Stephan Linnenbank nieuwe Associate Partner van Boer & Croon.

Stephan Linnenbank has joined Boer & Croon as an Associate Partner. Here he will use his experience and expertise to build out the Finance & Technology Solution. With the interesting combination of roles as supervisor and consultant, Stephan has a very broad view on the developments in the pension sector.

Stephan: "In the next 5 years, the pension industry is going to experience more changes than in the past 25 years. We are on the eve of a new pension system. For all market participants, the timeline is very tight. In addition, the legislation is not yet fully crystallized. So the general attitude is, "as soon as the law is not passed by the Senate and published in the Official Gazette, we are not going to start a project of a few million." But the end date does not change. Still, by January 1, 2027, everyone must be ready. While an enormous amount has to be done. The social partners have to make all kinds of decisions about the new pension scheme. Fund managers have to get to work communicating to their participants. There is a lot of explaining to do, because soon there will be a lot to choose from. The AFM is going to remind pension organizations of their duty of care, because there is a risk that people will put themselves at a disadvantage because they cannot oversee the consequences of their choice.

'Data quality is also going to play a big role. The moment you go from one system to another, you have to make sure that your administration is historically in order. That contains all the personal data from the past 30 years. Now you have to examine whether those are all correct. Almost everyone works with old IT systems, often built in programming languages that have long since ceased to be used. Everyone is now revamping systems and automating processes. Everyone now needs the same scarce specialists at the same time. On top of that, asset managers have to change all sorts of things. Because in the context of ESG, one has to start reporting in a different way, so all products have to be held up to the light.

´The challenge in the whole sector, and I am talking about both insurers, asset managers, banks, pension funds and pension administrators, is huge. There are a huge number of choices to be made. We are going to see a lot of consolidations in the coming years. Pension funds have to think about whether they still have the right to exist independently or have to merge with others. I think we as Boer & Croon can contribute in many areas. We solve things and make ourselves redundant again.´

Stephan began his career as a marketer, including as a marketing director and as a consultant. He always worked at the intersection of marketing, sales, communication and technology. In doing so, he closely followed developments in digitalization and data science. He soon ended up in Finance, first in the insurance corner and later in the pension sector. (NVS, AIG, E&Y Consulting). At Atos Consulting, as a partner, he became responsible for insurance and pensions. There he carried out scenario analyses to predict how the market would develop, both for life and pension insurers and pension funds and administrators. After this, he was responsible for Sia Partners' Financial Services Practice in the Netherlands and Belgium. Later, as he took on more and more supervisory roles (AEGON PPI, AEGON Capital, Pensioenfonds SABIC, Pensioenfonds Capgemini Nederland), to avoid conflicts of interest, he started working as an independent consultant.