The two Dutch pension funds of telecommunications giant KPN – the €6.6bn Pensioenfonds KPN and the €730m Ondernemingspensioenfonds KPN (Opf KPN) – have announced plans to merge.

Rudi van Nieuwenhoven, chairman at the Opf KPN, said: “A steering committee has already concluded that a merger will chiefly produce benefits, such as risk-sharing, significantly lower implementation costs and improved quality of governance.”

He said both pension funds and their pension plans already had a comparable set-up, and that their investment and risk policies were also quite similar.

In addition, the schemes’ boards have already been cooperating in joint committees for asset management, communications and financial management for “quite a while”, according to Nieuwenhoven.

The chairman said the merger of both pension funds would happen at the request of the employer.

The Opf KPN is open to KPN staff who are not employed under a collective labour agreement (CAO).

As of the end of 2013, it had 1,895 participants, of whom 510 were workers and 445 pensioners.

It reported a 1.6% return over 2013, while its coverage ratio was 115% at November-end. 

The KPN Pensioenfonds had 57.712 participants in total at the end of 2013, when it returned 1.3% on investments.

Its funding was 111.5% at November-end.

The KPN Pensioenfonds said it granted its active participants an indexation of 0.38% for 2015.

Its pensioners and deferred members were given a 0.55% inflation compensation.

The scheme also said it doubled the number of age cohorts for life-cycle pensions saving to 10 to further fine-tune investment risk for age and the remaining period before retirement.

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