Data sharing will make pensions more accessible

In a few years, your pension accrual will be visible in your banking app, much like the balance of your checking account and savings with another bank or mortgage obligation. The legal ability to share financial data—with explicit consent from the consumer or pension participant—aligns with PGGM's ambition to lower the threshold for accessing pension information. If pension is considered a financial product that a participant should feel ownership of, then it needs to become much more accessible.

The recently presented Financial Data Access Regulation (FiDA) proposal by the European Commission opens the door to a potential revolution in pension communication. Financial entities, including pension funds like PFZW, fall under this proposal. Funds such as PFZW are obligated to share pension data if the participant (consumer) requests it. At the same time, PFZW can use participant data from other financial institutions for service provision.

This proposal is part of the European Commission's ambition to heavily digitize European society, with the principle that the participant owns their data and has control over its use.

PGGM is a member of the expert group that advised the European Commission on the proposal. We see many opportunities to improve services within the financial sector through data sharing.

Data sharing offers opportunities for innovation
Pension data will soon be accessible through multiple channels, at crucial moments for participants and in locations that make sense, even if it's not within PFZW's own environment. This provides opportunities to bring pension closer to participants and thereby increase financial awareness.

Sharing data will make the guidance provided by pension funds to participants more comprehensive and valuable. For example, combining pension data with information about other savings and mortgage details can create a much fuller picture of a participant's financial situation. Those facing the question of when their pension can commence can be better guided in making this decision.

Protecting the participant is crucial
The proposed FiDA regulation rightly focuses on the sensitivity of certain data, such as disability pension data. Sharing this data could potentially lead to financial exclusion by providers of insurance products. For this reason, it would be good to exclude data that could lead to financial exclusion of consumers (and participants) from the scope of the regulation.

Additionally, participants must be well-guided when giving consent for data sharing. Individuals may not always grasp what they are agreeing to. Therefore, we emphasize that data sharing should always occur solely with informed, specific, and free consent from the participant, with consent granted only for a specified purpose and for a specific period.

PGGM and PFZW are actively involved in developing a national initiative to make agreements about the development of so-called microservices to unlock and share participant pension data within the sector. With this initiative, the pension sector is preparing for FiDA, which is expected to come into effect at the earliest by the end of 2026. From the pension sector, we are engaged in developments around the FiDA proposal and will continue to do so in the future.