European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque defended this Thursday, 19th, the reinforcement of supplementary pensions, to diversify sources of income in retirement, also highlighting the possibility of increasing the role of insurance companies as institutional investors in Europe.
“We know that public systems will continue to be the basis of social protection, but we also know that in the challenging demographic context, to put it mildly, we need to diversify sources of income in retirement”, said the Commissioner of Financial Services and the Savings and Investment Union, in a speech at the Insurance Economic Forum, promoted by the Portuguese Association of Insurers, in Lisbon.
For Maria Luís Albuquerque, it is necessary to reinforce supplementary pensions, namely through the European pensions package, presented in November, which aims to “increase citizen participation, improve the efficiency of products and create adequate incentives for long-term savings”.
In this sense, the former Minister of Finance also highlighted that the insurance sector “has a central role”, taking into account that insurance companies are experts in “long-term financial planning and prudent risk management”.
“More retirement savings also means more capital available to finance the European economy, creating a virtuous circle between individual financial security and economic growth,” he highlighted.
The official also highlighted the role of insurance companies as one of the “largest institutional investors in Europe”, pointing out that there is “room for greater participation by the insurance sector as a source of patient capital”.
“We cannot have long-term capital immobilized by excessively conservative interpretations of risk”, he reiterated, arguing that the insurance sector can be “an engine of investment, innovation and European economic growth”.
It is worth noting that the Minister of Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, announced on Tuesday that the government will present a savings plan to reinforce supplementary pensions in Portugal, in addition to public ones.
“We will wait for the Commission [Europeia] finish your work and then we will present a savings plan that is being worked on with regulators and also with market agents”, said Joaquim Miranda Sarmento.
Speaking to Portuguese journalists in Brussels, at the end of the meeting of EU finance ministers in which the supplementary pension package proposed by the community executive was discussed, the government official pointed out that “savings in Portugal have risen a lot since the pandemic [pois] historically it represented 7% or 8% of disposable income and today it is around 12% or 13% of disposable income”.
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