39 cross border IORPs

Already in early March, CEIOPS reported the status of cross-border IORPs that were active by the end of January 2007. For some reason, this has escaped our attention to date, which is quite unforgiveable since it is an interesting statistic.

Of the 39 institutions reported, 77% have been in operation prior to the Pensions Directive's entry into legal force. Only 9 are "new" IORPs, located in Finland (1), Germany (1), Ireland (4), Luxemburg (1) and the UK (2). Notably absent from that list are Belgium and Liechtenstein, but we would wager that the "many new cross-border IORPs" anticipated by CEIOPS should change that ranking fairly soon, especially since Belgium is a relatively late arrival in terms of directive transposition. We hope that this statistic is updated periodically, for instance quarterly.

CEIOPS also notes that the Budapest Protocol of supervisory cooperation works well, but that "some features of the IORP Directive might benefit from further clarification".