In line with the Commission’s proposal to introduce a Pan-European Pensions Product to supplement the low pension replacement rate for European citizens (see the BETTER FINANCE Pensions Report 2017), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) proposed a single framework allowing for regular reporting requests on occupational pension funds in EU Member States (see press release).
The framework is conceived to ‘increase efficiency and to further strengthen the monitoring and analysis of the European occupational pensions sector’ and allows for EIOPA to look into the reporting standards of national competent authorities for which a Consultation paper was issued. Pensions Europe, who represents pension funds associations throughout Europe, responded to the Consultation Paper on the aforementioned framework criticising ‘the legal basis to require the NCAs to report the data’ on savers’ contributions to the pensions funds, benefits paid or their investment income to EIOPA.
On the other hand Pensions Europe considers that the type of data that EIOPA wishes to collect, could be reported to an undetermined authority within a legal framework that currently does not exist. In other words, Pensions Europe is supportive of the proposal that NCAs should report data on occupational pension funds, but not to EIOPA, not that type of data, and not now.
Pensions Europe criticism points to a perceived conflict between the statutory legislation of EIOPA and the IORP II Directive, a competence creep by EIOPA into the field of social and labour policy, and the risk of such an arrangement to result in unnecessary additional costs for pension funds.
The Dutch Pension Federation also criticised EIOPA's one-stop-shop plan to simplify reporting and collection of data on pension funds. It upheld that data should be collected locally, by national regulators, and then sent to EIOPA or the ECB.
It is important to point out that:
- the IORP II Directive’s provisions must be read in conjunction with EIOPA’s statutory legislation. EIOPA is not pursuing the objective of regulating or supervising social and labour policy in Member States, but rather that of prudential supervision of IORPs as participants in the financial markets within the CMU;
- the single framework merely calls for the aggregation and standardisation of the reporting procedures, streamlining the information collected by NCAs and provided to EIOPA. This does not require disclosure of new information, but simply requires different packaging, meaning that no additional costs will be incurred by IORPs; in addition, the single framework replaces the existing ones (such as the Financial Stability Report, the Market Developments Report, Consumer Trends Report, as well as the Pension Database and Registers).
Read here:
EIOPAs Press Release: EIOPA STREAMLINES THE REPORTING OF OCCUPATIONAL PENSIONS INFORMATION.
Investment & Pensions Europe’s article: PensionsEurope questions legal basis for EIOPA info requests;
Pensions Europe’s response to EIOPA’s Consultation Paper: PensionsEurope answer to the public consultation on EIOPA's regular information requests towards NCAs regarding provision of occupational pensions information.