The new law of public pension funds starts in this second half of the year after passing the parliamentary process by a minimum. The rule aims to popularize these collective plans of saving, which until now were limited to large companies and tied to private formats and high bank commissions. And that they make them their own, especially SMEs and the self-employed. However, the spirit under which the rule was drawn up by the Minister of Inclusion, Jose Luis Escrivacollides in its early stages with the existing lack of knowledge among small and medium-sized companies about them.
The new law, although approved by the Cortes, still lacks regulatory development and is also pending to finalize the insurance structure, that is, the financial part of the savings mechanism. However, according to a survey of caser, two out of three SMEs and freelancers in Catalonia they say they don’t even know what an employment pension plan is. An even greater lack of knowledge among employees, that, based on the survey data, only the 4% of workers has asked their addresses if they have any product or service of this type. This survey has been drawn up among a sample of 450 companies nationwide and 100 of these in Catalonia.
“Unlike other countries, here there is very little culture of these collective savings plans. And the beneficial taxation that existed until now for individual plans meant that anyone who planned to save did so through this channel,” he says. the general secretary of Pimec, Joseph Ginesta.
The Collective negotiation stands as the main gateway for these funds, since the new rule enables a mechanism for sectoral organizations to promote these public pension funds through agreements. And so the companies in these sectors can directly take advantage of one of these and each one does not have to create their own. In addition to the fact that the union of different savings enables better profitability. “If the social agents do not assume it as an important part in the negotiation of new agreements, it will not prosper”, warns the professor of economics at the UB, Montserrat Guillén.
From the Catalan employers recognize that the current state of collective bargaining – with a high stagnation given the high inflation and the pugna salarial– is not inclined to introduce these plans and asks to “think small” to make it easier for SMEs to incorporate under flexible conditions. However, the UB professor contradicts that the rise in interest rates advanced by the central banks can offset it, given that the price of money will increase and the returns on savings products as well. “The tax incentives of these funds are better than the private ones, which promises to shift savings from individual plans to collective ones,” says Guillén.
The predisposition exists
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The predisposition and interest in exploiting these collective and public savings mechanisms – which promise lower interest rates than private ones – exist, again taking into account the data from Caser. According to these, the 73% of Catalan SMEs considers it interesting to contract savings products or services for its employees, a substantially higher proportion in Catalonia than in the average for all of Spain, where this percentage is 57%. However, and despite this apparent predisposition, only 7% have contracted a long-term savings mechanism, according to the same survey.
At the moment, the only sector that has signed an agreement with the unions to reserve part of the workers’ salaries and allocate it to these ‘collective piggy banks’ has been the building at the state level. The sources consulted agree that those sectors that are less labor intensive, such as industrylas offices and dispatches o to consultancy, are more likely to end up giving birth to these public funds, while the negotiation of agreements ends up going beyond what is merely salary or working hours. On the other hand, in those with worse salary conditions it is difficult for the negotiators to end up sacrificing part of the possible salary increases in savings products.