Unfortunately no indexation of your pension in 2024

Unfortunately, the pension fund does not have enough room to increase your pension (indexation) this year. This is because the consumer price index is lower this year than it was last year. We do, however, keep track of all omitted indexation in our records. Our news flashes for August and December 2023 explain why you will not be getting any indexation this year.

Indexation depends on the policy funding rate. If the policy funding rate at 30 September is higher than 110%, partial indexation is allowed. If the policy funding ratio is 150% or higher, full indexation is allowed.

However, indexation is only allowed if prices actually went up. To determine whether prices have risen, we use the consumer price index (CPI) for households in the Netherlands as published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) every month. Our pension fund takes the period running from October to October of the current year to determine whether indexation will be possible in the following year. In comparison with October 2022, the consumer price index in  October 2023 was negative: -2.0% . This means you will not be getting indexation for your future pension benefits from 1 January 2024.

The consumer price index at 31 October 2023 was lower than it was at 30 October 2022. In other words, there was deflation instead of inflation. We are not allowed to increase pensions in a situation of deflation.

That is correct. Prices may have gone up in 2023, but less so than in 2022. More importantly, the CBS modified its method of calculating the price index. In 2022, energy prices accounted for a substantial part of the index. That was because the CBS assumed everyone would be directly affected by the rising cost of energy. However, many households had fixed energy contracts that had been closed before energy prices started going up. So the CBS modified the index. In fact, price inflation was overestimated in October 2022 and underestimated in October 2023.

Go to Consumer prices; price index 2015=100 (cbs.nl). We are using the overall consumer price index for households in the Netherlands as published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) for the period October 2022 to October 2023.

Actually, you were warned. In August we sent you a news flash pointing this out. Besides which this is the first time we are in a situation of deflation. It really is a very rare situation.

We prefer to opt for clarity. That means we set the rules in advance and don't modify them during the game. Not modifying the rules isn’t necessarily bad for your pension. We are building up a buffer that will benefit your pension when we switch to the new pension rules. In other words: not increasing your pension now means the pension fund's funding rate stays high. As a result, we have a large amount of surplus funds. When we switch to the new pension rules, we will spread that extra money across the pensions of all participants.

The rules prescribe that omitted indexation cannot be paid out until the policy funding rate is around 150%. When we reach that point, omitted indexation for the year that’s longest ago will be paid out first.

You can find these here on the ING CDC pensionfund website.

You can read the indexation decision in the news flash of December 2023. In January 2024 you will receive a personal letter from your pension fund. Letters from previous years can be found on My Pension.

No, it does not. These two pension funds are legally separated and each have their own indexation policy. You can find the respective policies on the pension funds’ websites. More information on the indexation policy of Pensioenfonds ING is available here. And for ING CDC Pensioenfonds it is available here.