Germany’s occupational pensions association, aba, has called on EIOPA and ”other institutions” to respect the timeline for a review of the new IORP II Directive, stating that a recent proposal from the former shows that the “Damocles sword” of solvency requirements still hangs over the industry.
Aba noted that IORP II did not introduce new solvency requirements for workplace pension providers, which it said would have made occupational pension provision considerably more costly, and unnecessarily so.
An important aspect from aba’s perspective is that under EIOPA’s proposal, national supervisory authorities should be able to take regulatory action against individual IORPs based on the results of the proposed risk assessment framework.
The association fears that EIOPA would try to implement its common framework recommendation through Article 29 of the IORP II Directive, which sets out the requirement for own risk assessments by IORPs.
In its analysis of the final proposal for the new IORP Directive, aba noted that it is down to Member States to require and ensure IORPs fulfil the own risk assessment requirements, and that neither the European Commission nor EIOPA are given any role to play in this regard.
“We hope that the implementation details will be specified by the individual Member States and that Article 29 of IORP II will not leave open the back door for EIOPA to introduce the common framework,” said the association. Aba said that such a move would be “decidedly against European lawmakers’ intention”, with use of the Holistic Balance Sheet precisely not provided for by the IORP II Directive.
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