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Our future pensions have been used up in recent months more than we can fear. We are too focused on the dramatic present of the pandemic. Understandable but not excusable. In the Additional Note to the Document on Economics and Finance (NaDef) we find that the famous hump in the relationship between pension spending and Gross Domestic Product has become a long plateau, just to use a term that is sadly back in fashion. There is no peak expected, there is a plateau to climb. The ratio of pension spending to GDP will reach a record 17.1 percent by the end of 2020 – we’re talking 300 billion, also because of 100 – and will remain around 16 percent for the next few years . In the euro zone today, on average, 13 percent.
The buoy of 2045
It will start to decline in Italy only in 2045, when at this point the contribution system will be generalized for each treatment with replacement rates, compared to the last salary, even lower. Only in a quarter of a century, if all goes well, will we see a reduction in the relative weight of public welfare over the wealth produced. Thanks to the crisis, we have created an even more expensive mortgage for the future. Without the slightest debate. Says so.
And give
Other data should make us think. The first is the hole of 4.6 billion that was not entered into the professional coffers. Almost half, as they write the sun 24 hours Antonello Cherchi, Flavia Landolfi and Valeria Uva – caused by the backlog of architects, engineers and surveyors. Notaries are unique without any problem (and God forbid). One in four nurses has outstanding debts (and perhaps they could receive more help in this new health emergency). The Funds have all the flexibility to recover late payments from their members. But the hole will fatally affect future treatments, impoverishing them. In the latest Covip report, the Superintendency of the sector, of which Mario Padula is president, found that a fifth of the members of the pension funds do not pay their shares. Obviously many are in trouble. But, just in recent days, the ABI, the banking association, announced that bank deposits increased in September, compared to the previous year, by 8 percent, to a record high of 1.682 billion. Unless we are talking about totally separate worlds, it is not ruled out that not a few members of the funds have preferred to choose the liquidity of a precautionary savings -which does not pay anything- to the investment in their future retirement, even in the first and fundamental pillar. as in the case of the Casse.
As if the future did not exist
All this is a symptom of the deep economic crisis we are experiencing. But also from a cultural reflection that leads us to consider investment in retirement, particularly in the second and third pillars, or category and individual, as something easier to renounce, even discretionary. As if the future did not exist and it was not about those young people that we talk about all the time only to betray them with our concrete choices.
Just one example: insurance long term careprovided by many pension funds or individual products, a concrete response to the tragic suffering of a generation of elderly people affected by the pandemic. And it would relieve young people of the future tasks of assisting the not self-sufficient which, in many cases, taking into account the aging of the population, will be simply unsustainable.
The 20% drop
The negotiation funds have not had, for now, a drop in contributions. The expansion of the redundancy fund has protected them for the moment. But what will happen when the lockdown on layoffs ends and we see a likely painful corporate restructuring? The European House Ambrosetti presented in recent days, together with the Perseo Sirio fund and Hsbc Global Asset Management, a detailed study on pension funds coordinated by Lorenzo Tavazzi.
The number of supplementary pension positions (today 9.1 million) increased faster than the contributions paid (15.9 billion). And we still don’t pay for the Covid effect. The estimated drop of 20 percent. Membership rates are below 30 percent. And its growth must be promoted. Not only with a different tax treatment, perhaps at the time of disbursement and not payment (it would be enough to return to 11.5 percent in 2015 when it rose to 20) but also with an adequate information campaign. Those who need these tools the most, those who know them least, says Tavazzi.
The example of public employees
An example is the case of public employees (3.24 million, 57 percent women, average age 50.6 years) for whom there is no formula for silent consent and the belief that the State always and in any case protects the future welfare of yours. employees.
Trading funds (31 in Assofondipensione, of which Giovanni Maggi is president, 3.2 million members and assets of 56.1 billion) in 2019 had returns between 7.2 and 12.2 percent against 1 , 5 percent of the severance pay or TFS and they recovered almost all the losses at the beginning of 2020. They are patient investors, medium and long term. They are able to support the dimensional growth of companies, but only 3 percent of their assets are invested in Italy. Too many limits.
The third pillar
In the so-called third pillar, that is, that of individual products (open pension funds and individual pension plans or PIPs), in June 2020 there was a limited decrease (2.3%) in contributions, equivalent to 2000 million and 673 million. Also in this case, beyond the non-marginal question of costs and the final transparency of the services, the need arises to favor their subscription. One idea could be to not limit the use of the tax allowance ceiling (5,000 164 euros) to the family. The example of an elderly person who adopts a precarious young person, helping him in time to build a reserve pension would have great social and intergenerational value. We are a generous people, we can also demonstrate this by helping the work experiences of young people outside of parental ties.
Saving for retirement as a basic need
The crucial question – says Raffaele Agrusti, founder along with Giancarlo Scotti, both former generals, of Propensione – not only how much will he have retirement, the conversion rate that decreases over the years, but when he can collect it. The crisis of the pandemic makes a social bomb that we pretend not to see even more dangerous and explosive. People who will no longer have their jobs but who will have to wait years before retiring. And what to do? We must get used to considering saving for retirement as a basic necessity. Parents start doing it for their newborn children, don’t wait. And the institutions promote serious and documented information campaigns.
The INPS had the so-called orange envelopes but removed them (a significant gesture of a general mentality) to save on postage. An extraordinary case – continues Agrusti – that of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, which a few years after the supplementary pension law launched a housing plan conditioned to the subscription by applicants of a pension fund with at least 15 thousand euros already paid. Italians really like the house. Retirement is the home of the future.
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