We invest for the long term
16 April 2025The import tariffs announced by the United States caused declines on the stock markets. Many reports about this appeared in the news last week. We can imagine this raises questions.
The social partners (the employers’ and employees’ representatives) want to choose for the solidarity-based pension scheme. In this pension scheme are windfalls and setbacks absorbed together and collective investments are made. As a result, pensions will be stable.
In the coming months, we will explain the new pension scheme to you in small pieces. Let’s start with the old-age pension. This is the pension you will receive when you stop working.
In a nutshell: how does it work now
Agreements have been made in the current pension scheme about the amount of pension you will receive when you retire. So you know in advance how much pension you will receive each month.
In a nutshell: how will it work in
the future In the new pension system, agreements are made about how much money (contribution) you and your employer will contribute to your pension. This is called a contribution scheme: it is an agreement about the amount of the premium. You can clearly see how much money you and your employer are putting in for your pension and how this amount is growing. In short: You build up capital that you use to purchase a pension when you retire.
This capital, and ultimately your pension, will move in line with the economy: up faster when things are going well and down when things are not going so well. Because pensions will move in line with the economy, declines cannot always be prevented. The new rules do ensure that the movements become less significant when you are (almost) retired: by investing less risky as you get older. A buffer is also used for setbacks: the solidarity reserve. In good times, we build it up, so that we can absorb or mitigate a decrease in pensions in bad times.
The import tariffs announced by the United States caused declines on the stock markets. Many reports about this appeared in the news last week. We can imagine this raises questions.
In 2024, we will have achieved a 12.6% return by investing the pension assets. With this result, we are in the top three of the more than 170 pension funds in the Netherlands that were surveyed by consultants from OverRendement and Bell.
We are expected to implement the new pension scheme from January 1, 2026. We are preparing for this, so that this transition is done carefully. For example, in 2024 we switched to a new pension administration system. In this administration system, we can administer our current and future pension scheme. In short: with this administration system we are ready for the future.