Better the money at the end of the contract than one supplementary pension forever. This is it, according to the findings of the Covip, the pension fund supervisory commission, the orientation of the majority of workers enrolled in a pension fund. “They are still a minority, to be optimistic – he writes The Sun 24 hours – those who upon retirement ask to convert the amount accrued in social security into an annuity: most collect the capital, despite the taxation unfavorable".
The numbers speak for themselves. In 2022, positions transformed into annuities with insurance companies amounted to 303 million euros against 315 million in the previous year and pension funds disbursed 439 million annuities in the form of annuities, 22 million less than in 2021. “A drop in the ocean - Federica Pezzatti rightly writes in the Sole - compared to pension benefits in capital which instead amounted to 4,6 billion euros, of which 1,6 billion in negotiable funds and 1,2 billion in Pips", to which the pre-existing funds follow with 1 billion.
But why do pension fund members prefer, upon retirement, to collect the capital instead of a form of social security, often a second pension to the state one? The president of Covip explains it, Francesca Balzani, according to which the low competitiveness of the insurance sector does not currently allow sufficiently attractive annuities which are mostly configured in amounts much lower than what workers expect after so many years of payment. Or life annuities for groups of pensioners in weaker socio-economic conditions are today "inaccessible".
These are undoubtedly complex problems, especially due to the lengthening of life expectancies, but it is about time that the Government and Parliament also thought about it.
