Supplementary pensions

Within the context of growing pressure on legal pensions, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of supplementary pension plans. Today, about 80% of the professionally active population is affiliated with a supplementary pension plan, and few HR directors need to be convinced about the need for such plans. What is a challenge, though, is whether and how supplementary pension plans can be considered an instrument of strategic rewards and can thus be aligned to the firm’s overall reward strategy.

That’s why Vlerick’s Centre for Excellence in Strategic Rewards together with its member Vanbreda Risk & Benefits – who has a high level of expertise in the field of supplementary pensions – set out together to answer that question. Professor Xavier Baeten decided to focus on the reward strategy and think about how the design of (specific parts of) a supplementary pension plan can be aligned with the company’s overall reward principles. This proved to be a very interesting and inspiring exercise, whose results are explained in the white paper ‘Supplementary pensions: a strategic reward perspective’.

The white paper consists of 3 parts. First, the concepts of strategic rewards and reward strategy are explained. Next, the main building blocks and relevant concepts of supplementary pensions are focused on. Finally, and this is the core of this white paper, it is explained how these building blocks (and choices to be made) relate to 5 key reward principles.