Roundtable on Defined Contributions Pensions

The DC Pensions Roundtable brought to view main issues and developments in the DC pensions world and highlighted good practices in product design and the main directions in supervision and consumer protection. Europe is confronted with a challenging macroeconomic environment, influenced by deep and far-reaching effects of the demographic shift and the necessity of transitioning towards a sustainable economy and this has a great impact for pension sectors.

In this first event of this kind, EIOPA explored issues related to pensions supervision and the process of transitioning from a DB pensions European world towards one dominated by DC and DC hybrid systems. EIOPA is assisting in this process and is providing building blocks for future European solutions, by offering advice, opinions, and guidelines, and by encouraging communication and transfer of knowledge.

During the first session of the DC Pensions Roundtable, presentations focused on more mature and established DC systems such as the Italian model, privately developed alternatives to the public pension systems in the CEE, and the outlay of transitioning from a DB mature system towards a DC one in the Netherlands. We have witnessed evidence of good practice, while also emphasizing main challenges that have been met or are yet to be tackled with in these circumstances.

In the second part of the event, important DC issues of participation and inclusion were presented and debated. The Norwegian DC public pension system has successfully addressed the issue of gender pension gap, and the OECD has shared from their extensive research possible policy solutions to address this issue further at the level of developing and perfecting DC pension systems. Lastly, we talked about the process of implementing autoenrollment in the UK to address participation issues in the private pension systems. The focus now lies on including specific groups of people that in the modern context become an important part of European economies, such as part-time workers, the self-employed and gig-workers.