Company pension scheme – this is how the company pension pays off

When is the company pension scheme worthwhile?

The company pension is particularly worthwhile for you if your boss makes a financial contribution to your old-age provision. Because then you will automatically receive a higher salary, regardless of your professional performance. If you have a good contract and your employer saves with you, the company pension plan is worthwhile even if you have to pay taxes on your supplementary pension.

If you want security for your private supplementary pension and shy away from investing in the stock market, certain forms of company pension schemes may be an option for you. However, if flexibility is important to you when it comes to your retirement provision, you should give preference to other forms of saving for retirement. This is also the opinion of Niels Nauhauser, head of the old-age provision, banks and loans department at the Verbraucherzentrale Baden-Württemberg eV: “One sticking point is that you can no longer access your savings before you retire,” explains the old-age provision expert in an interview. “Compared to other forms of saving, company pension schemes are a very inflexible form of saving for retirement.”

You often have to work for a company for a few years in order to receive co-payments from your employer – so when your boss pays depends on your loyalty.

Important: The right to deferred compensation is independent of this period.

Your employer must pay by 2022 at the latest

The hurdles for the “extra money from the boss” have become smaller since the law for the “implementation of the EU mobility guidelines” came into force on January 1, 2018: For financial support from your employer, three years of employment in a company (previously five years ) and a minimum age of 23 in the event of termination or change of employer. Since 2019, all employees have enjoyed advantages when signing up for a new bAV.

As a result of this reform, the framework conditions for company pension schemes have changed – and they will continue to improve over the next few years.

Already since 2018 Employees benefit if a so-called company pension collective agreement is valid in their industry. Because then employers pay at least 15 percent of the employee savings contribution. The changes also relieve employers: they no longer have to guarantee a minimum pension amount.

Since 2019 All employees who work in an industry without a collective agreement also benefit. The employer must then pay at least 15 percent of the contribution that the employee pays voluntarily.

Caution: Incidentally, this only applies to contracts that are concluded from 2019 onwards. On the Homepage of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs you can read the legislation again specifically.

From 2022 All employers will then have to pay 15 percent of the employee’s contribution into their employees’ company pension scheme – regardless of when a company pension contract was concluded or whether a collective agreement exists.

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