The start of savings in the publicly promoted and privately managed pension fund devised by former minister José Luis Escrivá will still have to wait, after more than two years since the law to promote these plans was approved in the summer of 2022 and has been successively retouched the regulations. A legal detail that the Ministry of Social Security has not yet resolved, and that may take months, prevents further steps in a process whose last major advance occurred in January, when its information platform was launched.
The regulation of pension plans and funds that the Council of Ministers approved this week does not provide the conditions to market employment plansa legal detail that must be corrected with the rank of law or royal decree. This figure is mainly informative and transparent about the savings products that the Executive intends to promote.
The regulation includes, in the case of individual plans, the need to inform about the conditions of the plan allows marketing costs to be attributed to each office and, understanding that if there is a savings product there are commissions and this information is necessary. Correcting this error would allow employment plans to be marketed in the distribution network of each entity in the same way as in the case of individuals.
This regulatory figure also establishes regulations for marketers and imposes supervisory functions. The entities that promote these savings products have regulations that ensure at all times a service and information in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries.
Several reliable sources in the sector explain to elEconomista.es that the commercialization of employment pension plans requires resorting to the rank of Law or royal decree law. “Regulations are not enough as they intended and the State Attorney’s Office overthrew thembecause the current law only talks about the commercialization of individual pension plans,” they say. The Lawyers then warned of the need to reform article 26 bis to include this regulatory detail, as ABC reported in the summer, directing the Executive towards a path which may take several more months.
Therefore, the Government has been forced to leave this detail out of the update of the regulation that the Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday, once again hindering the start of savings in the public fund, although sources familiar with the process assure that the modification does not would entail no revolution or long work.
Although collective pension plans at the corporate level have previously been sold without the figure of the marketer (which are entities or natural persons), a question of transparency and control surrounds this decision. Taking into account the importance of the marketer so that these products have a greater reach and are capable of promoting savings parallel to the public provision of Social Security.
In this situation, and still celebrating the “first step” that is the approval of the regulation, although they do not set a date for the next phase. Once the General Directorate of Insurance and Pension Funds corrects the aspect of marketing the employment plans, the managers will assign the investment vehicles.
The managing entities (VidaCaixa, Santander, BBVA, Ibercaja and Caser) They are aware of the heritage objectives that Escrivá imposed: 2.5 billion in three yearsat a rate of 500 per manager between net contributions and total assets. Of course, the three years will begin to count once the vehicles are assigned.
The counter remains at zero, both in terms of deadlines and in the case of promised savings. The Government’s objective with the latest reforms is to promote collective retirement savings plans, to the detriment of individual plans and their reduced tax benefits.
In any case, these financial sources explain that it will also depend on the agreements reached by collective bargaining to develop new plans; or the transfer of already existing plans to the public fund. A point that plays against this public fund is the supervision of the plans so that a sector loses certain power over its savings product. The economies of scale that a larger savings pool can generate and the limited costs play in its favor, with commissions that are around 0.2%.
The most recent tweaks: remuneration and costs
The approval of new modifications in the regulations of pension plans and funds in the last Council of Ministers have focused, essentially, on remuneration and costs. One is the remuneration of the 13 professionals in charge of supervising the public fund appointed by the Ministry (5), CCOO and UGT (4), CEOE and Cepyme (4) with requests from union and employer organizations that have caused (more) modifications in the regulations.
The supervisors They will only charge if the assets of the public fund have at least 1,000 million assets.. Previously, there was a paradox that the managers still did not have money and could not meet the remuneration of the directors.
The associations also requested to receive, as an institution, the remuneration of the directors appointed by each of them, all of this previously advanced by elEconomista.es. This aspect was processed as a ministerial order since the beginning of summer.
They will charge 3,375 euros per month fixed in twelve paymentsplus another 1,390 euros per meeting. If the managed assets exceed 4.5 billion, the Control Commission staff would receive a 20% bonus for each extraordinary meeting or attendance at additional work meetings.
Another technical modification will allow fund participants to receive benefits in partial retirement, a until now limited possibility.
It allows both the Promotion and Monitoring Commission and the Special Control Commission to request legal assistance from the Legal Service of the Social Security Administration.
The Government anticipates that these recent modifications will be definitive to consolidate the momentum of collective savings plans at the workplace level between employees and the self-employed. The employment pension plans, reformed with Escrivá, They aim to facilitate financial planning for the retirement of SMEs and the self-employedwhich are the groups in the productive fabric with the least coverage of complementary social security.
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