Meeting with DISA Management and Pension Board, March 21st 2019
Present: Patrick Schreiber, Chris Newton, Arnold Dikkers, Pierre Chaigneau, Georges Darrer
The meeting was called by DISA with the purpose of advising us of changes being undertaken in the near future to the pension plan as part of the DowDupont de-merger.
Arnold Dikkers kicked the meeting off by detailing that all active employees would be presented with a new pension plan in the coming weeks. These changes are driven by the need to harmonize plans between the current alternate DuPont plan (introduced for new employees in 2012), active members of the original DISA pension plan, incoming ex-Dow employees, those that will join Corteva, the new AG entity, and those that will join the Du Pont Spec Co. It is expected that all of these employees will join a new plan that will be managed by Swiss Life insurance company. This means that the original DISA pension plan which today serves approximately 850 beneficiaries will no longer have any active participants. The details of the new proposed pension arrangements are currently being discussed with all active employees concerned by this change. Patrick Schriber indicated that as of the effective date of the proposed plan changes for active members, the DISA pension plan and foundation would henceforth be limited to pensioners; In light of that, the funding of the Foundation would be financially strengthened through a set of measures to ensure that it will continue to provide the plan benefits to all beneficiaries for the entirety of its remaining life. The measures would include substantial additional cash contributions into the fund to achieve a very low discount rate of about half a percent coupled with a company guarantee.
Chris Newton proceeded to explain that the DISA fund would continue to be managed in the same manner as currently, i.e. by AON-Hewitt for administrative purposes and would continue to receive investment advice as at present.
We enquired about future of the Pension Board. Chris stated that in the case of the DISA fund, there would be no need for employee representation and the company appointed Board members would remain responsible for fund oversight and reporting. Pensioner participation in pension boards is not mandated by law. Our association would continue to receive news and be a conduit for questions related to the running and performance of the “pensioners only” fund.
Most of these changes will occur in the next few months, with the aim of finalizing them by June, albeit, the exact timeline may be reviewed.
A possible pensioner get-together will likely be planned in May/June period to explain the changes and field questions about the ‘pensioners only’ DISA fund. In the event the timeline were altered, such a pension get-together would be rescheduled accordingly