After ten years of tug of war, employers, employees and the government have today come together to determine what the new pension system should look like.
Agreements had already been made about the contours last year: pensions had to become more flexible. But how this had to be done and what the transition situation will look like for different generations was the subject of discussion last year. What have we become wiser today?
Spare change
The most concrete in the short term is that most pension discounts for the coming year are gone. According to Koolmees because of the ‘exceptional economic circumstances’. It is the second year in a row that according to the rules it is necessary to cut, but that this does not happen.
“Change in the negotiations,” said Corine Reedijk, pension consultant at Aon. “Otherwise the unions would not have gone.”
According to Reedijk, this is in principle at the expense of the younger generation, certainly because the new system will only take effect in 5 years. “It is now the second year that the rules for pension discounts are not being applied. What will you do in the coming years, especially with this economic situation?” This leaves less money for the younger generation, says Reedijk.
Marike Knoef, professor of economics at Leiden University, is more positive there. “If this allowed them to make agreements on other points, then it is worth it. Although it depends on how the economy will develop in the near future. If things continue to go bad for a long time, we must take the pain of the pension discounts take it once. “
“How are you going to explain that?”
And decisions have also been taken in the long term. “They have at least agreed that we are going to get rid of the hard promises,” says Knoef. This refers to the current situation, where people receive a promise about how much pension they will receive later. “That is about such long periods, such a promise is very expensive,” says Knoef.
In order to fulfill that promise, pension funds in the current system have to calculate how much money they need to have in order to pay out current and future pensions. “As a result, pension funds did have a lot of money in cash, but they still had to cut,” says Knoef. “That is complicated to explain.”
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