The government and ruling party on the 29th unveiled a plan to strengthen retirement pensions. It would require employers to set severance pay aside with outside institutions to prevent unpaid severance, and expand fund-type pensions to lift returns.
According to Kyunghyang Shinmun, the labor, finance and financial regulatory ministries announced the plan on the 29th after consultations with the ruling party, following up on February’s labor-management-government declaration. At its core is a mandate that employers deposit severance funds in advance with an external institution.
광고 문의 · 300×250The rollout is staged by size: workplaces with 100 or more employees in 2028, those with 10 to 99 in 2029, and those with fewer than 10 in 2030. The duty applies to service periods accruing after each start date, and workers with under a year of tenure and ultra-short-hour workers are excluded for now. The government said it would study their situation separately and seek improvements through social dialogue.
Fund-type pensions and support for small firms
The plan also promotes fund-type pensions in which specialist institutions jointly manage reserves from many workplaces. Three types are under discussion, open to financial institutions, alliances of labor and management groups, and open to public institutions, and whether the National Pension Service will take part has not been decided. Fund managers must pass a licensing committee of labor, management, experts and government, and get approval from the labor minister.
Workplaces that fail to complete external reserves will be enrolled automatically in the public fund-type pension ‘Blue Seed’, with a right to leave later. Firms with under 30 workers that adopt external reserves early get support for 10 percent of employer contributions for workers earning under 130 percent of minimum wage, and firms under 50 that newly introduce a pension get a 2-percentage-point cut in business loan rates; 122 billion won is in next year’s budget.
Returns were also flagged. Last year retirement pension assets exceeded 500 trillion won, but returns were 6.47 percent versus 18.82 percent for the National Pension and 17.2 percent for civil servants’ pensions, and 83.5 percent of benefit accounts were paid out as lump sums. The government will ease the 70 percent risky-asset cap on IRAs, shift provider evaluation toward returns, and consider paying as an annuity by default unless a lump sum is requested. A revision of the retirement benefit act is to be drafted next month, aiming for passage this year.