NETHERLANDS - The €217bn Dutch ABP pension scheme has today presented the name for its newly-established separate administration body, which it launched yesterday.

The new organisation, called Algemene Pensioen Groep NV (translated as All Pensions Group) or APG, will manage the ABP pension scheme, covering pension administration, asset management, ICT and communication.

ABP adopted a pension execution company (PUB) construction from yesterday - ending its self-administering (ZAF) status by splitting into a pension fund and administrative body.

Under this new structure, ABP will remain the full shareholder of the new administration agency and its subsidiaries, ABP stressed again in today's announcement.

ABP has also set up a holding company NV, with a supervisory board and an executive board.

The fund announced its merger with pensions provider-cum-asset manager Cordares last December, so this merger can now formally go ahead now the fund/admin split has been concluded.

Over a similar move, the second-largest pension fund Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW) - previously PGGM - was taken to court earlier this year by the Dutch Association of Insurance Companies (Verbond van Verzekeraars), as it claimed the fund practiced unfair competition by applying the PGGM name to its admin operation.

Last month however, a Dutch court ruled the fund manager PGGM may continue calling itself ‘PGGM'.

The court decided the transfer of the name PGGM from the pension fund - which only recently had the name change to PFZW - to its new investment manager is lawful.

The association, at the time, said establishing a new commercial organisation that - since the split of the pension fund and the administrative body - carries the same name as the widely-known pension fund while offering life course insurance products under that name would constitute unfair competition.

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