Andrea Nahles, Minister for Social Affairs and Employment has outlined yet another goal: making supplementary company retirement schemes more attractive. To this end she has designed a new provision and Minister Jörg Asmussen presented its main elements on March 16 at a conference on “Company pensions in 2015” held in Berlin by the Economics publication, Handelsblatt. The provision gives the social partners a key role in implementing, at branch level, a common pensions fund or a pensions contributions scheme to which the companies can adhere. Still at the preliminary stages, this reform project will be subjected to widespread discussion both within the broad coalition government and with the social partners.
Bolstering SME pensions attractiveness. As the second pillar of the German pension system alongside contributory pension systems and private insurance, company pensions ((Betriebliche Altersvorsorge – bAV) have undergone a real boost with the implementation of the 2002 Riester Reform (c.f. article No. 120562). Before the 2002 reform, 29% of private employees benefitted from such a scheme and now some 60% are members of these schemes, (there are 5 different types), covering about 17 million...
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