Netherlands Roundup: ICT Scheme To Continue Pensions Accrual With PNO Media

The €475m Dutch pension fund for the digital sector (TrueBlue) is to place its pensions accrual with PNO Media, the much larger scheme for the creative industry.

It said the €6.7bn PNO Media scheme would take over both TrueBlue’s defined benefit and defined contribution arrangements as of 1 April 2020.

TrueBlue added that at PNO Media, the identity of the ICT sector would be guaranteed, and that PNO would be able to implement both pension arrangements almost unchanged and against lower costs.

Rob de Ridder, TrueBlue’s chair, said his scheme had been facing increasing costs, in part because of insufficient growth on the number of participants.

“PNO Media offered certainty and continuity,” he said.

Nelly Altenburg, chair of PNO Media, noted that part of TrueBlue’s participants could benefit from PNO’s new proposition of DC life cycle arrangements, a hybrid pension plan.

The ICT scheme adds 2,700 workers, 5,100 deferred participants as well as 600 pensioners affiliated with 99 employers.

Currently, PNO Media has 17,000 active participants, 31,000 deferred members and 10,000 pensioners affiliated with 400 companies.

The coverage ratio of both schemes stood at 97.1% and 98.9%, respectively, at the end of October.

NN IP enters partnership with Venn on residential mortgages

The €287bn Dutch institutional investor Nationale Nederlanden Investment Partners has taken a majority stake in mortgage investor Venn Hypotheken.

It said the acquisition would broaden its proposition for institutional players that want to invest in Dutch residential mortages.

The majority stake in the UK and Spain-based company enabled NN IP to come up with mortgage products for clients that prefer an investment mandate rather to an investment fund, it argued.

Since 2015, NN IP offered investments in its Dutch Residental Mortgage Fund, which has attracted €2.7bn of institutional assets so far.

Venn Hypotheken has been established by property financier Venn, who has invested €1bn in residential mortgages issued by Venn Hypotheken.

NN IP said Venn Hypotheken would keep on issuing loans to Venn’s Cartesian securitisation programme.