RD 668/2023 has been published that modifies the Regulation of pension plans and funds. Among the novelties included, it develops simplified pension plans, facilitates the inclusion of temporary workers in the plans and allows partial retirees to continue making contributions to the plan until their full retirement.
New regulations
RD 668/2023 modifies the Regulation of pension plans and funds, develops by regulation the provisions of L 12/2022 on simplified employment pension plans and on Public Promotion Employment Pension Funds.
The RD contains novelties, among which are:
- The basic elements for the constitution and operation of the new open public promotion employment pension funds.
- The features and functionalities of the digital platform through which all the operations and communication between promoters and participants will be carried out. It will also offer general information for all entities and citizens. It is established that the platform will be launched within a period of 6 months from 21/7/2023 (entry into force of the standard).
- It includes the development of simplified employment pension plans for its promotion and formalization quickly and for its integration into pension funds in an agile manner, both public promotion and private promotion, promoting digitization. In this modality, the promoters are the companies included in the collective agreements of a sectoral nature that implement pension commitments in favor of their workers. The participants are the workers of companies with sectoral agreements, public employees, self-employed workers and members of associations, federations and cooperatives.
- The procedure for the integration of simplified pension plans in the new publicly promoted pension funds or in other already existing pension funds.
- The promoters and the information to be provided to participants and beneficiaries are identified and delimited, aspects related to the mobilization of the rights of the participants and beneficiaries and the concretion of the functions of the Special Control Commissions.
- extends the access to these pension plans to all workers, including temporary ones, by reducing the minimum time in the company to one month to be able to access a pension plan. Until now, the term was previously established at 2 years.
- The investment regime of pension funds is updated. To this end, the policies for the involvement of pension funds as institutional investors are reinforced; Investments in collective investment institutions, venture capital and entrepreneurship are facilitated. The investment assessment criteria are also updated and investment criteria related to the life cycle of the participants are introduced, making it easier to vary the distribution of investments based on the age of the participants.
- It is allowed that In cases of partial retirement, the participant can continue making contributions to the pension plan to allocate them to the retirement contingency, which may be combined with the collection of benefits.
- is possible that savers benefit from contributions made by companies through commercial programs or sponsorship campaigns, when considering them direct contributions of the participant to individual plans, attributing to them the ownership of the contributions made.
- Finally, it establishes a maximum period of 12 months to adapt the specifications of the plan, the principles of the investment policy of the pension fund and the rules of operation of the pension fund to the provisions of this regulation.
