Chairwoman of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market Madina Abylkassymova took part in the International round table: “Prospects for the development of mandatory funded and mixed pension systems”, which took place in Almaty on September 28, 2023 (hereinafter referred to as the Conference). This event was organized by the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund together with the International Social Security Association and dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the accumulative pension system of Kazakhstan, DKNews.kz reports.
The round table was dedicated to discussing current issues and challenges in the field of pension provision, their solution taking into account the best global practices, standards and trends in the field of regulation and supervision of pension funds, as well as prospects and directions for the development of the pension sector.
Madina Abylkassymova outlined the main stages and features of the development of the pension asset management system in Kazakhstan, the advantages and disadvantages of pension reforms, and spoke about the main achievements in the field of private management of pension assets and pension annuity insurance.
“To increase the investment potential of private management companies and expand opportunities for managing their pension assets for investors with a small amount of pension savings, in July 2023, citizens were given the opportunity to transfer up to 50% of their pension savings to private management without taking into account the sufficiency threshold, and voluntary pension savings - in full” Madina Abylkassymova
Along with this, in order to attract a larger number of private managers to the pension services market, access to the management of pension assets of subsidiaries of large foreign management companies with a high credit rating - not lower than "BBB" - from international rating agencies is allowed.
To increase the availability of pension annuity insurance for the population, the cost of a pension annuity contract has been reduced, and new types of pension annuity contracts have been introduced, including deferred and joint pension annuities.
In conclusion, Madina Abylkassymova noted that the measures taken by the regulator will have a positive impact on improving the quality of pension asset management, strengthening institutional demand and will give additional impetus to the activation of the domestic stock market.
During the Conference, panel sessions were held in various areas: population aging and pension reform; coverage of social and pension security systems, and public awareness; investment strategies; risk management and supervisory regulation in social and pension security systems; the future of social and pension systems.
