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THERE WAS A frightening headline on an article in finance magazine Eurohedge recently: “Poland Confiscates Half of Private Pension Funds to ‘Cut’ Sovereign Debt Load”. It sounds unbelievable, but effectively that is what the Polish government did last month – it moved the assets out of the private sector and into the unfunded public pension scheme, in the process allowing it to reduce its debt load.
The Irish Government should certainly not consider following the Polish example of taking over all pension assets in the private sector to pay for insolvent Defined Benefit schemes.
Defined benefit (DB) schemes can be very appealing during times of economic stability or growth and when a country has a robust, young workforce to support it. In this scenario, employers are sure to be able to meet their obligations, possibly with funds to spare for further investment.
But with an increasingly aging workforce, it becomes more difficult for businesses to meet these obligations, particularly in combination with an erratic economy. This scenario puts an added burden on the business and creates animosity amongst current employees who are in the DB scheme and are concerned about their pension prospects.
This is why defined contribution (DC) plans have become so popular. The employee pays into their own fund and the employer may also contribute an agreed upon amount. This relieves the employer of the burden of having to find the resources to fund the employees’ pension and relieves the employee of the concern that their pension will not be available when they retire.
Because a DC pension is based on what has been accumulated in the fund rather than on a final salary, it provides further reassurance to the employer.
We are not suggesting that the Irish Government is about to engage in a further raid on pension funds but lest we forget our Government did something very similar with the funded pension schemes of the universities in 2009. Nationalising those pension schemes allowed the Government to take all the assets on to the balance sheet, assume the liabilities and add them to the unfunded pay-as-you-go public sector pension fund, which is ultimately paid for by the ordinary tax payer. At another time the National Pension Reserve Fund was also raided to bail out the banks. Short-term win for long-term pain seems to be the preferred route.
Poland is not the only European government to have filled a budgetary gap using pension funds in recent years.
In 2011, Hungary practically seized private pension fund assets, giving Hungarian citizens an ultimatum: they could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension entirely (and still have an obligation to continue to pay contributions for it). In this way, the Hungarian government gained control over approximately €11 billion of individual retirement savings they used to lower the national debt. Bulgaria and France have also dipped their hands into private pension schemes at different times. In all of these cases, the funds were used to plug short-term deficits without implementing any reform and at the cost, I would argue, of the long-term sustainability of the system.
The move by the Polish government was a very extreme example, but it served to illustrate what can happen where there are two diametrically-opposed goals.
The Polish experience highlights again the necessity to take pensions out of the political arena. In Ireland, there is a need to establish a non-political body that can plan a long-term strategy to deal with the pension crisis without the requirement to consider short-term political necessities.
The Waterford Crystal case is due back into the courts shortly. How long it will take until a decision is made is anyone’s guess at this stage. Nevertheless, at some point the piper will need to be paid. How much the figure will be is not yet known, but I do suspect that the Government will be very unlikely to carry the cost.
I can foresee a number of ways to deal with this issue. One of them could be for the Government to take over the assets and liabilities of double insolvent schemes and pay out benefits on a pro rata basis to the assets using sovereign bonds to underwrite the payments. For this to work, the Government needs to address the priority order issue and also needs to ensure that payments out do not exceed the assets taken over or else the cost will come back to the taxpayer.
While I don’t believe this is the way to go, the Government could nationalise all DB pension schemes and use the assets to fund all benefits up to a certain median level, effectively using the assets of well-funded schemes to fund those that are less well funded. The assets would need to be ring-fenced to fund the benefits and all benefits would need to be capped. I don’t believe this likely to happen in the current environment, but it is an option.
A more likely outcome is that a further levy or otherwise named charge on pension schemes is introduced to fund the reparations made to members of double insolvent schemes where the benefits paid out were below an acceptable level.
We would argue that Defined Contribution scheme members who already bear the risk that their pension will not be adequate in retirement should not be liable to paying the cost of insolvent schemes.
More often than not Defined Contribution scheme members are already carrying the majority of the cost of funding for their own retirement and in most cases their pension at retirement will be a fraction of that enjoyed by those who reach retirement in a functioning Defined Benefit scheme.
It should be those in Defined Benefit schemes funding the cost but a further detail to decide is who bears what exactly.
Is it fair that well run schemes should fund up, or do we pass the burden to those schemes already struggling? In my opinion, whichever way we eventually decide to tackle this issue it will serve to hasten the end of Defined Benefit pension schemes.
Samantha McConnell, Chief Investment Officer, IFG Corporate Pensions
They can rob mine all they want. It went from a healthy six figure sum in 2008 to the grand figure of €26,000. That new figure is bang up to date as the statement arrived today.
I very much doubt I’m the only one.
Bet M. Noonan’s went up over the same time frame
Did you diversify when shit hit the fan?
Yes there is, the government will steal some private pension money to prop up public pensions
Also. Many PS retire before 65 on gold plated pensions and continue working in either PS or private sector. Not just politicians going to Europe but CEOs of state boards, Gardaí, teachers, nurses.
We should apply a Retired Public Service Pension Levy to cap pensions at 60k and significantly reduce them is the retiree is still working- at least until they reach retirement age
You need to either change your anti-public servant record or do your homework. To retire on a pension of 60K, a public servant would have to have 40 years service and an finishing salary of 120 grand. Less than 2% of the public sector are on that final salary and not all of even that tiny percentage would have 40 years service.
Were, I”ll be on about €50k after 25 years in the PS and I was told by Cornmarket that my pension will be €12500 a year when I retire after 40 years!
Not fun is it. Most PS don’t have pensions of that size but many do and continue to work.
‘Many do’
So, less than 2% is ‘many’ now, is it?
You really need to get that chip off your shoulder.
The 60k plus pensions may be 2%. But the pension plus pvte sector work is a lot more
Would it be more than a private sector pension of 60K plus private sector work?
There’s almost no pvte sector pensions of 60k. Would need a fund of €2 million to support such a pension
Croke Park, are you even reading the comments being put to you? There is almost no public sector pensions of 60k either!!
Dear god. I’m talking about the PS workers who retire at 50+, on a pension of 40k+, who take up employment in the pvte sector at 40k+
In some cases both payments are much higher. I personally know more than 10 “pensioners” in this category
My Dad is a retired public servant I can assure you it not a whopping gold plated pension so stop peddling lies.
This government has stolen private savings. This discourages anyone from saving into a pension fund. This leaves the problem to our children to fund from their taxes. Assuming that us that there is anything left after paying off the national debt which we have so generously left them.
Isn’t that what all tax is.
This is happening at the moment.
We need to stop thinking of wealth in terms of money. Money itself is as close to worthless as makes no difference, and saved money worth even less again, because what we call money may be currency, but in economic terms it’s actually not quite money. Money is anything which satisfies three criteria: a means of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. From this definition, we can see that our currency is not money in economic terms, as due to inflation money does not represent a good store of value. This may seem like nit picking, but it is a very important point.
As currency does not represent a store of value, to look to pension funds to provide us with wealth for aging populations is a quite ludicrous notion. Gone are the days of the gold standard and similar such systems, so the future value of currency is based primarily on the economic strength of the issuing jurisdiction at any given time. Putting EUR 100 into a pension fund today, compounded at 2% per annum over 35 years means that when you cash out that initial EUR 100 you will have just shy of EUR 200. This may seem like a good investment, but what will EUR 200 be worth in 35 years? What will it be worth in 35 days for that matter?
To provide for the elderly, the country requires wealth. Currency may be a useful measure of this wealth, but in reality wealth is the ability of an economy or society to produce and provide necessary goods and services. The western world (and indeed much of the rest of the world) is currently witnessing extremely high unemployment rates, yet the global economy still appears quite capable of providing us with what we need. Technological advances will only see demand being met with an ever decreasing necessity for labour input.
There is no looming pension crisis. The crisis we face is a systemic crisis, and is easily resolved by adapting our monetary and governance systems to suit the conditions of the modern world, and stop trying to adapt the modern world to suit archaic systems.
Your example of 2pct compounded over years bringing 100Eur to 200Eur, but purchasing power of that having eroded is quite correct.
However, generally people will not put money on deposit over such a large span of time. And deposit interest rates often do not keep pace with inflation.
That is why pensions over the long term are invested in funds based on commodities, equities and property. These on average will at least match or beat inflation in the long run. Pension funds only move to deposits close to retirement as they are safer (can only go down in financial/bank crash), albeit with an annual return that might not keep pace with inflation.
As for an economy (or monetary zone) with high inflation (and therefore rapidly devaluing currency with reduced purchasing power per unit of currency), this is likely to coincide with rapidly increasing value of assets and investments underpinning pension funds, at least local ones.
Therefore while pension funds are not safe, there are inherent safeguards that mitigate against them becoming worthless , but only on average and over the long term.
It does not prevent problems occurring due to fund mismanagement or economic crashes.
I know, the rate it was just a simple example to illustrate a point, and I chose 2% as this is generally the target inflation rate. The point I was making isn’t that pension funds are worthless to individuals, as under our current system they certainly make sense for individuals, but to the detriment of society as a whole unfortunately. Few people, journal readers in particular it seems, appear to make the link between the derided bond holders or high property prices & their own retirement nest egg.
The point about the weakness of currency still stands. Our retirees could well end up controlling the S&P 500 and the entirety of Australia’s mineral deposits, but if society does not have the ability to provide adequate care and sufficient food, they will starve like the rest of us. The true wealth of a nation is not it’s stock market or pension funds (thank Christ as we had the worst pension funds in Europe until Poland pulled this little trick), but on our ability to produce and provide. Pension funds are storing away today’s wealth to provide for tomorrow, but today’s wealth may well be worthless tomorrow, while today people starve because all the wealth is being put away for a rainy day.
Since time immemorial, the economics of scarcity was all that mattered, as scarcity was all we had and all we knew. But what do we do when we have enough of everything for everyone? Do we hamper production to ensure scarcity to safeguard the system, or do we adapt to the economics of abundance, and how do we make the transition?
I dont care too much for money ,money cant buy me love.
Silent,,sounds like you understand the monetary system…central banks/fiat currency/fractionalised reserve banking etc etc..note the current move by the BICS to asset based currency..the Chineese rmb.bartering..the assault by US FED on bitcoin etc etc..the world is changing..best advice to all is ‘isolate yourself from the state as far as you are able’… “interesting times” ahead i think
I don’t agree Mike, we do not need to isolate from the state, we are the state. That’s a lot of the point I’m, unsuccessfully I fear, trying to make. Corporations and so called elites may control the power, political types may control the laws, but we are the society, we are the labour, we are the innovators, we are everything. Isolation achieves nothing, participation can change everything.
Things changing may mean interesting times ahead, but doesn’t necessarily mean bad times. I don’t believe this is all some big evil conspiracy, just that the world around us is developing faster than we really know what to do with, and we need to learn to adapt to these changes as a society and not just as individuals. If we look at education for example, the leaving cert is still primarily focused on learning off information on a variety of topics; is this really necessary in a world where no child will remember not being able to access an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge via a device in their pocket? Similarly, the monetary system is also something that has been overtaken by time really; it doesn’t seem to working very well for many societies globally at the moment. But it is just a system, made by man to serve man, and we always have the power to change it when the conditions around us demand it.
Just because things don’t work the way that perhaps they should doesn’t mean sinister forces are corrupting proceedings, any system controlled by and involving humans will always be imperfect because humans are delightfully imperfect.
Hi,silent, your comments are laudible but idealistic and depend on,the people, understanding and then seeking a change..a big ask..i use the state as a term which i see as the govt/mandarins which might not have an agenda that is not in the interests of the many but selected for the few..so i say..during times of uncertainty protect yourself whilst sharing your knoweldge with others so they may form their own view and pos petition for change. what i see is secrecy at all levels and propeganda etc..alternate views to the official one is characterised as ‘conspiracy theories’ eg mad cap/deluded etc..all revolves around the monetary system which is ‘not fit for purpose’ but is exploited by the few who ‘know’…pardon grammar/spelling
Mike, just read over my last comment and I meant to say “Corporations and so called elites may control the power” when I meant to say they control the money – isn’t that telling that in spite of all the views I’ve just expressed I still confuse money and power! And there’s more than the few who know, many know and play the system to their advantage, from the person who under declares income to get their kid a college grant, to the one who gets inside info on a pharma patent to make the GDP of a small nation. It’s game theory, we all take our own optimal position. Whatever vested interests exist, they’ve either not tried, or failed in their attempts, to hinder the development of the past century which has witnessed more innovation, and a greater rise in living standards, than the entirety of human history had achieved previously. We are not living in scary times, just confusing times. If we just embrace our achievements and potential, there really is no limit to what we can achieve.
The guberment has no money, you have money, the guberment needs money. Guess how it ends.
They all live happily ever after?
I’m thinking of going to Newry and open a bank account transfer all my saving which is pittance into that account and direct debit my monthly savings into this account anyone know if this is legal or not ?
Of course it’s legal, it’s your money. But it will be a GBP account you open so you will be exposing yourself to currency risk, to hedge which will be costly. Risk can obviously work out in your favour or against you, but over a long enough period you will almost certainly witness dips in value.
Believe you have to declare it for DIRT & tax purposes. If you are planning to do direct debit make sure it is all tax legal or the friendly revenue service will knock on your door.
Pension can’t be moved. Property can’t be moved. We are owned by the government.
The PS pension train wreck is coming. Any chance the govt could calculate an actuarial value on each PS pension as if they were to retire today and park that notional sum at interest equal to inflation. Switch them all to a DC scheme with govt matching 5%?
You need to work 40 years to get a PS salary and mine will be €12,500 a year. Give over!
That’s the new career earnings based pension Tommy. Another example of Howlin pulling the ladder up after him. You lads now pay a public service pension levy ostensibly to pay for your own pension but in reality it’s to keep the current crop of PS pensioners in the style they’ve become accustomed to. You lads will NEVER claim back what you’re paying in now. If PS pple march on the Dáil in protest about this daylight robbery, I’ll march beside ye. It’s a total joke what they’ve done. Not only burdening our kids with crazy national debt but also burdening young PS workers with a levy they’ll never collect and raiding what any reasonable person would deem sacrosanct private pensions. We’re entering Robert Mugabe territory.
Get your pension and go to paddy powers and put it on The Dubs to win the All Ireland for the next 10 years
Why would anyone wish to continue putting their hard earned (and already super taxed) earnings into a pension pot for the Gov to rob??? Off to open a UK account….
Money paid by a PAYE worker into a pension fund is given relief at the marginal rate. Effectively, you put the money in tax free. They get the tax when you eventually retire and start to drawdown your pension.
They get tax each and every year you save your money!
No strictly true David, a pensioner can earn 18k before they have to pay tax, 36k for a retired couple. Pretty generous really. There is USC but reduced rates apply.
No. Because none of the heirachy benefit, so it wont ever be thought of
Why not nationalise private pensions and give guaranteed 4% return. Funds could be used for stimulus. It would be better than the system we have now. It just seems to be luck if you happen to retire with a high value pot. it’s cyclic. Although Could we trust the government not raid it when things go tits up again. Hmmm
Private pension funds are just that, Private. The government have no right to take it for any reason. If they want to set up a scheme that people can pay into instead and guarantee 4% thats fine
Isn’t that pretty much what Madoff did? Want to hire him as minister for finance?
Defined Contribution Schemes that will fund only a fraction of a DB scheme should not have to pay the pension levy.
Isn’t the nice lady from ifg pensions engaged in scare mongering and pr. You should really offer a bit more explanation about how such a person gets to write the article in the first place.
Well done Timmay Timeo. I hadn’t spotted that one!
Just death
The pension industry charge extortionate fees and often give very poor performances. They rely on the fact that countless years will pass before the pay date.
Are pension funds a waste of money? So much is lost in fees and commissions. I think I might be better off running the fund myself. Diverse blue chips from around the world etc.
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