| The State Duma adopted amendments to pension laws in the first reading The State Duma on Friday approved in the first reading a draft amending the laws “On investing funds to finance the funded part of a labor pension,” “On non-state pension funds,” and “On individual (personalized) accounting in the compulsory pension insurance system.” After its approval in all readings, the period in which citizens have the right to make a choice between government agencies or private funds and management companies will end not on October 1, as now, but on December 31. The pension fund will be obliged to inform insured persons about the status of their personal accounts not until July 1, but until October 1. At the same time, he will have the right to send out only this information to citizens, and applications for the selection of a management company or non-state pension fund will be available in the branches of the Pension Fund of Russia, as well as in organizations that have concluded agreements with the fund on the mutual certification of signatures.
Commenting on innovations in legislation to Vremya Novostei, Deputy Chairman of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation Alexander Chernoivan drew attention to the fact that sending citizens only notifications about the status of their personal accounts will save significant funds spent on the production and delivery of such correspondence. Now the Pension Fund must put four forms in an envelope, including a notice of account status. The experience of 2003, according to Mr. Chernoivan, shows that only 0.17% of people who received them by mail used the enclosed forms. Moreover, they resorted to the most expensive method for themselves of sending the application to the Pension Fund: they also had to spend money on notarization of their signature. The rest of the 2% of citizens who made a choice in favor of private management companies in 2003 registered it in the branches of the Pension Fund of Russia or in organizations that entered into agreements with the fund on mutual certification of signatures. In doing so, they used forms received at the place of application.
So sending out voluminous letters from the Pension Fund is overkill. In the opinion of Alexander Chernoivan, it will be enough to send one form, on the front side of which there will be information about the status of the account, and on the back - information about those organizations to which the insured person can apply to submit an application to the Pension Fund. This will allow you to save not only on the production of forms, the vast majority of which, as experience shows, remain unclaimed, but also on payment for postage: the post office applies the lowest tariff to letters weighing up to 20 grams. Moreover, we are not talking about saving the Pension Fund budget. Expenses for printing and mailing are made from the net financial result, that is, from citizens’ money. The total volume of such savings is estimated at 150 million rubles.
As for the postponement of the deadline for sending notifications about the status of personal accounts from July 1 to October 1, this, said the deputy chairman of the Pension Fund of Russia, will enable the fund to provide insured persons with better information. In past years, the Pension Fund, in order to meet the deadline, printed notices in May and June. Meanwhile, the tax authorities are completing the reconciliation of payments for the unified social tax by July 1. 10-15% of information received from enterprises is updated based on the results of such reconciliations, but the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation does not have time to convey information about these updates to insured citizens. In addition, by December 31, the new deadline for completing pension elections, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation will have updated lists of management companies and non-state pension funds participating in the reform. They may include new companies that have won a competition for trust management of pension savings, or funds that have received a license to participate in compulsory insurance. Managers and non-state pension funds whose licenses have been revoked, or those who have declared their refusal to accept pension funds, may leave them.
The Pension Fund of the Russian Federation considers it very important, says Alexander Chernoivan, that the new law resolves the problem of paying the pension savings of deceased persons to legal successors. According to the current version of the law, the only way that the heirs could use was to go to court. This authority also determined the amount of payments. But by the time the court decision was made, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation was often unable to provide complete information about the status of a particular personal account. A portion of the payments made by the employer to the deceased insured has not yet been identified and credited to this account. And for the funds transferred to the management company, investment income could still not be determined. Thus, the legal successors did not receive the entire amount due to them. When, over time, its size was accurately determined, they had to re-apply to the court to obtain the balance. The new bill, on the one hand, establishes the right of heirs to apply for payment directly to the Pension Fund, and on the other hand, it gives the fund six months so that the amount of this payment can be accurately determined and the successor receives every penny.
The adoption of amendments in the first reading does not mean that changes will not be made to pension laws in subsequent readings. The relevant State Duma committees, which generally responded positively to the bill, nevertheless made a number of comments. Most of them, however, were removed during a joint discussion with the Pension Fund. However, the deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, Vladimir Vasiliev, told Vremya Novostey that the deputies intend to clarify the concept of “date of application”, which is interpreted vaguely in the current law, which allows officials from the Pension Fund to define it as the date of receipt of the document by the Pension Fund . According to Mr. Vasiliev, it is necessary to fix in the laws a rule according to which the date of filing the application will be determined, for example, by the postmark or mark of the transfer agent of the Pension Fund. Igor POLISCHUK |
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