tax and pension frameworks. So, the initiative from the European Commission was to help a consortium of employers to start a pension fund and also to help for things around it. The consortium consists of more than 10 organizations. One of them is the VSNU because the VSNU is very interested in this. About 40% of researchers at the Dutch universities are not grounded in in the Netherlands and come from abroad. The RESEAVER pension fund is a multi-country and multi-employer second pillar pension fund. The employers are considered as European research organizations. However, not only researchers are affiliated with RESEAVER. Everyone who works for a research organization can be affiliated with RESEAVER. There is one pension fund and everything coming into the fund is coming from the different countries. So, money is coming in from different countries and it will also go out in different countries. Therefore, RESEAVER is built on a defined contribution system. That's according to Huysse necessary when you go Pan-European, because then DB plans are impossible. RESEAVER respects also all national labor, social and tax laws and is also compliant with all the rules from the local authorities. The RESEAVER pension fund is also very flexible. This is important because in some countries it is a necessity to have social partners included in the pension plan.

During the second part of his presentation, Huysse explained the MyReseaver member portal. This is a multiple language portal. Therefore, the users can see their savings in English and/or in their own language. Everything is done with respect for local laws. Huysse explained this with an example: like in in the Netherlands, you will also have a disability insurance within the system because the design is done by the employer itself. So the employer is able to decide what will be part of the plan. RESEAVER has a big group of leading providers which can be contacted for this system. In this regard, RESEAVER works together with Blackrock, Mercer, KPMG, Deloitte, etc. A special role is for AON, because AON will give the help in setting up a new organization or when RESEAVER starts in a new country. Due to the flexible design of RESEAVER, employers and social partners can decide how the pension plan and the MyReseaver member portal is setting up. For instance, different investment options like lifecycles or Freestyle are possible. RESEAVER started also with ESG funds.

The third part was about the current state of play. RESEAVER started in 2017 and is nowadays active in six countries: Hungary, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Cyprus. RESEAVER has also nine different organizations aboard in those countries. However, RESEAVER is still very small pension fund with only 1.000 participants and around 10 million of assets. The goal for RESEAVER is to grow during the coming years. Therefore, RESEAVER is trying to attract more organizations. According to Huysse, there are now limits in this respect. The ultimate goal is to involve al universities in Europe. When things start working, RESEAVER might try to get associations with other continents. Because RESEAVER has a lot of people coming from the United States, India and China to Europe.

After the theoretical parts of his presentation, Huysse elaborated on the so-called RESEAVER journey. In this regard, Huysse took the example of a participant in Hungary who is working in a university and started his pension in RESEAVER. This university had political problems in Hungary and was forced to move most to another country. A part of university moved to Austria. A lot of employees also switched to Austria. Therefore, these employees work for a new employer in a different country. However, their pension is still at the same pension fund and the dashboard in the MyReseaver member portal will show the combined savings in one amount. So there is no big change for the participant according to Huysse. However, all those pensions payments have to be in compliance with social, labor and tax law of the countries. This means that there will be a different amount of money, because Austria might have different rules than Hungary. When the pensions will be paid, there might be differences again because there could be differences in retirement age and different taxation rules.

Concluded, the RESEAVER pension fund is according to Huysse in theory a fantastic system. However, there are still a lot of obstacles in domestic law and this prevents for instance the Dutch universities to join RESEAVER at this moment. For example, in the Netherlands there is the Wet Privatisering ABP (WPA) and according to the WPA the employees to Dutch universities has to build up their pension at pension fund ABP. So there's are lot of things that must change in this respect. Huysse thinks that the Netherlands are already helping, because of the shift from DB to DC. As policy advisor VSNU, Huysse is involved in the negotiations for the collective labor agreement of the Dutch universities. In this regard, the VSNU is trying to make it possible for Dutch universities to be part of RESEAVER. At this moment there are three small Dutch organizations who are part of RESEAVER. One of these organizations has also employees in Belgium and in France. Therefore, RESEAVER wants to facilitate that the employees of these organizations are also connected to the system. According to Huysse it is for RESEAVER very important to bind more companies, because how more companies how better the RESEAVER system is working.

Mr. Johan Huysse

Board member RESAVER pension fund / VSNU policy advisor

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Conclusion

The main lesson learned during the 10th Pension Seminar Maastricht is that the Netherlands can learn from the experiences abroad (Europe) in the field of pension communication and providing pension information to cross-border workers. According to Bouma, the Netherlands should take these lessons into account when elaborating the agreements included in the new Dutch Pension Agreement.

During the four presentations it became clear that there are still sufficient challenges in respect of providing pension information to cross-border workers. It is very important to solve these challenges, because the numbers of cross-border workers are increasing and also cross-border workers need to have an ‘adequate’ pension after retirement. According to Bouma, the four presentations gave an excellent overview of the complexity involved in cross border work. On the one hand there is the complexity of local social, labor and tax law. At the other hand it is a hard challenge to activate participants during their pension journey.

The Advisory Board of the annual Pension Seminar Maastricht, consisting of Gerard Rutten, Lilian van Duijnhoven, Janwillem Bouma, Prof. Roland Brandsma and Prof. Anouk Bollen-Vandenboorn (chair) hopes that the four presentations have given the participants of the Pension Seminar food for thought in terms of the work they are involved with and have given them hopefully some ideas or lessons that they can apply. In that respect, the Advisory Board looks back on a successful Pension Seminar in line with the theme "Pension: Outside In". It is important to consider what the Dutch pension system can learn from the world outside the Netherlands. This can be from a European perspective, a country perspective but also from a ‘non-pension’ perspective. The organization welcomes all input for the next Pension Seminar Maastricht to further explore this theme and looks forward to another well-attended seminar.

The 11th Pension Seminar will take place – live – at Maastricht University on Monday 24 January 2022.

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