Occupational pensions play a major role in OECD countries and worldwide, complementing retirement income from state sources. At the end of 2009, private pension savings reached USD 25 trillion. Population ageing has led many OECD countries to undertake a wide range of pension reforms – the overall effect of which has been to reduce public pension promises and, in turn, to increase the importance of private pension savings for retirement.

The OECD Consolidated Core Principles of Occupational Pension Regulation (the “Core Principles”) present the key principles and recommendations that should guide the regulation of privately managed occupational pension systems. The ultimate goal of the Core Principles is to promote the sound operation of private pension plans, pension funds, and pension entities as a means of providing income in retirement to plan members and to promote the security of pension benefits.

The Core Principles provide the fundamental framework and guidance for the regulation of privately managed occupational pension systems. The purpose of the Methodology presented in this paper is to provide a structured approach to the assessment of a jurisdiction’s private pension system in relation to the Core Principles.

This section outlines the type of information that a reviewer will need to form an assessment about the importance of individual principles for the private pensions regulatory framework in a jurisdiction and in forming questions relevant for a judgement about the associated Implementing Guidelines.

This section presents the Core Principles, Implementing Guidelines and commentary against which a jurisdiction’s private pension system will be assessed.

This Methodology is intended to underpin an assessment that will identify the nature and extent of specific strengths and weaknesses of the private pensions systems in a jurisdiction in order to help identify reform priorities through policy dialogue so as to ultimately improve the performance of private pensions in delivering deferred remuneration and to provide security to plan members. The emphasis is on how the private pensions regulatory framework actually functions as a whole or as a system: the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts which is important to take into account when considering policy priorities.

A list of questions has been compiled as an aid to the reviewer in the assessment process. The purpose of the questions is to gather relevant information and background material in order to be able to form a comprehensive understanding of the pension system in the jurisdiction to be assessed.

A list of questions has been compiled as an aid to the reviewer in the assessment process. These questions were designed by the IOPS specifically to aid the reviewer in the assessment of a jurisdiction’s supervision of its private pension system.