German Institute for Retirement Provision

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German Institute for Retirement Provision

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1997
Seat Berlin
management Karl-Heinz Buchholz, Werner Janzen
Branch Science lobbying and public relations for the privatization of old-age provision
Website dia-vorsorge.de

The German Institute for Retirement Provision GmbH (DIA) is a company founded in 1997 by Deutsche Bank AG in Germany . It conducts science lobbying and public relations . According to his own statement, his goal is to “ inform the public about the opportunities and risks of old-age provision and to promote private initiative”.

The German Institute for Retirement Provision pursues this in particular with the publication of scientific studies on private retirement provision and the statutory pension insurance . Since it was founded, more than 50 scientific studies have been published there. The shareholders are companies of Deutsche Bank and the Zurich Group Germany , which also control the advisory board of the GmbH.

Together with the Deutsches Aktieninstitut , the Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft and the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft , the company is counted among the institutions of the German science lobby (“ think tanks ”) that are particularly close to the financial services industry . The main objective of the DIA and the companies behind it is therefore a (partial) privatization of old-age provision . Scientists close to the company are in favor of such privatization in principle and are accordingly involved in the pension policy discussion.

organization

The shareholders are Deutsche Bank AG itself, Deutsche Bank Bauspar AG, DWS Investment GmbH and the insurance company Deutscher Herold AG. The cooperation partner is Deutsche Bank Private and Business Customers AG. Since the sale of Deutscher Herold AG to Zurich Financial Services in 2001/2002, the Zurich Group has also been part of the group of shareholders.

The company is represented externally by the spokespersons Klaus Morgenstern and Dieter Weirich . Werner Janzen, senior employee of the main shareholder Deutsche Bank , is managing director of the DIA alongside Iradj Memar-Khasse . The scientific director is Thomas Langer , who holds the chair for financing at the University of Münster . In this role, Langer leads the DIA Research Group, a pension research team at the University of Münster, which includes nine post-doctoral and doctoral candidates.

aims

According to its own presentation, the company's goal is to promote the knowledge and competence of Germans in the field of private old-age provision. Since 1997, the DIA has published over 50 publications on this, which are created for the DIA by external scientists. The studies mainly deal with economic issues relating to the topic of old-age provision. The focus is on the status and further development of statutory pension insurance, the framework conditions for private wealth creation, as well as behavioral psychological and demographic aspects. The volumes “Financial crisis and old-age provision - How big are the losses really?” And “Bank image and financial market crisis - What savers know about deposit security and how they rate banks” are from 2009.

In addition, the DIA annually awards the DIA Future Prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, to journalists and scientists who do important educational work on the subject of old-age provision. The DIA also publishes the DIA-Deutschland-Trend-Vorsorge , a quarterly representative online survey of the German population on the subject of old-age provision. Ultimately, by financing and disseminating scientific studies for public relations purposes, the DIA pursues the overriding goal of science lobbying in favor of private pension provision.

DIA Research Group

The DIA Research Group is a cooperation project founded in 2007 between the DIA and the Finance Center Münster (FCM) at the University of Münster, which aims to establish itself as a “competence center for pension research”. According to the research approach of behavioral finance, behavioral aspects of old-age provision should be the focus. The DIA finances the DIA Research Group by providing third-party funds for the Chair of Financing (Thomas Langer) and by directly assuming event costs. In addition to pure behavioral research, the research group should also develop practice-oriented concepts that help investors make pension decisions. The research projects currently being examined by the DIA Research Group are:

  • Behavioral Product Design
  • Company pensions - taking stock
  • Deposit insurance
  • Information systems
  • Risk perception in the payout phase

The DIA Research Group also organizes the “Summer School” and “Speaker Series” events. At the “International Summer School in Behavioral Economics and Retirement Savings”, young scientists from different countries discuss current problems in the field of old-age provision with experts. In 2008 u. a. David Laibson (Harvard University), Cade Massey (Yale University) and Martin Weber (Mannheim). The main aim of the biennial summer school is to build international research networks. In the Speaker Series lecture series , students and citizens are discussed the economic and psychological aspects of old-age provision by experts from practice and science.

public relation

With the financing and dissemination of scientific studies, the DIA pursues, in addition to influencing the scientific and political discourse, above all the goal of convincing the population of the sense of additional private pension provision through public relations work , since the statutory pension insurance alone the standard of living of broad sections of the population due to demographic and other social developments could no longer adequately secure. For this purpose, the commissioned studies, surveys and thesis papers are distributed via press releases , press distribution lists and direct contacts to journalists who regularly address DIA topics in their reports, for example:

  • Inflation-adjusted interest on payments into statutory old-age provision and private old-age provision products, 2009. (Quoted in Capital   and Berliner Zeitung, among others .)
  • Study on the comparison of returns between state pension insurance and old-age provision via the capital market, 2008. (Reprinted in Welt .)
  • Survey "Germany Trend Provision" 2009. (Reprinted in Focus   and Ruhr Nachrichten, among others .)
  • Axel Börsch-Supan and Lothar Essig: Saving in Germany - SAVE-Sudie , 2001 to 2005. (Quoted in FAZ, among others .)

criticism

In accordance with its articles of association, the company promises neutrality and independence "from the marketing and sales activities of its shareholders" on its website. However, not only does the institute as a company of the Deutsche Bank Group have private-sector connections, there are also personal links. The DIA managing director Werner Janzen is at the same time product manager of Deutsche Bank Private and Business Customers AG. The second DIA managing director, Karl-Heinz Buchholz, was sales manager at Deutsche Bank AG until 2007. In the publications of the DIA, however, concrete product recommendations - in particular for offers from the DIA shareholders - are generally avoided in order to achieve the desired credibility and acceptance in science and the media.

In particular, the statutory German pension insurance has repeatedly criticized the work of the DIA in recent years. The focus of the disputes was on the results of the DIA on the internal returns on statutory pensions, which in the DIA calculations regularly performed much worse than private pension contracts because of the consideration of inflation. In 2008, Bert Rürup , then Chairman of the Advisory Council , and the President of Deutsche Rentenversicherung Herbert Rische criticized the fact that the DIA calculation calculates the rate of return on statutory pensions taking inflation into account, while the retirement provision products of private financial service providers “regularly disregard inflation” in their rate of return calculations “Let. In the ZEIT , the DIA return comparison between the statutory pension insurance and securities as well as life insurance was criticized as a commissioned work and as "[z] u plump to be true". DIA press spokesman Bernd Katzenstein responded with a reply .

literature

  • Diana Wehlau: Lobbyism and pension reform - the influence of the financial services industry on the partial privatization of old-age insurance. Dissertation. University of Bremen 2008. VS, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-16530-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deutsches Institut für Altersvorsorge GmbH, entry in the commercial register at the District Court of Frankfurt / Main, HRB 42010. (Original company GEISLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH).
  2. ^ German Institute for Retirement Provision - The Institute . Self-presentation on the DIA website. (Retrieved December 4, 2009.)
  3. ↑ According to the annual financial statements as of December 31, 2007 of the German Institute for Pensions GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, the Advisory Board as of December 31, 2007 were:
    • Christoph Siemons, Chairman of the Advisory Board, Member of the Management Sales Germany, Deutsche Bank Private and Business Customers AG
    • Jochen Schwarz, deputy chairman of the advisory board, member of the board of directors at Deutscher Herold AG
    • Wolfgang Herzog, Head of Sales Third Party Business, DWS Investment GmbH
    • Michael Hoffelder, General Representative at Deutsche Bank Bauspar-AG
    • Hans Kraus, Deutsche Bank Private and Business Customers AG
    • Stefan Märkl, Deutsche Bank Private and Business Customers AG
    • Georg Schürmann, Deutsche Bank Private and Business Customers AG
    • Norbert Walter , member of the management team at Deutsche Bank Research
  4. ^ A b Diana Wehlau: Lobbyism and pension reform - the influence of the financial services industry on the partial privatization of old-age provision . VS - Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 254–256.
  5. ↑ Deal between Deutsche Bank and ZFS perfect . In: "Handelsblatt" of March 27, 2002.
  6. ↑ Thomas Langer's website ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the Chair of Financing, Department of Economics, University of Münster. (Retrieved December 4, 2009.) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wiwi.uni-muenster.de
  7. ↑ Complete directory of publications ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the German Institute for Retirement Provision. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dia-vorsorge.de
  8. ↑ a b Young researchers discuss old-age provision  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / cgi.uni-muenster.de   . Press release of the University of Münster No. 10169 from July 18, 2008.
  9. ↑ Heinz-Peter Arndt, Birgit Wetjen: Those who earn well have to save particularly high sums  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.capital.de   . In: "Capital" of October 22, 2009.
  10. ↑ Daniel Baumann: Pension insurance is also worthwhile for younger people. In: Berliner Zeitung . July 15, 2009, accessed July 10, 2015 .
  11. ↑ M. Fabricius, H. Zschäpitz: The pension carries a higher risk than the stock market . In: "Die Welt" from August 25, 2008.
  12. ↑ Every fifth person complains about losses . In: “Focus Online” of April 14, 2009.
  13. ↑ Insufficient knowledge about old-age provision  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ruhrnachrichten.de   . In: “Ruhr Nachrichten” from October 16, 2009.
  14. ↑ Stefan Ruhkamp: In the land of the piggy bank . In "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" of September 24, 2009.
  15. ↑ "Rürup and Rische: Pension yields also positive in the future"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in press releases from the German Pension Insurance Association on August 25, 2009.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de  
  16. ^ Marie-Luise Fleck: Bought as a precaution . In: "Die Zeit" No. 29/1998.
  17. ↑ Bernd Katzenstein: We didn't cheat . In: "Die Zeit", No. 32/1998.