Hanfa Board meeting: new regulations governing pension insurance companies
At its meeting held today, the Board of the Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (Hanfa) adopted a number of regulations governing the operation of pension insurance companies.
First, the amendments to the Ordinance on the requirements for membership in management and supervisory boards of pension insurance companies prescribe the contents of the application and the required documentation for potential members of the supervisory board, and supplement the provisions on the documentation to be enclosed with the application for approval to perform the function of a member of the management board. In addition, provisions have been introduced specifying the reasons on the basis of which Hanfa may grant its approval for the term of office of a management board member for a period shorter than the usual 5 years.
Furthermore, the Ordinance on pension insurance companies’ pension scheme distribution prescribes documentation proving that a legal or natural person meets all the necessary requirement for distributing pension schemes of the pension insurance company and that they are familiar with the product they distribute and have all the relevant information they are obliged to provide to a potential pension beneficiary, in order to be able to distribute pension scheme products in an efficient and transparent manner and answer all the questions of potential clients in an adequate manner, enabling them to understand the pension scheme and make an informed decision on concluding a pension contract.
The Ordinance on marketing activities and website of pension insurance companies prescribes the rules for pension insurance companies’ marketing activities and the data and information that must be included in their website. This Ordinance introduces some additional obligations for pension insurance companies, such as the obligation to submit to Hanfa marketing information referring to data and/or calculations from the pension calculation calculator for the purpose of obtaining approval for publication and the obligation to publish data on costs covered by assets covering technical provisions managed by the pension insurance company.
Pursuant to its statutory obligations, Hanfa has also adopted the Ordinance on the contents of the application for approval to take over a pension insurance company’s pension contracts portfolio. Given that the Act on Pension Insurance Companies provides for such situations, Hanfa was obliged to adopt the corresponding ordinance defining the approval issuing procedure in more detail.
The alignment with the law also resulted in the adoption of a new Ordinance on the partial lump sum payment made to the old-age and early old-age basic pension beneficiaries, since the legal amendments increased a possible lump-sum pension payment from 15 to 20 percent, provided that the basic pension of the insured person is higher than the minimum pension. This Ordinance lays down the procedure pursuant to which a pension insurance company acts in such cases.
Finally, at today's’ meeting the Hanfa Board also adopted amendments to the Ordinance on the requirements for performing a key function in a pension insurance company.
More details about this and other news from today's meeting are available here.
