In this message I, advocate Emanuel Geurts, inform you about the discussions to arrive at a new pension scheme for the catering industry, contract catering, hospitality and inflight.
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Retirement
On September 26, 2022, employers and trade unions in the hospitality and contract catering industry held consultations about the new pension contract to be chosen. We talked about the investment policy, solidarity reserve, survivor's pension and compensation measures.
When it comes to the investment policy, we have decided to use lifecycle investing where when you are young you also have more risk and can therefore also get more returns. The older you are, the more conservative this becomes because you have fewer years to go until you retire. The parties do not want to make use of the option in the solidary contract to lift the borrowing restriction for young people. We do not believe that the additional risks that may arise for young people outweigh the benefits of higher investment returns.
We also discussed the size of the solidarity reserve. What risk do we want to cover and what may that cost? The parties prefer to hedge the risk of declining pensions in payment by 'guaranteeing' a fixed (nominal) amount. If we calculate this risk on the (future) population, we have a relatively low reserve to build up. Hedging every other risk requires more reserves and these have to be financed from somewhere. This can come from the funding ratio, premium or equity of investments. Premium has already been excluded for parties. See also the previous member letter with principles.
The survivor's pension is something that is not yet included in the current pension scheme. In principle, the social partners see this as a valuable addition to the new pension scheme. However, in the light of the total scheme and costs, which we do not yet have in full view.
To find out what the possible compensation measures for abolishing the average premium entail, we first discussed the possible effects with each other. The size of the effect of the abolition of the average system is estimated at 700 million. We are now looking at what this means for the different groups of participants. For one group there seems to be a little more and for the other group somewhat less benefit. Because we have to test everything against the concept of 'balanced', we still have some time to spend on this.
On Monday 17 October 2022 we will discuss topics such as incapacity for work and the possible compensation criteria. We also get an in-depth look at the protection, projection and over-yield from our calculators. At the beginning of November, we will discuss the investment policy to be pursued, the projected returns to be used, allocation rules and cost reserve with the pension fund board. At the end of November we want to agree on the pension scheme to be implemented and present it to the various supporters. An important condition is that the legislative process is completed by 1 January 2023. They are currently working on it in The Hague, but I don't think it is going smoothly yet. On the other hand, it is also not a small file to deal with.
Contact
If you want to respond to this newsletter or want to be in touch, you can reach me via 06-5252 2074 or via emanuel.geurts@unie.nl. For individual advice you can contact my colleagues from the Service Center department via 0345-851 963, via email sc@unie.nl or the chat function www.unie.nl. We are happy to help you!
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