Gabriel Bernardino, EIOPA's president, yesterday outlined a provisional timetable for the conduct of quantitative impact studies (QIS) on its draft advice to the Commission on a revised Occupational Pensions Directive. Reiterating EIOPA's preferred approach to marrying EU Member States' diverse and complex approaches to pension funding and solvency rules, Bernardino confirmed the first QIS would test the holistic balance sheet approach.
EIOPA's board of supervisors is scheduled to decide on 13 February on a framework for a first QIS, for the holistic balance sheet proposal, according to Bernardino. The first-draft technical specifications will be determined in March, incorporating Commission advice on the exact nature of confidence levels.
The first QIS – involving nine unspecified Member States – will aim to produce an analysis of the rules' impact on the overall supplementary pension system. Studies in other, also unspecified, Member States will measure the impact on individual pension funds prior to the delivery of a first report in September, Bernardino said. According to the Commission, a draft Directive may be possible by the end of 2012.
The holistic balance sheet proposal has not been without its critics, however. In the past, the UK's National Association of Pension Funds has characterised EIOPA's proposal as "inflexible" and "unnecessary". "With such a diversity of pension systems across the EU's 27 Member States, it is impossible to find a single regulatory system that would work well in every Member State", it said.
"It would be better to retain the high-level framework provided by the current IORP Directive, which allows Member States to develop funding regimes that suit their own patterns of pension provisions."
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