NETHERLANDS - Officials at the Dutch pension funds of SCA Paper and Hygiene could be one of the first Dutch groups to create a multi-OPF next year, in a bid to gain improved governance and administration.

Mathijs van Gool, director for both the SCA Hygiene and Paper Funds, said it is in the process of reviewing whether it can combine its activities through the new regulated pensions model and merge the two pensions boards into one.

Van Gool revealed the SCA pension funds' plans during a video interview at the IPE Awards in Dublin last month, which can now be viewed on IPE.com.

This latest move follows the appointment last year by the SCA ‘t Anker pension fund, which administers the pension fund for SCA Packaging Nederland, and the SCA Hygiene Products Nederland fund of Mn Services as a fiduciary manager. (See earlier IPE story: Dutch SCA funds go fiduciary)

"The fiduciary manager transition will be more or less completed and we are moving to a more standard process now. So that brings us to corporate governance," said van Gool. "Why should SCA have two pension fund separately with two boards? It is a lot of work, for me especially."

He continued: "There is a new law coming up in the Netherlands - which allows us to combine two pension funds with one board but still have the assets and the liabilities split - called multi-OPF. That allows us to combine the funds without a complete merger. We are looking into that," he added.

Even if the SCA schemes do go ahead with the creation of a multi-OPF, officials will still have a great deal of work to do, to ensure members properly understand how their pension plans and that schemes are running efficiently.

A series of video interviews recorded at the IPE Awards in Dublin are now available for viewing at the IPE.com/webcasts, including an interview with Bjarne Graven Larsen, CIO of ATP, which was winner of this year's IPE Pension Fund of the Year Award 2009.

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