AMweb: “Pension consultant can no longer ignore PPI”

Article posted on Amweb.nl on 26 July 2012

The PPI of Brand New Day and ASR acquired one hundred customers in its first six months. “We’ve cleared the first hurdle,” says Commercial Director Pieter van Eijden. BeFrank, the first PPI in the Netherlands, also affirms that the premium pension institution already forms a well-established part of the Dutch pension landscape.

In the space of six months, one hundred companies placed their group pension schemes with Brand New Day PPI, the joint venture of ASR and BND, which received a licence from the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) in December 2011. According to Pieter van Eijden, these one hundred employers represent some 4,500 pension scheme members. “The size of the companies varies widely. We primarily target SMEs, but larger organisations are also welcome.”

For comparison: BeFrank (subsidiary of Delta Lloyd and BinckBank), which was launched in June 2011 as the first  PPI, acquired about 5,000 pension members in its first six months, spread across twenty employers. Now that the BeFrank PPI is about to blow out its first birthday candle, the company declines to divulge any figures, but is happy to reveal that it was welcomed “with open arms” by the pensions market. The latest additions to its customer base include Bol.com and Accor Hotels.

“The market needs a modern approach to pension administration,” says BeFrank which, together with seven other pension administrators, commissioned Motivaction to carry out a survey. This showed that advisers prefer simple and transparent pension schemes that are easy to explain to the customer. “Risk is currently being introduced all across the pension world,” says marketing manager Frank van Wessel. “We are honest about this; that’s the origin of our name. And this honesty is evidently appreciated. We started with customers who didn’t yet have a pension scheme or had a defined contribution scheme with an insurer. Now we’re suddenly seeing employers who used to have a DB scheme switching over to us, or employers participating in an industry-wide pension fund who are requesting dispensation in order to transfer their scheme to us. This naturally fits in with the general trend towards defined contribution schemes. It helps employers keep their costs under control.”

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