The largest Austrian pension fund is set to grow further by taking on Porsche’s retirement plan, one of the last remaining company Pensionskassen in the country.
On 2 April the general assembly of the €7bn VBV Pensionskasse will vote on the takeover of the Porsche fund, according to a notice in Austria’s official gazette.
The vote is understood to be a formality, but it has not been disclosed when the transfer will be finalised.
It is also unclear by how much the VBV will grow, as Porsche has not disclosed any details of its Austrian pension plan.
Over the past decade various other company Pensionskassen in Austria have been transferred to multi-employer providers. The main reasons cited in most of these cases were complexity in regulatory requirements, and asset management having led to increased administration costs.
In addition, many companies did not want to build the in-house expertise to deal with the increased complexity of Austria’s pensions system.
In several cases the complete transfer was preceded by outsourcing asset management to one of the multi-employer Pensionskassen.
Among the larger transfers were Unilever, Shell, Generali, Siemens, Infineon, Austrian federal energy company Verbund, regional energy provider EVN, and the economic chamber WKÖ.
Now, there are only two independent company Pensionskassen left: IBM Austria, and the fund for Austrian social insurance (Sozialversicherungen).
In early 2016, the first sale of a multi-employer Pensionskassen provider since the initial consolidation phase in the early 1990s was finalised, when Bonus bought Victoria-Volksbanken’s Pensionskasse and Vorsorgekasse.
Read more about the VBV Pensionskasse in the upcoming April edition of the IPE magazine
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