Eduard Ponds, independent and original thinker with broad knowledge, retires

An independent and original thinker with broad knowledge. That is how Eduard Ponds is also described. The professor and longtime Netspar researcher will reach retirement age this year. He will soon complete his chair in the Economics of Collective Pensions at Tilburg University. Two former colleagues and a PhD graduate look back.

Theo Nijman, former colleague of Eduard

“Eduard Ponds has a large number of publications to his name on many different topics within Netspar’s research agenda. Even before Netspar was founded, Eduard was ahead of his time and initiated topics such as the valuation of pension liabilities using Value Based ALM. This was then called Fair Valuation. Our collaboration goes back at least to before 2006. In that year we wrote papers and a book on Fair Valuation together with Niels Kortleve.

Eduard has also played an important role in supervising many Netspar doctoral students who worked part-time at APG on their dissertations. He was always hardworking, curious, enthusiastic and very committed. Much better than others, naturally, Eduard knew the precise design of pension contracts and he was always willing to share that knowledge with others.

In later years, when he was by then also a professor in Tilburg, Eduard’s focus partly shifted to the analysis of participant choice behavior. This of course involved access to rich data sets and all his knowledge of the choices participants might make.

I also recall Eduard’s contributions to the fierce discussions about the added value of intergenerational risk sharing around 2017. Out of that came the solidarity reserve in the Dutch solidarity premium scheme. And now we are still working together, also with others, on a paper to sharply define concepts such as collectivity and solidarity and to identify the advantages and disadvantages of emphasizing those characteristics in a pension contract.

Eduard was a very committed colleague. I trust that even after his retirement he will not completely stop his contributions to thinking about all the research questions still on the table. I hope, although also retired, to encounter him a lot in this regard.”

Onno Steenbeek, former colleague of Eduard

“Eduard Ponds has been a direct colleague at APG for a long time. If I’m correct, it’s been about fifteen years. I have come to know him as an independent and original thinker who goes his own way. My role as manager of the team has therefore always been to give him space within APG to do what he does best. With his research and broad knowledge of the subject, he has always been very valuable to our organization. At the same time, you could say that he has meant a great deal to the Dutch pension system in general. The Indexation Policy Ladder in the Financial Assessment Framework (FTK), for instance, was his idea; this adjustment allowed the Financial Assessment Framework to last a lot longer than it otherwise would have done.

Eduard is also characterized by his enormous enthusiasm. For example, we are now working together on a book about the Dutch Future Pensions Act. He can completely immerse himself in it. The idea was to make an outline and send it to the Editorial Board of Netspar. But that outline has already grown into a kind of paper. Eduard is also enthusiastic about promising young people, which is why we often end up hiring them because of this enthusiasm. In this way, he has already managed to connect several very good PhD students to APG, of whom Zina Lekniūtė is a good example.

I am grateful to Eduard for helping shape APG’s role as a thought leader. We want to administer pensions well for our clients and have the ambition to lead the way in thinking about pensions and the pension of the future. That means not rigidly clinging to how things were in the past, but continuously thinking about solutions to tensions in the pension system. Eduard did that very well by coming up with the ideas and seeking partnerships with experts in practice and science at home and abroad. He did that in parallel with the rise of Netspar, so it makes sense that he became part of that as well.”

Jorgo Goossens, PhD graduate and former colleague of Eduard

“During my graduation for my master’s degree in Econometrics, I landed at APG. There I started working on my master’s thesis in Econometrics at the Policy Department. They were so satisfied with it that they suggested I present it to the Research Department, and that’s where Eduard Ponds worked. He and Rob van den Goorbergh, also from APG, then asked if I wanted to do a PhD. That’s how things started rolling. In addition to Eduard, I was eventually supervised by Bas Werker and Marike Knoef from Netspar.

When I think of Eduard, several things come to mind. For example, he is extremely friendly and kind and also shows interest in things outside science; he is curious in how you are really doing. In addition, he has an extremely creative mind and is full of ideas. For one of the chapters of my dissertation, for example, he came up with the idea of linking survey data to real choices people make at Dutch pension fund ABP. It was very creative to combine that. Eduard is also a real connector. He brings disciplines and fields together, and thus also the right people.

I also like the change I have seen Eduard go through in the time I have known him. When I met him, he was mainly known for Value Based ALM. However, he has also increasingly delved into behavioral economics, and thus the psychological side of retirement. In addition to this, he also began to specialize in econometrics itself. He keeps learning and also picks up newer research techniques. I find that very clever and beautiful, also because he continues to do this so far into his career.

Looking back, I am grateful to Eduard for many things. Most of all I am because he gave me the opportunity to do my doctoral research. Of all my supervisors with their own perspectives, Eduard was for me the one who constantly came up with unexpected and creative ideas. This gave me the inspiration to analyze issues in a certain way. The nice thing is that I am now on the other side of the table, supervising a new PhD student at Tilburg University together with Eduard and Marike. This is Shashank Misra, who again is working with APG data. This brings us full circle.”