On 17 December 2019, EIOPA published the outcome of the 2019 Occupational Pensions Stress Test, which included some general elements about the Belgian situation.

• On Monday 27 January 2020, FSMA hosted a meeting for the 14 Belgian pension institutions that participated in this stress test (together covering 60% of the market) and representatives of PensioPlus and IABE.

• In the global report as published by EIOPA, we see that the Belgian institutions had under the base case scenario a coverage ratio of 123%, based on the national balance sheet.

• Based on the common balance sheet approach, the coverage rate comes down to 107% under the base case scenario (against the total sample that has a 96% coverage ratio).

Based on the common balance sheet approach, the coverage ratio drops to 91% under the adverse market scenario (against the total sample that has a 79% coverage ratio).

• No details were provided by company, but FSMA clearly indicated it is open to discuss the outcome of the stress test with each pension institution individually.

• In the conclusions, FSMA highlighted the importance of further strengthening the risk management function at pension institutions and the role IABE could potentially assume in this process.