Netspar, the knowledge network focused on bringing together science and the pension sector, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. We look back on these two decades with Anne Balter (theme coordinator at Netspar) and Rob van den Goorbergh (member of the Netspar Partner Research Council on behalf of APG). Which developments played an important role? And how have APG and Netspar benefited each other with respect to the renewed system? “Instead of making value judgments, we now focus much more on formulating the different characteristics of policy options.”
How has Netspar developed in the past twenty years?
Anne: “Initially, Netspar was primarily a knowledge network that provided opinions. It is now more concerned with the question of under what assumptions a particular choice by a legislator, administrator, or participant might be attractive. Examples include the choice of exposure to investments, the legal state pension age, or the options that can be offered to participants. We now focus much more on the different characteristics of policy options. The final choice is up to politicians and other parties involved.”
Rob: “APG has been one of the partners from the very beginning. Over the past two decades, Netspar has developed from a local platform into an international network of scientists involved in pension issues. Most of the partners come from the Dutch pension and insurance sector. Netspar has made an enormous contribution to the scientific foundation for decisions in the pension sector. The new pension contract and the substantiation of legislation have become much more professional, thanks in part to Netspar.”
How did APG and Netspar benefit from each other during those years?
Anne: “There has been a great deal of interaction, including in the form of researchers being appointed to APG for a specific period of time. A recent example is the project around measuring participants’ risk and sustainability preferences. The regulator now requires such metrics, and many Netspar researchers have contributed ideas on how APG can implement this. In previous years, they also contributed ideas on measuring the value of intergenerational risk sharing and how to deal with shocks in life expectancy. Another example is the fight against the gray and white spots, i.e., people who are accruing insufficient or no pensions. In addition, after the failure of the Pension Agreement in 2011, Netspar contributed to normalizing the sour relations between the various parties involved. More recently, Jan Bonenkamp (ALM manager at APG, ed.), Bas Werker (professor at Tilburg University), and I conducted research into the standard method. This is the basis for how participants’ assets are distributed during the transition to the new system.”
Rob: “The PhD student who worked with us at the time on research into measuring risk preferences was Jorgo Goossens. That helped us enormously in the services we started offering as a team for risk preference studies. This is very interesting research, which requires expertise from various disciplines. Not only investment specialists, but also IT professionals, actuaries, communication specialists, and people who know how to set up a survey and ask the right questions, who understand people. Jorgo is now an assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, but still works at APG part-time. He has also expanded his field of research to include participant preferences for sustainability.
I think APG is one of the most active partners within the Netspar network. In total, around forty people from all parts of the organization play an active role in publications, webinars, and podcasts. They often do this in collaborations with Netspar scientists. For example, Anne and I worked with Nikolaus Schweizer to publish research on the prosperity effects of underestimating and overestimating risk appetite.”
