NETHERLANDS - Pensions provider Syntrus Achmea has introduced a new system that directly links companies' salary administration with their pensions administration.

The system - called Pensioenaangifte, or "Pension Return" - allows employers to inform both the Inland Revenue and the pension fund with "the single click of a button", according to Syntrus Achmea, which has already connected 20,000 employers.

The company says the system provides for an "up-to-date and very accurate" pensions administration, and prevents accounting differences with companies' salary management.

"From now on," it said, "there is clarity on a monthly basis about which worker and which pension products the employer need to pay contributions for. In the past, a company usually had clarity on this only once a year."

Syntrus Achmea has spent two years developing the system in close co-operation with consultants for salary administration and software developers.

The provider said it was consulting the Pension Federation and other large pension providers about the options of a broad introduction of Pensioenaangifte within the Dutch pensions sector.

It also pointed out that it had opted not to protect the system legally, with the view to generating "maximum support" in the industry.

Hans Snijders, chief executive at Syntrus Achmea, said: "The development of Pensioenaangifte fits within our pursuit of simplification. Ultimately, pension funds' participants will reap the benefits."

Gerard Riemen, director of the Pension Federation, said his lobbying organisation was supporting the initiative for the benefit of all Dutch pension funds.

Syntrus Achmea is pensions provider for 70 pension funds with approximately 3m participants in total.