NETHERLANDS - The Dutch Association of Insurers (VvV) has the pensions regulator De Nederlandsche Bank with a court summons, for its part in what could allow the large pension funds ABP and PFZW to gain a foothold the insurance market.

In this case the VvV is trying through the administrative court to overturn DNB's decision earlier this year, to allow PGGM, the separated manager of the €86bn pension fund Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW), to sell insurance products under its own name.

"Because of the widely known PGGM brand, this will give the pension fund an unfair competitive advantage," the VvV argued.

"We want to force a verdict in this case, which is very important to the insurance sector," Jan-Willem Wits, spokesman for the VvV explained to IPE.

The court case against DNB comes on top of the appeal by the VvV and some large insurers against the decision of a civil court that PGGM acted lawfully, when it transferred its name to its new provider.

"In our opinion, it is comparable to the police starting a security service under the name Police plc," it said.

Last year, the pension funds ABP and PGGM, have split their organisations into an administrative body and a (commercial) pensions provider, which continued under the names APG and PGGM respectively.

Earlier, ABP and PGGM established the subsidiary organisations Loyalis and Careon, which main task was to sell the tax-friendly ‘levensloop', or life course, insurances.

"If the pension funds sell insurance products through these subsidiaries without referring to themselves, there wouldn't be a problem," the VvV spokesman stressed.

"Pension funds should either only offer second-pillar products or enter the third-pillar market under a different name."

If you have any comments you would like to add to this or any other story, contact Julie Henderson on + 44 (0)20 7261 4602 or email julie.henderson@ipe.com

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