The investment manager for the second largest Dutch pension fund is to cut 200 jobs in an effort to cut costs, it has announced.
PGGM, which manages €178 billion on behalf of major pension PFZW and others, said it would reduce its workforce by 15% to try and cuts costs by €50 million a year.
“The Dutch pension market is becoming more dynamic and PGGM needs to have the flexibility to adapt,” said Else Bos, CEO of PGGM.
Bos said that the price of PGGM’s products had to be reduced because costs played an increasingly important role in pension funds’ considerations.
She added that new services would also be brought online during what PGGM have termed “remodelling”. As the Dutch pension market has, in some instances, struggled to recover from the financial crisis, consolidation between funds has accelerated. PGGM—along with other providers—has been gearing up to attract smaller pensions to use its range of advisory, investment, and implementation services.
In June, Chief Investment Officer revealed that PGGM had created a fiduciary management arm enhance its services to its current clients and its offering to smaller peers.
A spokesman said all areas of the company could be hit by the job cuts, adding there may be compulsory redundancies. However, sources inside PGGM told CIO that staff had been well-briefed about the changes in the run-up to the announcement.
PGGM currently employs 1,500 who work in a range of investment-related sectors. The company was spun out of PFZW—the pension fund for healthcare workers—in 2009, according to a governmental decree.
The company, which scooped CIO’s prize for pension fund governance at the European Innovation Awards in May, said it would be consulting with Dutch trade unions at the end of the month.
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