One of the last decisions made by the central government before going to the general elections was the awarding of the contract for publicly promoted employment pension funds. VidaCaixa, Santander, BBVA, Caser and Ibercaja Gestión have won the tender for this new program that seeks to encourage retirement savings from companies. Although the fringes of this contract with which fifteen pension funds will be launched are yet to be finalized, its relaunch comes after ten years of decline, in which equity losses have been a constant.
Since 2012, practically all the years have closed with a balance of negative flows, that is, the volume of money withdrawals has been greater than that of inflows. That year, marked by the debt crisis that devastated the peripheral countries of the eurozone, outflows amounted to 175 million, a figure that was conditioned by the elimination of contributions to the complementary social welfare plans of civil servants. Since then, the trickle has been a constant, with the sharpest drops occurring in 2016 and 2018, when 750 million were withdrawn in each case. Last year the figure rose to 241 million.
Now it is sought to resurrect this formula through sectoral collective bargaining, as advised by the Pact of Toledo, in order to promote private savings of workers from the company to complement public pensions, as well as facilitate their access to SMEs and auto onomos, which until now had it more complicated. At the end of the semester, the equity of these vehicles amounted to 35,385 million, an amount over which it has been stagnant in the last decade, with a total of 2,813 million ES since the end of 2012, one tenth of what the individual plans did, whose assets It has felt at 30,797 million, an amount that represents slightly less than a third of the total, according to data from Inverco.
From the investment fund employers, the director of Studies, José Luis Manrique, charges against time and the way in which the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations has promoted the initiative, “without respecting the deadlines.” Specifically, the expert criticizes the fact that the contribution to deductible plans in the individual income statement has been reduced to a maximum amount of 1,500 euros, compared to the 8,000 stipulated until 2020 “before the plans have come into force employment”.
The blow came in 2021, when it was lowered to 2,000 euros to apply another reduction of 500 euros in the following year, up to the level at which it is currently. This regulatory change contemplated the option of raising the contribution limit to 8,500 as long as it came from employment plans. In this context, Manrique questions whether the latest legal developments carried out are really going to translate into a “takeoff” of these vehicles, while a product (individual aircraft) that is a benchmark in long-term savings has been “penalized”. term for the Spanish.
As with assets, the number of participants in the collective pension system has been anchored at around two million people since 2010. Although it has experienced slight variations throughout this period, it has remained at that barrier ever since, with a slight rebound between April and June by 111,000 people. If this increase is confirmed at the end of 2023, it would be the first time in seven years that it would experience an increase. The trend is repeated in the case of individuals, in which the volume of participants has also been decreasing. The lack of stimuli and, mainly, the aging of the population hinder the capture of more investors who allocate part of their money to this product.
In July 2022, the law for the promotion of employment pension plans came into force, with the intention of favoring collective and minority pension plans over individual ones through the creation of a public promotion macrofondo. The five managers are still pending the development of the digital platform that will concentrate the 15 funds, in such a way that each firm will be in charge of a fixed income fund, another of mixed fixed income and a third of variable income. Its advantages include lower management commissions, which will range between 0.10 and 0.26%.
