Pension organisations have launched the European Tracking Service (ETS) Association following a call to do so from the European Commission in 2018, bringing together national pension tracking service’s from across the continent.

At an event during European Retirement Week yesterday (30 November), ETS project manager, Claudia Wegner-Wahnschaffe, presented the pilot project’s final report and the ETS Association’s plans going forward.

The consortium of European pension stakeholders has developed the pilot stage of an ETS, which includes a pension tracking service website that has been set up.

The next stage is to roll out the service and connect as many national pension tracking services and pension providers as possible.

The pension tracking website provides a framework for cross-pillar and cross-country content creation.

It offers tailored pension information targeted to mobile workers in different life situations, a ‘Pension Compass’, which guides participants to locate possible pension providers, and a dashboard that presents a personalised area of pension providers, a tracker of pension entitlements and a list of recommendations.

Information on the Dutch and Swedish pension systems are already available on the ‘Find Your Pension’ portal, while information on the Belgian, German and Danish pension systems will also be available before the end of the year.

The pilot project has also delivered a proof of concept of a visualisation of individual pension information, based on a secured data connection with national data sources.

It has successfully made a connection with the Belgian Federal Pension Service and Sigedis, providing information on the Belgian statutory and occupational pensions on the ETS.

The ETS Association’s board is composed of nine representatives: Five representatives of national tracking services, three representatives of pension providers and one representative of other pension provision institutions.

The ETS will be managed by an executive board of three members.

Membership of the association is open to national pension tracking services, administrators or providers of pension provisions, and professional pension organisations/associations.

The pilot project has also formed the ETS network, which will serve as a forum on pension communication, with the association planning to attract more national tracking services and pension providers to get involved.

The ETS project said that representatives from the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Germany have indicated their “positive attitude” towards connecting to the ETS.

The European Commission indicated: “We are very much committed to the ETS project and we are very much committed to continue supporting the ETS going forward.”

European Commission deputy head of unit, directorate employment, social affairs and inclusion, Valdis Zagorskis, said: “Today we are nearing the end of this four-year project. We are very happy to see how much has been achieved.

“It is very impressive to see today an online platform that offers information on pension systems; one tracking service connected to the platform; a growing network of institutions committed to implementing the ETS; a legal entity; and a growing number of interested stakeholders. We can congratulate each other on how far we have gotten.”

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