Some 23 Dutch pension funds serving over 8 million members and with more than €500bn in assets under management between them have been given regulatory permission to convert defined benefit (DB) accruals to defined contribution (DC) capital as of 1 January 2026.
The 23 funds follow in the footsteps of six early birds that already made the transition this year, bringing the total number of schemes accruing pensions in DC by early next year to 30.
The funds that have made the transition so far are, however, comparatively small. The largest of the six funds that have moved to DC so far is the fund for workers with a distance to the labour market, PWRI, with 186,000 members.
The ‘class of 2026’ is of a different scale, featuring two of the country’s biggest funds. These are €248bn healthcare scheme PFZW and PMT, the €86bn sector fund for the metals processing industry.
Two additional schemes, the hospitality sector fund Horeca & Catering and Stipp, the fund for temporary workers, also have more than a million members.
Delays
By the first week of December, all 23 funds would have received permission from pension regulator DNB to convert DB accruals to DC capital. To place things in perspective, altogether well over a hundred funds are still set to convert their arrangements to DC sometime between 1 January 2026 and 1 January 2028.
At the end of 2024, 1 January 2026 was still seen as the centre of gravity for the Dutch pension transition. At the time, almost 50 funds were set to move to DC on that date, compared to a little over 40 funds on 1 January 2027. Now this expectation has shifted, with the bulk of the funds – including the largest scheme, €520bn civil service fund ABP – planning to move to DC only in 2027.
Balanced transition
The reason for many pension funds postponing their transition is twofold. On the one hand, criticism from pension regulator DNB regarding pension funds’ plans on how to distribute the accumulated pension capital between young and old, active, inactive and retired members forced a number of funds to delay their transition.
In particular, many pension funds have been summoned by DNB to move capital from pensioners to younger and active members to allow for a “balanced transition”.
This means, according to DNB, that all groups of members of a pension fund should benefit more or less equally from the pension transition.
An example of such a fund is Pensioenfonds Beton, the sector fund for the concrete products industry. It was asked to move capital from pensioners to young active members and certain groups of active members to allow for a balanced transition.
“We made a lot of efforts to try to placate the demands of DNB. As a consequence, we had too little attention to the admin side of things,” the fund’s president, Govert van der Peijl, told IPE’s sister publication Pensioen Pro.
IT
As for the second reason for the delays in the Dutch pension transition, because discussions on a “balanced transition” with regulator DNB are taking more time than anticipated, the window to implement new IT systems becomes shorter.
“If time is short, things become too risky to implement,” director Jelles van As of pension administrator Appel, the administrator of the Beton fund, told Pensioen Pro.
Another client of Appel, the sector fund for butchers Slagers, even postponed its transition, even though it had received permission to convert accruals from regulator DNB.
“We want to do things well – and that takes extra time. We don’t want to take risks and therefore choose a careful approach,” the fund said on its website.
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