The European Commission (EC) should focus more on advancing pension saving goals, and less on regulating products, Sigedis general director, Steven Janssen, has said.

Speaking during a European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) webinar yesterday, 27 November, Janssen was asked what measures he would like the EC to focus on as it looks to solve pension gaps and provide more funds for investment in the European economy.

In his response, however, Janssen suggested that there is "no one specific measure" that would solve the majority of the problems, arguing that much of the industry discussion has been focused on pensions as a product, rather than as a goal.

During the webinar, fellow panellists, PensionsEurope chair and Irish Association of Pension Funds CEO, Jerry Moriarty, and retirement expert, Anna Lester, discussed the pros and cons of the different pension approaches taken in Ireland and the USA, respectively, highlighting the importance of ownership in auto-enrolment and the flaws with 401ks.

However, Janssen argued that focusing on these issues frames pensions in terms of products and assets, rather than an objective people should be targeting.

"It gets delinked from the goal you actually want to achieve and then people start using [their pension] for other reasons.

“It is a lot of investment as a society, setting up that framework, and then at the end of that journey, the money ends up being used for something completely different.

"Is that something for the European Commission to solve? Well, at least if their focus would be less on regulating the product and more on advancing the pension goal, then that would be one thing."

Moriarty agreed that there is a "limit" to how much the commission can do in terms of the design of different pension systems, as this is down to individual countries.

However, he suggested that systems that take decisions away from people and provide a framework that allow for good decisions to be made on behalf of people is good, highlighting AE as an example of this.

Moriarty also suggested that there could be a greater role for pension funds in the search for investment funds, acknowledging that the EC is looking for a lot of investment to improve the European economy.

"It's clearly looking at pension funds, which have a of money to invest. Those two things don't always match, as the pension funds have fiduciary responsibilities," he acknowledged.

"But I do think there is probably an opportunity for investments to be made available to pension funds, and that can work both ways, so I think working together to achieve that could be a good thing to focus on.

Lester also stressed the need for scale in her recommendations for the European Commission, emphasising that large markets drive price efficiency.

"So the larger you can make the market that you're operating in, the more price competition you're going to see," she said, also emphasising the importance of a professional fiduciary.

---