Track and Trace your pension in Europe: possible, but some way to go

Moving across European countries and always knowing what your pension rights are: this is the aim of a European project led by a number of private and public pension institutions in Europe. The project is at its mid-term and has presented its first results: a European pension tracking system is possible, but only on a minimum level.

In a first phase of the project, the partners have analysed a number of pension tracking systems that already exist on national level. This ranges from very developed schemes, such as in Finland and Denmark towards very simple ones.

At the simplest, a German imitative provides pension tracking for researchers across Europe, but provides only the contact details of pension funds according to the academic institution where a researcher has worked. In the UK, a pension tracking system also assists in finding occupational pension schemes that workers have lost sight of. In more complex schemes, information can be provided on the amount of money paid into pension schemes and even forecasts on the payments you can expect.

Such a system might however be complicated to realise on European levels, as questions around data protection arise. Another challenge is posed by different identification methods used across countries in order to provide information to the right person.

The project partners consider that ‘a European Tracking Service is complex but feasible’. Such a service has however to answer the challenges of authentication and data protection. If such a scheme was to provide information on the amounts paid into different schemes and the amounts to be expected, a harmonisation of pension information is also necessary.

AGE follows these issues with interest, is however not part of the project consortium. The project partners are PGGM, MN, Syntrus Achmea and APG from the Netherlands, ETK from Finland and PKA from Denmark. The project is collaborating with other initiatives such as ‘FindYourPension.eu’. The project is funded by the European Commission and is part of the implementation of the 2010 White Paper on Pensions.

For more information, please contact Philippe Seidel, philippe.seidel@age-platform.eu

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