Nederlands
Norma van den Berg became the secretary of the Astellas Pension Fund in 2016. She is a member of the board of the pension fund on behalf of the employer. Norma has significant experience as a board member; she works just short of full time in the world of pensions. In addition to her role as secretary of the Astellas Pension Fund, she is a member of the boards of both Bedrijfstakpensioenfonds Waterbouw and Bedrijfstakpensioenfonds Bouw. We asked about her experiences in 2020, the year in which the pension fund was confronted with the coronavirus crisis and the unexpected loss of its chair. We also looked ahead and asked: what are the plans for the years to come?
‘We thought that 2020 would be a quiet year, or at least less hectic than 2019 was. 2019 was all about the new administration agreement with the employer. When that had all been sorted out, we thought that we would be able to take it easy for a while.
It just goes to show you, things never really calm down in the world of pensions. Although this time it was not because of something directly related to pensions, yet it still affected all pension funds. We are of course talking about the coronavirus crisis. We were confronted with it rather suddenly.
At times like that, you immediately think of two things: how will this affect our financial situation (and therefore the pensions of our members), and how do we ensure that the pension fund continues to function as normal? We needed to make a lot of operational changes. We were used to regularly meeting in person, but that was not an option any more. We switched to video-conferencing via WebEx almost immediately. I am amazed by how quickly we can make such a change when we truly need to. You can achieve quite a lot when it seems you have no other option. It was a great experience. Although we still feel a quite a significant need to see each other again.’
‘We lost a lot of money on the stock markets, but thankfully we recovered quickly’
‘Starting in March, the stock markets nosedived. Combined with the low interest rate, that drop in stock prices significantly lowered our funding ratio. We started the year with a current coverage ratio of 106.0%. At the start of the coronavirus crisis, it seemed as if panic had broken out – especially on stock markets. Our lowest point was at the end of March, when our coverage ratio was 94.2%.
The board remained calm then too. We stuck to our policy, and that came good. The dip was short lived. Our shares increased in value once more and even the interest rate unexpectedly increased slightly. That interest rate in particular has a big impact on the level of our coverage ratio. A slight rise or drop could have a huge impact; the interest rate is a massive lever for your coverage ratio. Ultimately, we were able to recover a large part of our losses in the second half of 2020. This meant that we ended the year on a coverage ratio of 104.4%’.
‘The sudden passing of our chair was a massive shock’
‘For all board members, 2020 was a year with personal loss. At the end of September, our chair Dirk Veenvliet passed away completely unexpectedly. That was a massive shock. We are a small board, counting five members; we all know one another very well Dirk passed away out of nowhere. It made us all fall quiet.
However, the pension fund still had to keep functioning. We all put our backs into it. I became interim chair, although the combination of secretary-chair is far from ideal. Thankfully, we were able to work with the employer to immediately start searching for Dirk’s successor. We succeeded; Dick Vis was appointed as new chair on 8 February 2021.
I think that we have managed to get things back on track for the most part. The teamwork among the members of the board is excellent. This also applies to the collaboration with the Accountability Body, the employer, and the employee organisations. It is good for members to know that a reduction of pensions is not on the cards at the moment. However, the pension fund is not fully recovered yet, we remain vulnerable. This remains the case even though our coverage ratio increased further during the first months of this year, reaching 111.9% at the end of April 2021. This is higher than where it was in early 2020.’
‘We maintain much contact with our members, that is the benefit of being a company pension fund’
Astellas has two offices in the Netherlands, one in Leiden and one in Meppel. The board and Accountability Body both include employees from both offices, and pensioners are also represented in both. This is truly an advantage of a business with its own pension fund. It makes maintaining contact with members very easy under normal circumstances. In 2020, that was more difficult of course because everyone was working from home. We hope that this will change quickly.
This means that a company pension fund definitely has its advantages. We should also be asking ourselves how long we can keep this up. After all, we are a small pension fund with fewer than 1,000 members. The pension funds must follow requirements that are getting stricter all the time.
Is our pension fund still future-proof, or do we need to transfer our pension scheme to somewhere else? This means that we have to have many consultations with the social partners. Ultimately, we do this for the pensions of our members. If winding down our own pension fund is better financially, then we definitely have to consider this. This is what we are concentrating on at the moment. What do our members want? We will investigate this soon.
We will better involve the members in our socially responsible investing (SRI) policy. Our members are definitely interested in this and the pension fund greatly values this as well. We are therefore going to work on this in the months to come. A new pension system is also on our horizon as well. If you work in the world of pensions, you will never have a dull day!’