The Dutch pension system is changing — what expats need to know

First published July 2026 · 5 min read

If you work in the Netherlands, you've probably heard the pension system is being overhauled. The Wet toekomst pensioenen (Future Pensions Act, or Wtp) is the biggest change to Dutch workplace pensions in decades, and every scheme has to move across by 1 January 2028.^[1] But how much it changes for you depends almost entirely on one thing: the kind of scheme you're in today. So start there.

First, which kind of scheme do you have?

There are two main types (with variants within each). Either your employer bought a pension plan from an insurance company or a PPI (premiepensioeninstelling) — common at smaller and international employers — or you were enrolled automatically in the fund for your industry, such as ABP (government and education), PFZW (healthcare) or PMT (metal and technology). The name on your annual statement, or on Mijnpensioenoverzicht, tells you which. It matters because the two are changing by very different amounts.

If you're with an insurer or PPI

You're most likely already saving into your own private pension pot — a defined-contribution plan — so the basic structure isn't changing. What's changing is how the contribution is set. These plans typically used a rising premium: a small percentage of salary in your twenties, a much larger one in your fifties, on the logic that money paid in later has less time to grow. The new rules replace that with a single flat percentage at every age. Roughly what that means:

• Under 40 — the flat rate is higher than the old young rate, so more goes in early and has the longest to grow, and you come out ahead.^[2]
• Roughly 40 to 55 — the squeeze: you paid the low premiums when you were young but move to the flat rate before collecting the high older-age ones, so you can end up with less than you'd have expected. This is the group the transition compensation is aimed at.^[1]
• Over 55 — also below the old peak rate, but with only a few years to retirement the effect is smaller.

Because some employees lose out, an employer handles it in one of two ways. It can keep the old rising premium for existing staff — grandfathering (eerbiedigende werking), an option only insurer and PPI schemes have^[3] — or move everyone to the flat rate and compensate those who lose. How that compensation is paid matters if you later change jobs: paid as pension (extra contributions) it must by law also go to future employees, but paid as salary (a top-up) it need not, so a later joiner can miss it.^[4]

If you're in an industry fund

Here the change is bigger. Industry funds already charged a flat premium — but they ran on a promise: you were told the monthly pension you would get at retirement (a defined benefit), and the fund carried the risk of delivering it. It was never fully guaranteed — when investment returns fell short the promise could go unmet — but it was a promise all the same.^[5] Under the new rules that promise becomes your own private pension pot, and the pension you've already built up is converted into it — a process called invaren — with the money staying in the fund, still invested, but now in your name.^[1] The trade-off is certainty: instead of a set monthly figure, your retirement income now rides on your contributions and, above all, investment returns — it may come out higher than the old promise, or lower.^[6] (If your insurer or PPI plan was one of the minority still built on a promise, your future saving moves to a pot too — but what you've already accrued generally stays as the insurer's guaranteed promise.)

There's a subtler catch for anyone who won't spend a full working life in the Netherlands. That flat premium hid a subsidy: a young member's contribution grows for decades and ends up worth more than the pension credited for it, and the surplus quietly supported older members — on the understanding you'd be subsidised in turn later on.^[7] Pay in your subsidising years here and collect your subsidised years abroad, and you were on the losing side of a deal that only balances over a full Dutch career. The new pot removes that cross-subsidy — fairer for mobile workers, but also why mid-career members can end up with less than they'd have expected.

They're compensated for it too — but where an insurer scheme has the employer pay, an industry fund draws mainly on its own assets: the one-off release of reserves when it converts, and/or a temporary top-up to the premium, for the cohorts that lose out, as agreed by employers and unions in the fund's transition plan.^[8]

One more distinction: solidarity or flexible

Whichever type of scheme you're in, the new pot itself comes in two forms, and it's your employer and the unions who pick which. In a solidarity scheme your savings sit in one collectively invested pot with a mandatory shared reserve that cushions the good and bad years, and at retirement your pension is a variable one that keeps moving with the markets — there's no fixed-or-variable choice to make. In a flexible scheme you have a more individual pot, usually with some say over how it's invested and a choice at retirement between a fixed or a variable pension.^[9] Neither is something you pick yourself, but it's worth knowing which you're in — the label is on your scheme's documents.

The moment that matters: changing jobs

If you stay in your current job, there's little to do — your scheme converts on its own timetable and you'll get a letter explaining what happens; read it rather than file it. The awareness you need is for when you move employers. Only the first of these is specific to insurer or PPI schemes; the other two apply to everyone.

• Grandfathering (insurer/PPI). If your employer kept the old rising premium for existing staff, it doesn't come with you — you join the new employer straight on their flat premium.^[3]
• Compensation (everyone). If you're in the group being compensated for the switch, it's usually paid out gradually (to 2036 at the latest) and only to people who are still active members — so moving on hands you what's built up so far but not the rest, and at the new employer you come under their compensation scheme, which may be smaller or non-existent.^[8] At an insurer or PPI there's an added catch: where the compensation is a salary top-up rather than pension, it need not be offered to new joiners at all.^[4] Worth asking a prospective employer what compensation applies and whether you'd qualify.
• Survivor's cover (everyone). Partner's and orphan's cover is now pure insurance that runs only while you're in a scheme (partner's pension capped at 50% of salary).^[10] Move straight to a new job and the new scheme takes over; but leave with nothing lined up, or go self-employed, and after a three-or-six-month run-off (extended for as long as you receive WW unemployment benefit) it stops — unless you actively continue it from your pot (uitruil) or take out private term-life cover.^[11] Check it before you leave.

The bottom line

For most people the Wtp isn't cause for alarm, and a flat contribution is arguably fairer for a mobile international workforce than what came before. But it moves more of the risk — and more of the responsibility to pay attention — onto you. Two things are worth doing: look up which kind of scheme you're in on Mijnpensioenoverzicht, and take a proper look at the pension consequences the next time you change jobs.