Dutch brewer Bavaria said it would place pensions accrual for its staff in the new general pension fund (APF) of insurer and Achmea-subsidiary Centraal Beheer.
The accrual in the Centraal Beheer APF is to start on 1 April, while the transfer of existing pension rights and €200m of assets is planned on the same date, the pension fund said on its website.
It cited rising costs and increased requirements for expertise as the main reasons for liquidation of the company pension fund. This had resulted in the employer terminating the contract for pensions provision with the scheme.
At the moment of cancellation at year-end, funding of the Pensioenfonds Bavaria had dropped to 93%.
The scheme said it had opted for an individual compartment in an APF, as pension rights and assets could be transferred unchanged and rights discounts could be avoided.
A transfer to an industry-wide pension fund would likely have lead to rights cuts if the sector scheme’s funding was higher than coverage of the Pensioenfonds Bavaria.
The scheme’s board said that the proposition of Centraal Beheer had been the best of all APFs that had been invited to tender.
It added that an additional advantage of the Centraal Beheer APF was that pension rights and assets would remain with the same providers, Syntrus Achmea Pensioenbeheer and Achmea IM, respectively.
The Bavaria scheme is the second pension fund known to join the general pension fund of Centraal Beheer, after the €700m Dutch scheme of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
At the start of the year, the Centraal Beheer APF implemented the pension plans of more than 60 companies in a collective defined contribution compartment, data from the Chamber of Commerce indicated.
At the same time 23 firms were housed in the APF’s three multi-client compartments for defined benefit arrangements.
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