02 July 2012

IPE: Looking to IORP III?

The European Commission’s decision to postpone to summer 2013 its white paper on the IORP II Directive represents yet another delay in a highly protracted process that has to balance the need for reform of the first IORP Directive, the interests of occupational pensions and the insurance industry, as well as the Commission’s desire, as a lead global initiator of financial services legislation, to test the limits of its competence in harmonising EU laws.

The once uncontentious IORP Directive, which was prompted by the vision for pan-European pension funds with a view to promoting cost efficiencies and labour mobility, has become highly problematic. There is as yet no mass market for cross-border pensions; those entities that do offer pensions abroad – for instance, Denmark’s ATP in the UK – can do so well outside the scope of the IORP Directive. Sponsors of corporate pensions can pool their assets with a custodian, also outside the purview of IORP.

The three most similar defined benefit countries, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK, have markedly diverged in the last 10 years in their approach to occupational pensions regulation, as they managed their transition from old-style final salary DB in very different ways. The very idea of a Directive that would have remarkably little scope beyond those countries and Germany is highly contentious.

Barnier’s announcement on the delay to IORP is a welcome opportunity for those representing the interests of occupational pensions to focus on the holistic balance sheet proposal for IORP II and the planned quantitative impact studies.

Detailed solvency capital requirements may then have to wait for an IORP III Directive, and in the meantime the highly political decision on the right level of solvency funding for IORPs would be left with individual national governments, which is probably where it belongs in the first place.

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