Ten years ‘Annual pension statement’ A retrospective and a foresight on content, functions, and effectiveness

The Annual pension statement (the so called UPO) is a legally required document since 2008. Pension providers send this document once a year to all their active pension plan members. In this paper we analyze the developments of the Annual pension statement in the past ten years. Leading in this analysis are the functions of this document and the extent to which these are realized.
To determine the effectiveness of the Annual pension statement, we looked at evaluation research in which pension plan members gave their opinions and performed tasks. Members are more positive about the comprehensibility of the document than what would be expected considering their performance. Important problems occur during the process of finding, understanding, and applying the information in the document.
A determining factor for the future of the Annual pension statement is the new European guideline for pension communication, IORP II. We discuss the consequences of this guideline and relate these to the functions of the Annual pension overview. We conclude that there is a need for a stronger vision on the question which functions of pension communication can be realized with which communication devices.