The European Commission's Savings and Investments Union (SIU) supplementary pension package has been proposed through a financial lens and needs adjustments to ensure it doesn't affect a well-functioning system, European Association of Paritarian Institutions (AEIP) executive director, Simone Miotto, has warned.

Speaking at the CBBA-Europe Annual Conference, Miotto said paritarian funds viewed retirement as “mostly a social issue”, while acknowledging that social and financial considerations can go together.

“On behalf of the paritarian funds, we see the retirement topic as mostly a social issue. Most often, the two things can go together, but we believe that certain adjustments in the commission proposal are needed to make it work and to make sure that it's actually not affecting a very well-functioning system,” Miotto said.

Miotto also highlighted increasing the number of pension funds as “one of the most important goals” of the package but questioned the means of this aim.  

“In order to reach this goal, to have more funds, especially in countries where physically there is no occupational pension, we are raising the bar of the legislation. I'm not completely sure that this will work out as expected,” he said.

However, European Commission Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA) head of unit Savings and Investments Union (SIU), Andrea Beltramello, disagreed with the suggestion that the package had been developed from a primarily financial perspective.

“I do not really agree that this package was developed with the premise of a financial point of view. In fact, we really developed this package with the idea that pensions are an intersection between social policy and economic policy,” Beltramello said.

He said the commission’s approach was not simply based on the interests of the financial or investment sectors, but on providing people with greater opportunities to build wealth through their savings.

“If you read the communication of the commission that accompanies this package, the message is very clear that the starting point is not the financial sector's perspective or investment perspective, but the people's perspective,” he said.

Beltramello argued that this was not simply about the narrative but was instead part of the underlying concept and premise of the entire package.

Giving an overview of the SIU package and its link to pensions, Beltramello said its core objective is to provide people with more opportunities to build their wealth and have a better life through their savings.

He said the initiative starts with people and providing them more opportunities for their savings, which can then be mobilised towards the investments Europe needs to address the challenges it faces.

Public funding alone, he acknowledged, would not be enough to meet Europe’s investment needs.

“It is about making sure that people can be confident that they can have a good life in retirement and putting those savings to better long-term use for that objective," he concluded.

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