ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has allowed licenced investment advisers to offer employer pension funds.

This will be done as part of the new “Employer Pension Funds” and allowing asset management companies to offer annuity payments of pension under the Voluntary Pension System (VPS) concept, for which the SECP has also begun a 14-day public consultation period.

The newly introduced concept of Employer Pension Funds will address the reluctance of employers to offer VPS as well as provide greater portability and flexibility to participants.

Retaining the primary structure of pension funds, the Employer Pension Funds will have flexible seed capital requirements as well as bilaterally agreed expense ratios with no sales load chargeable to participants.

There is also no requirement of disclosing the expense ratios and management fee on the Mutual Funds Association of Pakistan (MUFAP) and asset management companies’ websites, along with removal of requirement to publish rankings on MUFAP website.

Through these amendments, the practice of charging selling and marketing expenses to pension funds shall be discontinued.

Moreover, in addition to life insurance companies that are mandated to offer life contingent annuities to VPS participants at the time of their retirement, the asset management companies shall also be able to offer such annuities to the VPS participants subject to conditions laid down by the commission.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2022