What do 53.8 million pension participations tell us about pensions and the labor market?

Behind every number is a story. In the “Numbers that count” series, we take a closer look at a single figure that reveals something about pensions, APG, or the world around them. In this edition, we focus on the 53.8 million pension participations that APG administered in 2025 for its affiliated pension funds. What does this enormous number tell us about pension administration and the changing labor market? Pension guidance specialist Fabian Schumans and legal expert Jesse Rijks explain.

A pension participation is the registration of an employee who accrues pension benefits through an employer with one of the pension funds for which APG provides administration services. During the course of a career, an employee may have multiple pension participations, for example by changing employers, pension funds, or employment arrangements. Behind the millions of pension participations administered by APG lies a constant stream of change. Examples include adjustments to salary or contract type, working more or fewer hours, disability, and retirement.

The exact number of changes, or “mutations” in industry jargon, across all these pension participations cannot be determined. However, every participant experiences events during their career that may affect their pension accrual. These changes therefore need to be processed carefully, because they can have consequences for both the accrual and payment of pension benefits.

You’ve both spent many years in the pension sector. What do the millions of pension participations and the continuous changes within them tell us about the way people work and live today?

Schumans: “The high number of changes shows just how much the labor market has evolved. In the past, employees often spent their entire careers in the same sector. Today, people change jobs more frequently, work as self-employed professionals for a period, take time away from work, or choose part-time employment. All of these changes leave their mark on pension administration. That is also one of the reasons why a renewed pension system was introduced. Under the old pension system, choices like these could have a significant negative impact on your pension. In the renewed system, those disadvantages are smaller because pension accrual is much more directly linked to the actual contributions paid by the participant and employer, and it better reflects the participant’s age.”

Rijks: “It also varies by sector. In education, for example, we see many changes because people move into different roles, progress from teaching assistant to teacher, or otherwise move around within the sector. That happened in the past as well, but it remains a sector where a great deal continues to change.”

There are many types of changes that can occur within a pension participation. What is one that is not widely known but can still have a major impact on a pension?

Schumans: “Divorce is a good example of a change with a major impact. We regularly see people discover years later that what they thought they had arranged was never actually arranged. For example, they may have made arrangements for their retirement pension but not for their survivor’s pension, or vice versa. I’ve worked in the pension industry for about twenty years now, and my experience is that roughly seven out of ten people have arranged their pension differently than they thought they had when going through a divorce. Often, they do not discover this until they retire, enter a new relationship, or become ill. That’s when people start thinking about their pension and realize something is missing. By then, it is often much harder to correct the situation.

The consequences of disability can also be significant for a pension, and we receive many questions about that. But we may receive the most questions of all about retirement itself. People need guidance when making the choices involved. In reality, every change within a pension participation matters.”

Rijks: “That’s exactly what makes it difficult. There is no such thing as the single most important change. It always depends on the participant’s perspective.”

Ideally, every change is reported correctly and on time by the employer. What happens when information is missing or not up to date?

Rijks: “In that case, we first ask the employer to provide the missing information. Our systems run checks that flag missing data or information that differs from what we expect. We also compare data with information from sources such as the Dutch Employee Insurance Agency (UWV). If discrepancies emerge, we ask the employer for an explanation. Pension administration is a joint effort involving employers, participants, organizations such as UWV, and us as the administrator. Employers provide the data, we verify it against various sources, and participants raise concerns when something is missing. Together, we make sure that pension entitlements are based on accurate information.

The Dutch Central Bank also monitors this. We must be able to demonstrate that the pension entitlements someone receives correspond to the information originally provided by the employer. If the source data is incorrect, the outcome will be incorrect as well.”

Schumans: “Pension administration is the foundation of everything. I need to know about changes in time so that I can provide people with the right guidance. Pension administration may seem technical, but behind every change is an event in someone’s life. A new job, a divorce, illness, or retirement. And all of those events affect the accrual and payment of pension benefits. That’s why it is so important that the data is correct.”