The Netherlands’ Pensioen Federatie has said that solutions should be proposed to help self-employed people save into a pension.

In a column, Pensioen Federatie chairman, Ger Jaarsma, said the federation wanted to continue discussions with the self-employed, government, trade unions and other stakeholders on ensuring self-employed workers have an adequate income in retirement.

He pointed to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics that showed 94 per cent of self-employed workers are not saving into a pension and “hardly put any money aside for later”.

Jaarsma noted that, on one hand, this was not a problem for pension funds, as they implement collective labour agreements whereby they accrue pensions for nearly 6 million salaried workers and pay out to 3.6 million pensioners.

However, he also stated that the mission of pension funds was to realise a pension for all workers.

“If the labour market changes and more people (want to) work as self-employed, then we have to come up with new solutions,” Jaarsma said.

“One of the solutions is so-called auto-enrolment with opt-out: Self-employed people join the pension fund in their sector; the entrepreneur who has already arranged his pension in a different way does not have to participate.

“That brings the decision to build up pension forward. Do not delay, but immediately decide how to arrange your pension.

“Unfortunately, experimenting with this, as some pension funds wanted, is not successful. Legislative amendments are required for this and there are not (yet) any.”

He concluded that work in this area was not finished yet, with the mission remaining to ensure that every worker has an adequate income in retirement.

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