The Riester providers also want to put pressure on the parties in the Berlin coalition negotiations.
(Photo: dpa)
Frankfurt So now Deka: With the Sparkasse fund subsidiary, the third major provider of fund Riester pensions is giving up marketing of its product for subsidized old-age provision. From November 1st, Deka will cease sales support and advertising for its product “Deka Future Plan Classic”. This was confirmed by Deka. First, the magazine “Capital” reported on it.
The reason given by the fund provider is that in the persistently low interest rate environment, it is impossible to meet the statutory guarantee of the contributions paid and still achieve a satisfactory return.
The other two major providers of fund Riester contracts, the Deutsche Bank subsidiary DWS and the cooperative Union Investment, have already reacted: DWS, with around 665,000 contracts in its portfolio, stopped its new Riester business in July.
The market leader Union with almost two million contracts has extended its minimum term. People in their mid-40s can no longer get a Riester contract there. Some insurers have also discontinued their Riester business.
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In doing so, the providers also want to put pressure on the parties in the Berlin coalition negotiations that are fighting for a possible reform of old-age provision. For years, the federal government has been promising to reform the Riester pension, which is considered complex, often expensive and low-yielding.
Two years ago, the financial sector submitted a proposal for a simpler Riester model, even without a capital guarantee. “The obligation to have a 100 percent contribution guarantee for the Riester pension is increasingly costing Riester savers more returns in the persistently low interest rate environment,” says Deka. “So far there has unfortunately been neither a comprehensive Riester reform that has been discussed for years nor a flexibilization of the contribution guarantee at Riester.”
Riester contract customers will save fees in the future
The total number of Riester pensions has been falling slightly for years to a current 16 million contracts. With a good ten million, insurance companies provide by far the largest number of Riester pensions, followed by a good three million fund contracts, almost 1.8 million real estate Riester contracts and almost 580,000 bank savings plans.
In principle, however, investors can still conclude Riester contracts with Deka. For the customer advisors in savings banks, however, the sale of Riester pensions is becoming less attractive, because they no longer receive any sales charges for the fund savings plans.
So far, customers have paid 1.5 percent per contribution for the “Deka Future Plan Classic” and 3.5 percent for the second product, the “bonus pension”. The provider has not advertised the somewhat less flexible “Deka Bonusrente” since 2017. The 710,000 Riester contract customers will save their contracts even more cheaply in the future. Because there is no front-end load for them either.
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