How secure is your pension?

Development financial situation

Our financial situation affects the amount of your pension. Our financial situation depends on the following factors:

• Life expectancy: the older people get, the longer we will have to pay pension. That means we will need more money.
• Low interest rates make pensions more expensive. If interest rates are low, we need more money to be able to pay the same pension.
• The results of our investments may be disappointing or better than expected.

What is the funding ratio/policy funding ratio?

The funding ratio shows the relation between PME’s capital and the amount PME needs to pay all pensions now and in the future. The policy funding ratio is the average of the funding ratios of the last twelve months. The higher the funding ratio, the better we are doing financially.

Pension increase

Every year, the pension board looks at our financial position, and decides if pensions can be increased. In the past few years, our financial position was not good enough.  The government temporarily relaxed the rules in the run-up to the new pension system. This allowed us to raise pensions by 1.29 percent as per 1 July 2022, and again by 6,2 percent as per 1 January 2023.

Pension decrease

If our policy funding ratio is too low legally speaking, there is a deficit. Pensions may need to be decreased. In the last five years, we did not lower the pensions.

The past 5 years

Below is a list of the changes in pensions during the past 5 years. The third column shows the price increase in percentages.

* Price increases from the month of July of a year compared to the month of July of the previous year.  This is based on information from Statistics Netherlands.

Recovery plan

At the moment, a recovery plan applies to PME. It describes how our financial situation is expected to develop over the next ten years. View the current (policy) funding ratio and the current information about the recovery plan.