NETHERLANDS – Dutch pension statistics from the pension regulator PVK are now available online – which has revealed the extent of the shift away from final salary arrangements.

The PVK, the Pensioen- & Verzekeringskamer, has put the so-called Pension Monitor online in Excel format. It features all non-financial facts of Dutch pension funds, at current 2004 levels.

According to the monitor, the most important change in 2004 has been the shift from final-salary arrangements to career-average with indexation.

The total amount of active participants retaining a pension based on final-salary has decreased by over 40% (2.3 million).

Now only 10% of total active participants still have a final-salary plan – down from 50% in 2003.

The overall percentage of average-salary based pension system with indexation has increased from 36.7% to 76.5%. The latter shift has been largely caused by the move of several large corporate pension funds to the new system as of the start of this year.

Also, there has been an increase in the overall yearly build up of old-age pensions. According to the monitor, more than 40% of active participants have an average build up percentage above 1.75% per year.

This fits together with the overall shift from a final-salary arrangement to an average-salary system with indexation.

The monitor provides multi-year tables comparing 1998-2004 data. According to the PVK, a hardcopy version will be available in August 2004.

Topics