The Pensions Board publishes Hybrid Pension Schemes booklet

Friday 28 September 2007: Today, the Pensions Board launched a Hybrid Pension Scheme booklet which provides guidance to those involved with pension scheme design to understand the different types of scheme designs available.

Brendan Kennedy, CEO of The Pensions Board , welcomed the publication of the booklet, saying, “I think that this booklet will be extremely useful in giving people a working knowledge of the emerging area of hybrid pension scheme design. Over the last year or so, the Irish pensions’ environment has seen the emergence of innovative new models of pension scheme design. While defined benefit and defined contribution models still have a key role to play, interest is growing in alternatives to traditional designs.”

The booklet is intended to help employers, employees, union representatives and others involved with pensions to understand the different types of pension scheme designs, with a view to helping them to reach agreement about the most suitable type of pension scheme in a particular situation.

The booklet explains the features of different designs and provides enough information for those involved to understand the important features of pension design and to make informed decisions.

Hard copies of the Hybrid Pension Schemes booklet are available from The Pensions Board, please call (01) 613 1900 or email info@pensionsboard.ie

Download a pdf of A Guide to Hybrid Pension Schemes booklet (193 KB).

To view and print pdf files, a viewer program called Acrobat Reader is required. A free copy of Adobe Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe website.

ENDS

For further information:
David Malone
Head of Information & Training
The Pensions Board Tel (01) 613 1900

Jackie Gallagher
Q4 Public Relations Tel (01) 475 1444 / 087 2371838

Notes

About The Pensions Board
The Pensions Board is the statutory body set up to regulate occupational pension schemes and PRSAs and to advise the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, and through him, the Government, on overall pension policy development. See www.pensionsboard.ie.

Hybrid Pension Schemes
As part of the social partnership agreement, Towards 2016, the Pensions Board was asked to research benefit design options in the occupational pensions area. This research included an examination of current design issues in both defined benefit and defined contribution arrangements. The output of this work is the Hybrid Pension Schemes booklet which provides guidance as to designs which encompass the positive elements of each arrangement while adjusting the costs and risks to the parties involved.

The Hybrid booklet was considered by the Partnership Pensions Review Group. This group was chaired by the Department of the Taoiseach and its membership also included Government Departments, The Pensions Board, employers and trade unions.

 
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