Penad Pension Services is very pleased to announce the opening of a new office in the Caribbean. Penad has been working with banks and trust companies in the region since 1995, and this year the company decided to partner with a group of local pension experts and establish a full-time operation in Curaçao. The Managing Director of the new office, Laurens Keesen, describes the benefits of this expansion.

In the Caribbean, only a very small percentage of people have any kind of meaningful pension at all. In this culture, it’s not normal to plan your future. Every day, you’ll hear people say, "See you in a few hours," and then add, "If God wills it!" People traditionally feel their future is not really in their hands, so what is the point of planning?

But these attitudes are beginning to change and more employers are being challenged to help care for the retirement needs of their employees. But even when employer-sponsored pension plans are in place, the lack of a proper regulatory environment and standardization means that pension plan members often have very little confidence in the ultimate value of their pensions.

In the five islands of the Netherlands Antilles, for example, the private pension services industry is much less strictly regulated than its Canadian counterpart. In Canada, pension administrators must provide plan members with a written explanation of their plan’s provisions, a comprehensive annual disclosure, and information upon request. In the Netherlands Antilles, employees often receive account statements a year late and without information such as accrued benefits, which is mandatory in Canada.
Penad Team

Enter the Canadians.
Over the past fifteen years, endless pension commissions and reform processes have been visited upon the Canadian pension industry to try to whip pension plan sponsors into shape and ensure that the retirement needs
of plan members are protected. There’s nothing worse than when a company or organization either spends the pension fund of its employees or they ‘lose’ millions of dollars through shoddy administration procedures.

As a result of all this policing and policy-setting, Canada now enjoys some of the highest standards in the world when it comes to pension plan management. Even with the inefficiencies in the Canadian system - the lack of standardisation across jurisdictions is an example of one on-going problem - Canadian pension plan members have a fairly well-developed understanding of the value of their pensions and confidence that their pension plans will most probably be around when they are ready to retire (Canada’s CPP notwithstanding!)

As a participant in the pension reform process in Canada and with a high level of expertise in pension plan management issues, Penad Pension Services saw the Caribbean situation as an opportunity to transfer Canadian ‘soft’ technology (in the form of standards, processes, and procedures) to the Caribbean market. Beginning in 1995, Penad began working with banks and trust companies as well as government advisory bodies in the Caribbean. Penad set up software-based automated pension administration systems which were used to service the pension plan administration needs of the clients of financial services providers.

As Penad continued working in the region over the past four years, they saw that the time was ripe to open an office and partner with local pension consultants to provide Caribbean-based pension plan sponsors with ‘local’ pension plan management solutions using Canadian soft technology and Penad’s proprietary software systems.

September 1, 1999 marks the launch of this sister company, Penad Caribbean N.V. Based in Willemstad, Curaçao, the new office will initially service existing clients on Aruba and the five islands of the Netherlands Antilles.

Part of the Royal Dutch Kingdom, the six islands - Curaçao (the largest), Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius and Aruba - are famed tourist destinations, with Willemstad on the UNESCO world heritage list. Their official languages are Dutch, English and Papiamentu. Besides tourism, major economic sectors include oil refinery and international financial services.

Two large international insurers and a few pension funds dictate the supply side of the area’s growing pension plan market. Unregulated by government legislation, their standards of service are well below those of the highly-regulated Canadian industry. Plan sponsors and members alike increasingly want better advice, higher investment performance and more prompt and flexible service from their plan administrators.

Penad’s entrance into the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba will finally fulfill these consumer demands. Fully automating all pension administration processes, Penad’s proprietary pension administration software will help make plan information much more accessible and will offer an unprecedented level of service in employee statements, processing of benefits and surrenders, and handling of accounts. Moreover, Penad’s software and expertise are uniquely capable of accommodating the multilingual, multi-currency corporate structures that exist in this diverse and economically vibrant region.

In addition to its software, Penad Caribbean N.V. will handle all aspects of pension administration, including pension plan consulting, authoring of plan rules, investment performance consulting, and actuarial services. The union of local market knowledge, world-class standards and leading-edge software that is Penad Caribbean N.V. promises to reshape the Caribbean pension-plan industry - for the better!

Laurens Keesen, Managing Director of Penad Caribbean N.V., is an actuary and pension expert with a wide range of experience working for pension plan sponsors in the Caribbean and Europe.