The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) chair, Petra Hielkema, has said she wants to look at why the pan-European personal pension product (PEPP) wasn’t a success.

Speaking at the PensionsEurope Annual Conference in Brussels today, 25 April, Hielkema said: “If you look at the PEPP, it wasn’t really a success, I wouldn’t throw it in the bin. I would look at it and see why it wasn’t, as there are some very good features in there.”

Regulation to introduce PEPPs was adopted by the European Parliament in April 2019, with member states given until March 2022 to transpose the legislation, paving the way for providers to launch the products. Two years on from the March 2022 deadline, there is just one registered PEPP provider on EIOPA’s register – a Slovakian company called Finax.

Despite 12 million Europeans working across borders, and PEPP being a cross-border savings solution, Hielkema thinks “we should step away from that”, adding that it has many good features.

“It’s simple, it’s cheap, it’s transparent, it’s digital. There are a lot of features in the PEPP that result in simple savings products that might be helpful for people in a market to save.

"If you look at the French market, where currently the third pillar has introduced a savings product, it has a lot of features of the PEPP, so besides reviewing the PEPP, indeed looking at the cost cap, definitely looking at the tax treatment, it could be helpful to also see per country, how features of the PEPP system could fit into the system and help people to save,” Hielkema said.

“Ultimately, I feel that we can make things as complex as we want but the multitude of citizens in any country is helped by a simple product... Yes, we are all different but in the end, we all want something simple, that we can understand that will pay out when we retire.”

She also added that the name of the PEPP is “unfortunate”, which to many in banking is known as the “pandemic emergency purchase programme”.

During the same speech, Hielkema reiterated her calls for the development of European pension dashboards and tracking systems, as she believes it could help close the pension gender gap.

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