October 2021

Israel’s Holocaust survivors to be supplemented NIS 20 million

The government has secured an extra NIS 20 million in annual payments for Holocaust survivors living in Israel following negotiations with the German Finance Ministry. The cabinet approved the agreement on Sunday. Some 3,700 Holocaust survivors who receive pensions from the German government will be eligible for the increased payments. The negotiations were conducted by the Social Equality and Pensioners Ministry and the Authority for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors. All those eligible for German pensions will receive an extra €100...

More Holocaust survivors to receive pensions from German government

The Claims Conference, which negotiates payments for Holocaust survivors with the German government, announced Wednesday it had secured pensions for an additional 6,500 Holocaust survivors who endured the siege of Leningrad, as well as other groups who were able to flee Nazi terror in other parts of Europe. In its annual negotiations with the German government, the NGO works to expand the number of people eligible for compensation. The 6,500 survivors who will benefit from the latest announced payments will...

German occupational pension execs call on next govt to ease rules

Executives of company pension schemes in Germany are calling on the country’s political parties, which are discussing to form a coalition for the next government, to tackle the complexity surrounding occupational pensions in favour of opting-out solutions, according to a survey conducted by Willis Towers Watson (WTW). The research – carried out last week during the annual WTW’s occupational pension conference bAV-Konferenz – showed that 44% of respondents believed the decision by the next government to simplify occupational pensions schemes...

Germany added to Sanofi pension fund in Belgium cross-border first

Sanofi European Pension Fund has become the first Belgium-based pension fund to begin operating cross-border activity in Germany, with two Hoechst companies coming on board. The development means that the liabilities associated with more than 5,000 pensioners of Hoechst GmbH and Hoechst Trevira Gmbh are being funded via Sanofi European Pension Fund. Hoechst AG was one of the three largest chemical and pharmaceutical companies in Germany before merging with Rhône-Poulenc in 1999 to form Aventis, which was subsequently taken over by...

Number of pension age Germans projected to increase 22 pct by 2035: Destatis

The number of people of retirement age in Germany will rise by 22 percent by 2035, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Thursday. The number of people aged 67 or over in the country will go up to 20 million, a 22 percent increase from 2020, the first medium-term population projection conducted by Destatis showed. The head of the Federal Employment Agency, Detlef Scheele, was quoted in the media as saying in August that Germany needed 400,000 new workers per...

September 2021

German parties vague on pension plans as they court older voters

The churned-up garden of the clubhouse for pensioners is preoccupying Peter Klotsche. “It’s the raccoons,” he says. “They come at night and toss up the earth looking for worms and we really don’t know how best to stop it.” The clubhouse, Stille Strasse, in northern Berlin, is abuzz with members wanting to put questions to local politicians before Sunday’s elections. The raccoons are a central talking point, as well as affordable housing and, not least, the future of the club...

German chancellor candidates clash over future of pension system

Chancellor candidates have argued over the future of the German pension system, offering opposite views to the public in the second televised debate which took place yesterday, as the general election on 26 September approaches. Olaf Scholz, chancellor candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), now leading in the polls, said his party would “guarantee that the retirement age will not increase and that the level of pension remains stable,” also with an eye to the younger generation. Read also Germany....

Germany. Pensioners can expect significantly higher pensions

Pensioners in Germany can expect a significant increase in their pay next year, according to the pension insurance fund. "I assume that the missed increase will be made up for to a certain extent next year and that pensioners will get a decent plus in 2022," Gundula Roßbach, President of the German Pension Insurance Association, told the newspapers of the Funke Media Group."How much more it will be, we won't know until next spring, because we have to look...

August 2021

On The Investment Strategies in Occupational Pension Plans

By Frank Bosserhoff, An Chen, Nils Sørensen, Mitja Stadje Demographic changes increase the necessity to base the pension system more and more on the second and the third pillar, namely the occupational and private pension plans; this paper deals with Target Date Funds (TDFs), which are a typical investment opportunity for occupational pension planners. TDFs are usually identified with a decreasing fraction of wealth invested in equity (a so-called glide path) as retirement comes closer, i.e., wealth is invested more...

July 2021

Fair Pension Policies with Occupation-Specific Aging

By Volker Grossmann, Johannes Schünemann & Holger Strulik We discuss public pension systems in a multi-period overlapping generations model with gerontologically founded human aging and a special focus on occupation-specific morbidity and mortality. We examine how distinct replacement rates for white-collar and blue-collar workers and early retirement policies could be designed to provide a fair and aggregate welfare-enhancing public pension system. Calibrating the model to Germany, we find that a pension system that equalizes relative pension contributions and the relative...