NETHERLANDS - Social affairs minister Henk Kamp has launched the national Pension Register in the Netherlands, giving every Dutch citizen an online overview of his or her accrued pensions at both pension funds and insurers.

The register has access to approximately 15m files and includes the accrued state pension AOW.

According to Francine Giskes, chairman of the Stichting Pensioenregister, interest has been very strong, with approximately 300,000 visitors attempting to access the site at one point today.

The website has been designed to receive about 500,000 visitors a month.

"Although not all the visitors got through to the site, we expect this enormous interest to be a temporary phenomenon," Giskes added.

The decision to establish the register - which is free of charge and prohibits commercial activity - was part of the new Pension Act of 2006.

In 2008, the pension sector introduced a yearly uniform pension statement (UPO), which shows the accrued pension rights and expected benefits of individual pension funds.

The Pension Register shows the combined figures of the most recent UPOs.

Giskes said the Pension Register wanted to offer additional information on the register in the future, but that no concrete subjects had yet been singled out.

The Pension Register has been set up by the three pension fund lobbying organisations VB, OPF and UvB, as well as the representative organisations of insurers and the social security provider SVB.

The website was built by ICT firm Atos Origin at a cost of €6.5m, which will be shared by the participating pension providers.

Atos Origin will also manage the digital register.

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