Should institutions for occupational retirement provision (Iorps) be forced – like insurers – to comply with Solvency II and its high capital requirements from 2013? This question is controversial not only in Brussels, but also in Berlin and Frankfurt.

As in many other European countries, German companies often fund occupational pension schemes, and the tradition is older than the public pay-as-you-go system. As these industry-owned pension funds are non-profit institutions and backed by a mandatory guarantee from the employer, the groups do not want their Iorps to get lumped together with sales-driven insurers.

Many even entertain the suspicion that the campaign of the European insurers (“same risk – same capital”) to make the Commission include pensions funds under Solvency II is nothing but a shakeout strategy. Insurers could fill the gap in the event that employers stop running their own Iorps due to intolerable capital requirements and bureaucracy and outsource them instead.

However, there can be no doubt the Commission also aims for a risk-based regime to replace the flat system of the current Solvency I regime for Iorps. But Karel Van Hulle, head of the insurance and pensions unit in Brussels, seems to have become more aware of the differences between Iorps and insurers during the past month.

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