Roundtables on Internal Supervision Pension Funds

Together with Philipp Golka and Aalt-Jan Smits (both Leiden University), I recently participated in two roundtable discussions with trustees and internal supervisors from the Dutch pension sector. During the roundtables, organized by Monitoring Commission of the Dutch Pension Fund Code (Monitoringcommissie Code Pensioenfondsen), my colleagues and I presented the first results of our research project on internal supervision in Dutch pension funds. Internal supervision is a control function of pension fund boards that has been introduced by the legislator in 2014.

Drawing on a survey as well as in-depth qualitative interviews, the Leiden team described the experiences of internal supervisors in safeguarding participant preferences, diversity, and the learning capacity of their organization. In addition, we led a discussion among pension fund board members and internal supervisors by presenting a number of dilemmas that, according to our research, internal supervisors face as part of their responsibilities. The findings from these round table discussions will inform the final research report that aims at serving as a scientific basis for future improvement of the Dutch Pension Fund Code.

The roundtable discussions were held on September 22 and 28 2021 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. More information regarding the research project on internal supervision can be found here.