– The end of March and the beginning of April is a time when a lot will happen in connection with Employee Capital Plans (PPK) – Bartosz Marczuk, vice president of the Polish Development Fund (PFR), admitted in an interview with Business Insider. This is also the time for a bonus for savers.
Let us remind you that by the end of March, about 8 million employees automatically added to this government program of additional savings for retirement have time to resign from PPK. They can also do it later, but then the March salary will be reduced by the payment to the program. More on e.g. deductions and pension benefits can be found HERE.
For the time being, representatives of the PFR, i.e. the institution in charge of the PPK, do not reveal the results of the auto-save so far. However, it is known that On Wednesday, March 29, transfers as part of the annual surcharge were sent to the accounts of most of the existing PPK participants. This is one of the elements by which the state wants to encourage additional saving for retirement.
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A record annual surcharge in PPK
– We are just transferring funds to financial institutions managing funds in PPK a record amount of PLN 410.3 million. In the coming days, they should already be visible on the accounts of about 1 million 710 thousand PPK participants – Bartosz Marczuk told Business Insider.
The vice-president of the PFR admitted that the regulations require the transfer of money for annual subsidies by April 15 each year. However, due to the efficient operation of the Ministry of Finance, which made the money available, it is possible to make a transfer earlier.
This year’s pool of funds is record-breaking. This is mainly due to the growing number of program participants. It outperformed the previous year’s result by about PLN 8 million. Earlier, in 2021, PPK participants received a total of about PLN 215 million, and in 2020 — nearly PLN 190 million.
Marczuk points out that the record-breaking annual payment increases the assets accumulated in PPK. As a result, they can reach PLN 14 billion.
Who will receive the annual supplement in the PPK?
Careful observers will notice that before the auto-save, there were about 2.6 million employees in the PPK. It means that about 900,000 people will not receive an annual subsidy. These include employees who were on maternity leave, long-term leaves, etc., when they failed to reach the minimum level of contributions to PPK. In practice, every employee who has saved money for PPK for at least several months can count on a bonus.
Who exactly is entitled to the annual subsidy? The regulations say that PLN 240 can be counted on by every PPK participant, on whose account the basic and additional payments (financed by the employee and the employer) in a given year amount to at least 3.5% of the total. six times the minimum wage applicable in the year for which the payment is due. It does not matter when the PPK participant started saving during the year.
The annual payment goes to one PPK account, even if the participant has more of them. In this case, it goes to the one that was established the latest (at the current employer).
People who were automatically enrolled in PPK in March have no chance of getting the current annual payment. They have to wait a year for it. They will receive a welcome payment of PLN 250 for this. This is a one-time start bonus. It is paid out only once after a full three months of saving. In practice, new participants can count on the transfer around August.
Money from the PPK can be freely withdrawn
Recently, we wrote that the record holder in PPK has so far set aside over 660,000. zloty. Regardless of the earnings and the amounts saved, everyone will receive PLN 240 equally (if they meet the conditions indicated earlier).
Importantly, this money can be withdrawn (in full) at any time. So do many people. The number of participants withdrawing funds from the PPK more than once (so you can say that they do it “regularly”) is about 58,000.
The average transaction amount is 2 thousand. PLN 443, which means that payers do it not every month, but regularly, every few months. The total number of persons withdrawing funds from the PPK since the beginning of the program’s existence is approximately 250,000. people. With the proviso that these data do not include payments for own contribution and for sickness.
Author: Damian Słomski, journalist at Business Insider Poland
