Austria’s Victoria-Volksbanken came into being in 1990 when launched by the Victoria-Volksbanken Versicherungs, the Osterreichische Volksbanken and Victoria International to make it one of the largest company schemes in the country. Although assets under management constitute a shade over E322m, by Austrian standards it remains relatively large. In total the fund boasts approximately 400 contracts – of which 90% are based along the lines of a defined contribution scheme.
These 400 contracts originate from approximately 350 customers, which between them have 13,400 people entitled to a pension. The fund is closely linked with the ERGO Group, a pan-European operation with more than 42,000 employees. Apart from the founder members mentioned above, the fund has taken on a further two shareholders, the SKWB Schoellerbank and the Nieder Landesbank Hypothekenbank, which have both taken a 2.5% slice.
As for the fund’s organisational structure, it employs a relatively modest staff of 10. More specifically, four look after marketing and advisory work, a further four are entrusted with technical administration of the fund and the last two oversee programming and the mathematical departments. All operational activities are carried out in conjunction with the Victoria-Volksbanken Versicherungs pensions department. More specifically, it outsources its accounting, auditing, business organisation and administration and, in part, the processing of data to Victoria-Volksbanken
The scheme is administered using an internal PC network. All the servers and clients’ computers are managed in-house and there are no connections to external networks. According to the fund, the software has been specially developed for this purpose and is implemented by two parties – an external IT company working alongside the fund’s own programmers. According to the submission, this structure enables rapid and direct access to the system.
As for the services and the benefits of the scheme, the fund says that it considers customer service as essential to success. “Optimal customer service means both personal, expert advice by specially trained staff and the supply of up-to-date information via electronic media,” says the fund. The personal service includes looking after companies that are contractual partners, and secondly advising and supplying these scheme members with the relevant information. The fund maintains that the client benefits from the high degree of training and the experience of the customer service department.
The pension fund has extended its outlook in terms of its business and its customers’ expectations tend to be more global. This, so the fund says, makes the efficient use of new means of communicating all the more important. One particularly interesting point the fund makes in its submission is how expectations vary according to clients. It says that customers from those regions typically using an Anglo-Saxon approach expect the fund to supply them with the kind of employee friendly information systems they are used to back home.
At present, the fund is able to communicate and relay information to its clients via the internet and, for each individual client, an intranet. It says that there has recently been a drive to improve the information that the customer service department was supplying. More specifically, special attention was paid to the user-friendliness of the systems and to the relevance of the information being supplied to clients.
Further details are available on the scheme’s website, www.vvp.at, and a quick look reveals interesting details about the structure of the scheme, the range of benefits, the investment process and past performance. Also included is a list of the scheme’s clients. As of the third quarter of this year, quarterly customer and portfolio reports on individual investment and risk companies became available via the internet.
In addition, the fund has developed an intranet page for installation in the customer’s own computer network. This provides staff with information about the fund, about the appropriate pension plan and the basic legal conditions associated with the schemes. This tailored medium, which is maintained by the fund itself, enables every employee to find out about the specific details of their company pension, directly from their workplace.
The fund says that testimony to its performance and efficiency is an impressive list of customers that include many group subsidiaries of international companies along with some of the country’s leading businesses. And again, a quick trawl through the website reveals such luminaries as Cisco, Compaq and Motorola. This, says the fund proudly, is due to “its recognised experience in the pension scheme business, its ambitious customer service and its success in the field of asset management”.

Topics