In the first quarter of 2021, Dutch pension funds saw their financial position improve again. Due to rising interest rates in financial markets, the value of aggregate liabilities fell EUR 111 billion to EUR 1,576 billion, outstripping the EUR 15 billion decline in aggregate assets to EUR 1,676 billion.
The Dutch pension sector’s average funding ratio came to 106.3% as at 31 March 2021. This represents a 6.0 percentage point increase from 31 December 2020 (see Figure 1). The funding ratio rose for the fourth consecutive quarter, and it is above the figure for the first quarter of 2020, which was 89.6%. The funding ratio reflects a pension fund’s current financial position, expressing the ratio between available assets and liabilities.
The policy funding rate came to 96.9% as at 31 March 2021. This represents a 1.9 percentage point increase from 31 December 2020. The policy funding ratio is the average of the funding ratios for the past twelve months. It increased because the funding ratio in the first quarter of 2021 was higher than that in the corresponding quarter of 2020.
At De Nederlandsche Bank, we independently compile statistics on the Dutch financial sector and economy. This article is based on these statistics. More information on our statistics and all dashboards can be found on our Statistics homepage.
We used the following statistics to compile this news release:
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