German bank sector pension fund claims Brexit-related client win

One of Germany’s largest pension providers has said it is attracting business from foreign banks responding to the UK’s impending departure from the European Union.

BVV, a pension provider for the financial sector in Germany, today announced that Standard Chartered Bank had chosen to partner with it to offer pensions to its staff in the country.

Standard Chartered’s move follows the bank’s decision to establish an alternative EU hub in Frankfurt. It has previously said it was applying to turn its branch in Frankfurt into a new EU-based subsidiary.

The pension provider – Germany’s largest Pensionskasse – said a large number of foreign banks were already using BVV to ensure staff in Germany were not missing out on pension accrual compared with peers in the UK given the auto-enrolment obligation there.

In light of the UK’s impending exit from the EU the number of foreign banks partnering with BVV was “continuously increasing”, the pension fund said in a statement.

The human resources department of the Standard Chartered Bank Germany branch stated it was already familiar with BVV, mainly through other employees’ experience of having a BVV pension.

“In connection with the bank’s strategic decision in favour of Frankfurt we decided to adopt the market standard and in future we will offer all employees an occupational pension via BVV,” it said in the statement.

It recognised that an employer-offered pension was becoming an increasingly important factor in the competition for qualified staff, the bank added.

BVV – the third largest pension fund in Germany, according to IPE’s Top 1000 Pension Funds report – recently reported a surplus of €371.9m and assets under management of €28.1bn, up by €1.5bn from the year before. Its assets returned 4.3% last year.

BVV did not respond to questions by the time of publication.