For a small pension fund like the pension fund for the employees of the Central Nuclear de Almaraz (CNA) in Spain, winning the IPE award for best fund structure and administration in Spain came as nice surprise, only two years after the fund was created.
With around €12m under management and around 530 members, the fund was established under the Spanish law that forced companies to externalise their pensions obligations through a pension fund or an insurance contract vehicle.
The process of externalisation has been complicated for most companies, and CNA is not an exception. However after intensive negotiations between employer and employee representatives an agreement was reached and the old insurance policy that covered pension provision was transferred into the newly-created pension fund.
Since then, the goal of the fund’s comisión de control – board of trustees – has been to improve communication with the scheme members.
“We have managed to develop an intranet system that provides members with general information on the fund, and they also get from us all the information coming from the asset managers and the consultants,” says Miguel Angel Catena, president of the fund’s board of trustees.
“Now we are trying to develop our intranet site further, some members can access more specific information regarding their individual accounts.”
Regarding the IPE Awards, Catena comments: “We think that participating in the IPE Awards is a fantastic way to get in contact with other professionals across Europe, and we are delighted we are one of the country winners.
“This will allow our organisation to be better known in other countries and will facilitate the exchange of ideas with our European counterparts.”

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