Tirana – The International Organization of Pension Supervisors (IOPS) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded the Annual General Meeting as well as the meetings of the IOPS Technical Committees followed by 2 intensive days of the Global Forum on Private Pensions. The Albanian Financial Supervisory Authority was the host organization of these events.

Ms. Helen Rowell, Deputy Chair, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority was elected IOPS President. While greeting the Global Forum, Ms. Rowell emphasized that this OECD/IOPS Global Forum on private pensions “give us an excellent opportunity ‘to debate, learn from each other’s experiences and search together for new ideas and innovative approaches to address key challenges that pensions systems face.”
Speaking on the latest development of the pensions system Ms. Rowell said that “pension systems are being refined around the world, including in Albania. They are facing common serious challenges [such as population ageing, increased longevity as well as the current environment of low growth and low interest rates] that make the task of pension supervision even more important and challenging from both micro-prudential and macro-prudential dimensions. The goal of the IOPS is to make the supervision of private pension systems more efficient through exchange of best supervisory experiences, standard setting activities, co-operation and policy dialogue.”
Mr. André Laboul, Secretary General of the International Organization of Pension Supervisors (IOPS), and Senior Financial Counsellor at the OECD, highlighted that the OECD supports for decades the diversification of retirement income which can be achieved through the combination of public and private pension arrangements. Strong regulatory and supervisory regimes, adequate financial education and efficient and deep capital markets are essential for the development of such private schemes, a theme which was at the core of the OECD/IOPS Global Forum organised in Tirana. He considered in this respect that the Albanian reform is going in the right direction. The regulators and supervisors have also to guide pension funds facing new economic landscape, such as the need to integrate ESG (environment, social and governance) factors in their investment and risk management processes, as achieved with the new IOPS major guidelines just released two weeks ago.  
Organized in Tirana in collaboration with Albanian FSA, the Forum had high audience, lively discussions with the audience interaction. During the Forum, panelists explored topics related to pension reform in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe over the past two decades, sustainable development of pension funds and their interplay with the capital market, developing of the pension plans with Defined Contribution, etc. The panelists also discussed the role of supervisors for further development of voluntary private pensions.

While appreciating the organization of this Forum in Tirana, Mr. Ervin Koçi, Chief Executive Director of Albanian FSA emphasized the great importance the Forum brigs with the exchange of experiences with all regulators presented here. Mr. Koçi underlined the work that the Albanian FSA id doing on the development of the capital market, in particular for the pension market. He pointed the AFSA aim to move from a modest private pension market to a consolidated market under careful supervision in the interests of economies’ growth and development”.

Important decisions on international cooperation, on-going IOPS projects were made at Executive Committee Meetings and during the Annual Conference. The IOPS Work Plan for 2019-2020 was discussed and approved.