An occupational pension (OP) is a collective term for all the financial benefits that an employer promises to its employees for their retirement. At Zooplus, we’re splashing out and chipping in with a whopping 30% of your personal savings!
But it doesn’t stop there. Everything we save together with you, we can pay directly from your gross salary. That’s why your OP operates tax-free during the savings period, and you also save on social security contributions.
See? It pays off twice!
Our OP gives you a sensible way of compensating for losses in statutory pension insurance – and helps you take control of your future.
Let’s fast-forward into the future. I’m now 67 years old and can tell you from my own experience how my personal investment has paid off big time.
In my younger years, my great passion was gliding. My wife would often throw her hands up in despair whenever I made my way to the airfield – especially as it wasn’t the cheapest of hobbies. She probably secretly hoped that I’d finally stop when I retired. But nope! Thanks to the monthly payout from my OP, I can still indulge my passion and don’t have to slow down.
Do you also have a burning passion that you never want to give up? Discover the benefits you get from an OP!
As a young man, I didn’t have the financial means to put aside a decent amount for a long time. Thanks to my employer’s subsidy and state funding, my minimal contribution quickly turned into a considerable amount.
Over the course of my career, I really appreciated that I didn’t have to pay any taxes during the time I was saving. And I didn’t have to pay social security on a portion of my contributions, since it was deducted directly from my gross salary.
Obviously, because of the gross/net effect, I paid the whole contribution – but I was still left with about half the amount net (depending on the tax band at the time).
Because I signed my contract after 2019, my employers were obliged to add at least 15% of my contribution. As an employee at Zooplus, I got as much as 30%! Until my retirement, my savings grew steadily thanks to interest rates, surpluses from insurers and returns on the capital market. Even in times of low interest rates, I couldn’t lose anything.
Retrospective taxation was seen as a supposed shortcoming of an occupational pension. Taxes were only due once I’d put down my pen for the last time and retired. But since my income is now lower than when I was still working, the taxes are now also much lower.
... and so forth. I could go on and on and on about why I decided to go for an OP at the time. My tip for you is to get a full picture and ask for a calculation. And then you can see for yourself if it’s worth it for you.
Statutory pension insurance, to which every employee is entitled, is a generational contract. The working generation pays into the pension fund, while the retired generation receives its pension directly from it.
However, demographic changes, which have been observed for years, are pushing the concept to its limits. Fewer and fewer workers are having to support more and more people in retirement.
On top of statutory pension insurance, there are several other options for taking control of your future. One of them is an OP. Its huge advantages are that your savings are subsidized by your employer – a whopping 30% with Zooplus – and that they benefit from compound interest.
That means that you can very easily accumulate a small fortune in the course of your employment. When you retire, you’ll get the capital you built up plus the interest as a monthly pension or a one-off capital payout.
“We’ve come a long way – from my first consultation in spring 2020 to parental leave and beyond. That was a lot of work. I’m extremely grateful for your help, and I’m more than happy to recommend you to my employer wherever I end up. Especially if they want to help their international employees.
I wish you all the very best.”
— Kristina, employee at Expath