GERMANY - Many of Germany’s small and midsize companies do not offer a corporate pension, even though their employees have had a legal right to it since the Riester pension reforms took effect in January 2002, a new study shows.

The study, conducted by the pollster Allensbach, said that of the 1.6m SMEs in its sample, only 62% currently offered a corporate pension. The SMEs in the sample employed a total of 4.7m people.

According to the study, some of the gap was due to the fact that only a slim majority (56%) of SMEs queried were aware of the Riester pension.

Also, a mere 14% of the SMEs knew about the Rürup pension, which like Riester is a tax-privileged DC scheme. Named after German pension expert Professor Bert Rürup, the pension was launched last January.

However, German retail bank Postbank, which commissioned the study, said the gap also resulted from a lack of demand for the DC pensions among the employees.

Among SMEs offering DC pensions, the study said 64% did so in the form of a Direktversicherung (direct insurance contract) followed by 22% who did so in the form of a Pensionskasse, or traditional pension fund.

Unterstützungskassen (support funds) made up 7% and Pensionsfonds, or equity-oriented vehicles, made up 6%.

“No company should fall behind in occupational pensions. Nowhere is state support greater, meaning that bosses and workers profit equally,” commented Wolfgang Klein, board executive at Postbank, which offers all occupational pension schemes to SMEs.

Klein also stressed that offering a DC plan would not lead to any additional administrative costs on SMEs, adding that in fact, it would help lower their non-wage labour costs.

Allensbach’s findings mirror those of another study conducted recently by rival pollster infratest dimap. According to that study, around 60% of employees in the country’s private sector currently own some type of an occupational pension, up from 38% at the beginning of 2002.