Professional translation services play an important role in managing pension funds. Several groups of multinational and multilingual companies are working out structures to pool the assets and liabilities of their different local pension plans within one single cross-border institution.
One of the reasons in favor of a pooled pension institution relates to economies of scale, which can be realized when pooling pension assets and liabilities. Economies of scale offer more and better investment opportunities, reduction of costs and better negotiation positions in such areas as pension fund administration, asset management, statutory reporting, actuarial assistance and other management services.
Another driving factor is the goal of better governance – global management and centralized operations with centers of pension excellence (for instance, in asset management) may enhance control and improve governance.
The optimal solution may be a combination of several vehicles, including cross border pension funds for some countries or some pension plans, local insurance contracts for other countries or plans, or mere asset pooling for some local pension funds. However, as these solutions combine various formats deriving from various countries, the issue of language will arise. For this reason, it is essential that you obtain foreign language translations of all relevant documents – and in all relevant languages – and file them in accordance with local rules and regulations.
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