The semi-conductor company Infineon Technologies Austria has started to outsource its pension fund to Allianz.

As of January, the insurance group’s Pensionskasse took over asset management of the company pension fund, according to an Allianz spokesperson.

A complete outsourcing is underway, scheduled to be finalised by January 2017, pending approval by the authorities.

Infineon declined to comment further or reveal the current size of assets under management in the fund.

In its 2015 annual report, the company reported operational capital in the listed Infineon Pensionskasse at €800,000 per year-end 2014.

In Austria, Infineon employs more than 3,000 people, just under one-tenth of its global workforce, although it is unclear whether all Austrian employees are covered under the pension fund.

In terms of assets, it may therefore not be a massive gain for the Allianz Pensionskasse, one of the smaller Austrian pension fund providers, managing more than €600m and the 2015 winner of the “Best pension fund in Austria” category at the IPE Awards.

The news marks the continuation of a trend that has led to the outsourcing of almost all company pension funds in Austria.

After the outsourcing of Infineon, the number of company schemes has dropped to just four: car company Porsche, computer giant IBM, Austrian electrical company EVN and the Austrian social insurances.

However, some of these have already outsourced their asset management to a multi-employer pension fund while keeping administration in-house – EVN’s assets, for example, are managed by the VBV. 

The most recent of these outsourcings was the Generali insurance group, which transferred its assets to the Bonus Pensionskasse last year.

Also in 2015, Austrian finance minister Hans-Jörg Schelling warned of an oligopoly in the domestic pension fund market following the takeover of the Victoria-Volksbanken Pensionskasse by Bonus.  

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