03 January 2013

IPE: IORP - Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

For months now, a large and rather vocal contingent of the European pensions industry has been debating the additional costs they might incur if they are subject to solvency capital requirements similar to Solvency II’s pillar one – the one focusing on capital requirements.

The optimism most likely stems from three significant developments in the pensions industry. First was the announcement of a Green Paper on long-term investing by the Commission back in June. Then came a report by the UK pensions minister, Steve Webb, who pointed out the “alarming” increase in costs Solvency II-type capital obligations would have on the UK industry. Finally, at the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) conference in Frankfurt, a member of the Commission stated that capital requirements would apply to future rights only.

The comments made by Van Hulle, the European Commission’s head of unit for market and services, have not gone unnoticed. In November, he affirmed that Brussels would not impose Solvency II-capital requirements on pension funds’ past rights, but only for accruing rights. For many, the decision – which came after protracted negotiations with the industry – was a breath of fresh air. Until then, many pension representatives argued that introducing such obligations for both past and future pension benefits would have major cost repercussions for European schemes, especially defined benefit funds. The announcement made by Van Hulle therefore means that pension funds’ existing books will not be covered by solvency capital charges.

The upcoming launch of the Green Paper on long-term investing by the Commission comes, for many in the industry, as an important step towards the amendment of the Solvency II and IORP II regulatory frameworks. Many pension experts see this paper as a tacit recognition that those two current frameworks would prevent institutional investors from financing long-term projects.

However, this talk of dropping the controversial first pillar altogether might be nothing more than wishful thinking. As Chris Verhaegen, chair of EIOPA’s Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group, says, if the Commission decided to water down the first pillar of the directive, it would have had no choice but to act before the end of 2012. Van Hulle also says that it is premature to think that Brussels will drop the first pillar. “The Commission will only take its decision after having seen the results from the QIS exercise, which is still running.

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