Personal note

Dear Reader,

In recent weeks, the pension situation has regularly hit the headlines. First came the announcement of an agreement on a new pension system. The talks between the government, employers, and trade unions had broken down in the autumn, and suddenly an agreement was on the table. And then there were the reports on the vote by the members of the trade union on the agreement. Would the grass roots approve the agreement or would they vote against it?

The results of the Dijsselbloem Commission were released while the vote among the trade union members was still in progress. The Dijsselbloem Commission was instituted to pronounce on the level of returns that pension funds can count on and the long-term interest rate. The Commission's recommendation was accepted by the agencies involved.

And recently, ECB President Draghi made the front pages of the newspapers when he announced that the ECB will be keeping interest rates low for the time being. In short: plenty of media attention.

The new pension contract: what does this mean?

Feelings about the new pension contract will continue to run high for a while yet. It is mainly the outlines of the new system that are currently being worked on. A steering committee has been installed to work out all the details. It is therefore not possible at this stage to say what the new contract will mean for our fund. We will certainly return to this in Life & Pension as soon as more is known.

What can you expect in this edition of Life & Pension?

We traditionally devote the June/July issue to the annual report. But this time we’re publishing a special edition for that purpose. The Board adopted the 2018 Annual Report on 13 June. The 2018 Special sets out the most important figures and conclusions from the annual report.

For me, 2018 was a year of contrasts. Until the end of September, the stock markets were doing well and interest rates fluctuated within a narrow bandwidth. But the stock markets fell sharply in the last months of the year. The final result was that we closed the year with a negative return.

The policy coverage ratio, which is the average coverage ratio of the last 12 months, stood at 114.0% at the end of the year. A small indexation was possible. In the meantime, the stock exchanges have fully recovered in 2019. despite that, the low interest rates mentioned above continue to exert pressure on the coverage ratios.

How are things going?

It's rarely good news for the members when pensions make the front pages of the newspapers. The low interest rate continues to cause problems for pension funds. The coverage ratios are falling as a result of the low interest rate. Fortunately, our fund is still on the right side of the line and reductions are not an issue.

Kind regards,

Kostijn

Kostijn van Gerven

director