Amount of reserves

Sigedis

What is the amount of supplementary pension provision? For all the 4.29 million people with supplementary pension rights, the average accumulated reserve amounts to €24 352. The reserve earned by the average member, i.e. the median, amounts to €3 459 and is therefore considerably lower than the average. This means that half of the members have so far saved a pension reserve of at least €3 459 and the other half is below this threshold. The average reserve earned by members combining active and dormant pension rights amounts to €48 796. This is almost double the average pension reserve of people who build up only active pension rights in their current job (€24 321). The difference is even greater if we look at the median: EUR 11 987 and EUR 3 438 respectively. Members who have only acquired rights in one or more previous jobs, and who are therefore ‘passively’ affiliated to one or more old pension plans, have the lowest acquired reserves. The graph below shows, by gender, the distribution in percentiles of the pension reserve for members approaching pension age (56 to 65 years). A percentile gives each time the amount of the pension reserve below which a certain percentage of the members are. For example, the 10th percentile is €798 for men, meaning that 10% of male members aged 56-65 have a total pension reserve of €798 or less (and therefore 90% have a higher pension reserve). Among women in the same age group, the 10% with the lowest earned reserves have a maximum pension reserve of €348. The 10% of men affiliated with the highest earned reserves have a pension reserve of at least €218.621, while this threshold is €105.789 for women. Average and median earned reserves decreased in 2023 compared to last year, by -0.6% (-€148) and -3.26% (-€155) respectively. If we look at the differences between men and women, we find that in 2023 the reserves acquired by women increased more than those of men. Women saw their average earned reserve increase by 0.92% (+€ 156), while for men, the average decreased by -0.86% (-€ 257).