The professional pension fund for shipping pilots, Loodsen, was the first Dutch pension fund to get the go-ahead to move to the new defined contribution (DC)-based pension system. However, the fund’s director, Rajesh Grobbe, was left unsure whether the fund would really be allowed to convert defined benefit (DB) accruals to DC until after Christmas last year.
In a podcast with IPE’s Dutch sister publication Pensioen Pro, Grobbe reflects on a hectic final three months of 2024 during which he navigated the scheme to its new DC arrangement.
The shipping pilots fund was one of three pension funds to first embark on the journey to ‘sail into’ the new pension system, as it is (in this case aptly) called in Dutch. Hence it had to, in keeping with naval terms, navigate in the fog.
“There was no script available on how to organise the transition to DC, so we had to organise everything from scratch together with our partners in asset management, IT and pension administration, and also with pension regulator DNB,” says Grobbe.
“In the last three months of 2024 alone, we had 91 official meetings, on video or on site, with all these partners. Over that period, working weeks of 60 to 70 hours were normal and regularly I also had to work on the weekend.”
DNB
Some pension fund executives have criticised the attitude of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), claiming the regulator keeps formulating new demands and is sometimes too strict in its assessment of funds’ transition and implementation plans. But Grobbe does not share this criticism.
“For them, everything was also new. And that they’ve been searching for the right approach too, perhaps we experienced that every now and then,” Grobbe reflects, adding: “For example, when they asked a question to us that they could also have asked a few months before. But we have always cooperated with them in a constructive manner.”
Court case
But why then did Grobbe not have a restful Christmas? This was because a retired shipping pilot launched a last-minute court case in December asking a judge to postpone the fund’s transition because he claimed a period of one month was not sufficient to assess the consequences of the transition on his personal finances.
The case was heard in mid-December but a verdict was only scheduled for 27 December, four days before the scheme’s transition. The pensioner’s claim was eventually dismissed unequivocally, but not before Grobbe had lost quite some hours of sleep over the matter, he says.
“The issue centred on the question of whether we had sent him his preliminary pension overview in time. It was exciting because having to postpone everything at such late notice would have been very difficult and costly,” Grobbe continues.
“Because we had done it more than 30 days before the transition date, we believed we had a strong case. But you only know for sure once the judge has made his verdict,” he adds.
You can listen to the podcast Pensioen Pro in Gesprek (in Dutch) for free via the website of Pensioen Pro or your favourite podcast platform.

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