The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) launches today the first Quantitative Impact Study (QIS) on Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORPs), as part of its process to advise the European Commission on the review of the IORP Directive.
The QIS will assess the financial impact of different sets of options for the valuation of the holistic balance sheet and the calculation of capital requirements. It will also deal with the quantification of the security and benefit adjustment mechanisms existing in different countries.
The exercise is targeted at IORPs that run defined benefit pension plans. IORPs that only provide pure defined contribution schemes are excluded from the scope. In order to facilitate the participation in the QIS of smaller IORPs, EIOPA developed so-called 'helper tabs' - spreadsheets that will assist IORPs in valuing sponsor support and pension protection schemes by using simplifications.
Nine European countries, in which defined benefit pension plans are most prevalent, have volunteered to participate in the study: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The national supervisory authorities (NSAs) are responsible for conducting the QIS in their country. The exercise will be performed by either selected IORPs or by the NSAs themselves using real or aggregate data; or by actuarial firms acting on behalf of NSAs; or a combination.
EIOPA will coordinate the QIS at the European level, will be in charge of a question & answer procedure and will analyse the individual data in order to ensure consistency of the results.
The exercise runs until 17 December 2012 and the report on the QIS outcome is expected to be released in spring 2013.
Gabriel Bernardino, Chairman of EIOPA, said: "I am pleased that we have been able to take this important step in the development of a new European framework for occupational pension funds. In our advice to the European Commission we proposed the holistic balance sheet (HBS) concept as a means to capture the wide diversity of retirement systems in a single prudential regime. This QIS will allow us to investigate the feasibility of implementing the HBS in practice".
The documentation related to the QIS for occupational pensions can be found here.
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