NETHERLANDS - The Dutch central bank and pension fund regulator (DNB) says it will not initially fine schemes which have yet to implement the newly-required internal supervision.

Maarten Hage, responsible for corporate governance, risk management and internal control dossiers inside DNB's policy supervision arm, made the comments during a round table discussion on internal supervision in Amsterdam last week.

New rules, implemented at the beginning of this year, require pension schemes set up internal supervision systems allowing independent experts to evaluate the functioning of the pension fund and its management.

However, DNB has announced it will only evaluate how pension funds are getting along with this implementation from beginning of next year.

That said, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution for pension funds, argues Hage, who commented "we will therefore look at cases separately".

"What is important to us is that when we go to a pension fund from January 1 next year, we can see that the fund is giving a material interpretation to internal supervision," suggested Hage.
 
"It is, bydefinition, good to have a supervisory body: you don't need enormous insolvencies or scandals in a sector to put an effort into internal supervision," he added.

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