FAQ

AEGON Global Pensions helps companies around the world improve management of their international retirement and employee benefit plans. We are part of AEGON, one of the world’s largest life insurance and pension companies, and a strong provider of investment products. In About us you can find more information on AEGON Global Pensions.

AEGON Global Pensions is working with a growing number of multinational companies, based mostly in North America and Europe, but also picking up momentum in Asia. So far, we have worked with more than 175 multinational firms and organisations to restructure their worldwide pension plans. Please read case studies and more in Our clients.

Because of financial, economic, legal, demographic and social changes:

• New accounting rules and tougher regulations have made companies more aware of the financial risks associated with their pension plans.
• Financial markets have become more volatile and unpredictable.
• People are living longer than previously predicted.
• Increased competition and lower profits mean companies must find new ways of controlling costs.

Since it was first set up, in 2005, AEGON Global Pensions has been expanding steadily. It now has partners in about 20 countries around the world. The network includes most of AEGON’s country units as well as a number of other partners, including AG2R La Mondiale in France and HDI-Gerling Pensionsmanagement AG in Germany.

AEGON Global Pensions operates in about twenty countries, including: Austria, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA.

AEGON Global Pensions offers a broad range of products and services to help multinational firms and organisations to manage their pension plans more efficiently and effectively.

We provide single-country solutions, tailored to local customs, practices and regulations, as well as multi-country and cross-border solutions designed for companies with international operations.

We offer the following products and services:

• Single and multi-country solutions: AEGON Global Pensions is a single point of contact for multinational companies, providing access to a wide range of pension capabilities and expertise around the world. We provide a wide range of pension capabilities around the world such as:
  o Defined contribution (DC) plans.
  o Defined benefit (DB) plans.
  o Investment solutions for the management of pension assets including a full range of investment funds, asset classes and investment styles, and duration, inflation and currency overlays. 
  o Fiduciary management – also called implemented consulting in the UK or investment outsourcing in the US – allows an outside provider, the fiduciary manager, to manage a pension fund’s entire investment portfolio and risk.
  o Total Retirement Outsourcing (TRO) is the placement of all, or most, of the administrative services associated with retirement plans with a single provider.
  o Risk pooling is an international profit sharing system, which combines the premiums paid to insure risk benefits worldwide into a single account giving ‘experience rating’ across borders.  
  
• DB de-risking: AEGON Global Pensions offers a suite of de-risking solutions for multinational companies with Defined Benefit pension plans in the Netherlands, UK and US.
• Non-qualified plans for mobile workers (‘expat plans’): AEGON Global Pensions provides retirement savings solutions for the international mobile employees of multinational companies and non-governmental organisations.
• Asset pooling in Europe: In 2009, AEGON Global Pensions launched Europe’s first multi-client cross-border asset pooling solution allowing multinational companies to pool pension assets including France, the UK and the Netherlands. From 2011, asset pooling will be available in Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland and Germany.
• News and research: AEGON Global Pensions publishes articles and research papers on the latest developments, opinions and insights into the rapidly changing world of global pensions.

A pan-European Pension Plan is a single legal entity meeting the definition of an IORP in the EU Pensions Directive established within an EU member state (“home” state). It covers members in more than one European state (”host” state), and contains different sections for each host state complying with the social and labour legislation for that state.

Asset pooling is the collective management of assets of different owners for the purpose of maximising advantage to the users. By asset pooling pension assets are combined in a single pool. Please click here for more information.

The Third Life Directive allows for insurance companies to issue cross border policies in Europe. A product based on this directive should allow for EET tax treatment for local nationals, while current products exclusively target mobiles. Although the 3rd life directive gives insurance companies the possibility to sell products across the EU and not only in their domestic markets, the products sold in another Member State have to comply with the national rules of that Member State. As a result. this means that if it is still no possible to create product types that can be sold all over Europe without any modification: every Member State has defined legal requirements concerning civil contract law that have to be complied with.