EuroLife Occupational Pensions Plan

Konstantinos Sofokleous, Investment Manager

EuroLife has been managing its clients’ investment funds for almost 30 years. It serves more than 300 corporate clients and efficiently manages more than €400 million.

Products and services offered

The EuroLife Occupational Pension Plan essentially operates as a Provident Fund, while also offering additional innovative features and higher expected returns due to EuroLife’s expertise in this field.

Both employers and employees have the flexibility to customize their plan, and even specify its characteristics. Each employee retains their own Pension Account and can manage his or her investment choices without need for a committee or a single investment policy. At the same time, employees take advantage of the tax benefits applying to Provident Funds.

Participants in these plans have the ability to save and invest in a way that suits their own personal risk profile as it changes over the course of their lives. EuroLife offers personalized investment solutions for plan members through four investment funds. These are the Conservative Fund, the Income Fund, the Balanced Fund and the Dynamic Fund.

EuroLife has also created the innovative “Hands on” and “Hands Off” options. The “Hands on” option allows members to actively choose their own funds, while the “Hands Off” option automatically assigns allocation percentages in investment funds for every member. The innovative “Hands Off” option can be tailored to the risk/performance profile of each member, as well as to the number of years remaining until retirement.

Performance

EuroLife’s fund-linked insurance products are medium- and long-term; for this reason, long-term fund returns are particularly important. The company's Balanced Fund has a history of almost 30 years, while the Dynamic, Income and Conservative Fund have a history of more than 15 years.

EuroLife fund performance over the 15-year period is shown in the table below:

The graph illustrates the successful evolution of the Dynamic, Income, Balanced and Conservative Funds which have a history of more than 15 years

Market data today

There is no doubt that the number of Provident Funds in Cyprus is significantly high. Every organization operating in the country, regardless of size, maintains its own provident fund for the benefit of its members, which results in the existence of many small funds.

Given the size of Provident Funds in Cyprus, the ability to implement a safe and efficient investment policy is quite limited. Including such funds in the EuroLife Occupational Pensions Plan creates greater economies of scale and efficiency, thus allowing for better service and lower management costs.

The sector’s future

Over time, and given the increasing supervisory requirements, demand for retirement solutions with good management and governance practices is expected to increase. We expect large Provident Funds to cope with all these requirements, while small and medium-sized funds are expected to choose other, more effective solutions.

By choosing EuroLife, governance and management responsibility is assigned to industry specialists with long-term know-how, experience, expertise and professionalism.