Co-founder of Affari Miei
February 23, 2024
Are you looking for information on Cattolica Assicurazioni’s Vera Vita Open Pension Fund?
If they have offered you to subscribe to this product, or you are simply curious and want to know what it is, all you have to do is read this article to get useful information on the characteristics, costs, advantages and disadvantages of this pension fund.
This is an investment aimed at providing a supplementary pension, and is a product supervised by COVIP.
Since it is still an investment, you must carefully choose which fund to join, how to do it and whether to do it, so think carefully before deciding and above all compare multiple instruments.
With this article you will be able to clear your ideas.
Enjoy the reading!
This article talks about:
Two words about Vera Vita
Before analyzing the product itself, let’s quickly see which company is offering it.
Vera Vita SpA is a bancassurance company in joint venture with the Banco BPM Banking Group and the Cattolica Assicurazioni Group.
They offer life insurance products, aimed at creating investment, savings and supplementary pension solutions.
They are also able to offer a high level of consultancy and assistance to customers and local networks.
They were born in 2000 in Verona under the name of BPV, while in 2018 they became Vera Vita.
It is not a risk-free tool
The institution offering the product turns out to be quite safe, being supported by Banca BPM and Cattolica Assicurazioni. However, this tells us nothing about the tool, since the security of the company is not directly proportional to the security of the tool.
In fact, if you decide to invest your money in supplementary pensions, remember that you are running risks, because your money will not remain in a savings account, but will be invested, so if the markets were to go badly, your investment would be affected.
Usually in products like these multiple investment lines are proposed, so that each individual can opt for the investment that makes him feel more comfortable or for the one that will be best for him.
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How a pension fund works
It is an open pension fund. Pension funds are established as separate and autonomous assets compared to that of the company that establishes them. They pay the benefits to the members.
The open pension fund provides the possibility for the member to make contribution payments which are collected, stored at the institution that holds the instrument and invested in the financial markets in order to obtain returns that allow the capital set aside to be increased over time. This will give rise to the supplementary pension.
The amount of the supplementary pension will be different for each individual, and will depend on the contributions paid, the duration of the contribution period, how much the instrument costs and also the returns obtained on the financial markets.
Contribution method
You can contribute to the pension fund in 4 different ways:
Making gods payments personally; Contributing with i TFR flows (severance pay) accruing if you are an employee; Thanks to contributions carried out by employers after having made the commitment on the basis of collective agreements or contracts or according to company regulations; If you want to increase the amount, you can pay additionally further contributions than the minimum.
This fund can be joined by private and public employees with permanent or fixed-term employment relationships, self-employed workers or freelancers, members of cooperatives, individuals without income from work, and tax dependent individuals.
Investment proposals
If you decide to join this open pension fund, you have 3 different sectors in which to choose to invest your money.
They are:
Popular bond: it is a guaranteed fund, with an average time horizon, i.e. between 5 and 10 years from retirement. It is a sector that is mainly aimed at individuals who still have a medium-term working life expectancy, and with a low propensity for risk. The portfolio is in fact made up 100% of bonds;
Popular management: this is a guaranteed fund that has a medium-long time horizon of 10 or 15 years from retirement. Management is aimed at achieving returns that are at least equal to those of the TFR, and it is a useful sector for a person with a low propensity for risk. The portfolio is made up of approximately 84% bonds and 16% shares;
Popular mix: it is a balanced fund suitable for those with a long time horizon, i.e. beyond 15 years after retirement. It is useful for a person who seeks higher returns in the long term and accepts greater exposure to risk. In this case the portfolio is roughly divided into 50% stocks and 50% bonds.
The pension benefit
By joining this pension fund, a periodic benefit will be paid in the form of an annuity. This sale will be calculated based on the value of the accrued individual position.
The periodic benefit can be provided in the form of:
You can request the provision of benefits in several ways:
Immediate annuity: which is paid to the insured while he is alive;
Immediate reversible annuity: paid to the curate while he is alive and subsequently to the person he designates;
Certain income: for the first 5 or 10 years and then it will become an annuity, it will be paid to the insured and, in the event of his death, to the beneficiary.
You always have the possibility to request an advance (up to 75%) for illness at any time or after 8 years for the purchase or renovation of your first home, always up to 75%. After 8 years you can request an advance for other reasons, but in this case only up to 30%.
You can also request partial or total redemption due to loss of requirements, disability, unemployment, mobility, layoffs or death.
You can also transfer your position to another supplementary pension scheme after 2 years.
The costs of the Vera Vita open pension fund
We have arrived at one of the most important and at the same time thorny parts when it comes to analyzing such an instrument.
In fact, this section allows you to evaluate whether a tool is really convenient or not. They therefore deserve further study and reflection separately.
So let’s look at the cost table:
Membership costs: 40 euros charged in a single payment upon joining; Expenses to be incurred during the accumulation phase: not expected to be paid directly by the member; Advance costs: not foreseen; Transfer costs: 25 euros; Surrender fee: 25 euros; Individual position reallocation costs: 25 euros; Temporary advance supplementary annuity (RITA): 3 euros for each annuity installment paid.
As regards indirect expenses depending on the reference sector:
popular bond: 1.10% of assets on an annual basis; popular management: 1.15% of assets on an annual basis; popular mix: 1.20% of assets on an annual basis.
To provide you with an indication of the cost of the 3 Savings & Pensions segments, I leave you with the summary cost indicator (ISC).
Facilitated taxation
The contributions paid by the member to the supplementary pension schemes are deductible from the overall income up to a maximum annual amount set at 5,164.57 euros. This annual limit also includes payments made to the supplementary pension schemes of tax dependents, for the amount not deducted by them.
The returns generated by the investment are taxed at 20% and not 26% like other investments.
Pension benefits are subject to a withholding tax of 15% on the taxable amount of the benefit.
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Opinions of Affari Miei on the Vera Vita open pension fund
We have reached the end of the discussion on the Vera Vita open pension fund.
As I told you at the beginning, I will now give you my opinions on this product, so that you can make your own assessments and try to understand whether it is a suitable product for you or not.
My opinion on these products is not positive, personally I prefer to invest with other instruments, as I explained to you in detail in this guide.
I believe that a fund like this is full of costs and is also not capable of providing you with returns that are worth spending all that money on. Self read the KID carefully you will also realize how these products are highly binding for you.
The first problem is that the costs you will incur will not be repaid to you in terms of returns, so you wonder if it is really worth it.
Of course we are not just talking about this tool specifically, but in general about all similar tools, also provided by other insurance companies.
In my opinion, supplementary pension provision is not the best method for building capital to supplement your pension.
You could consider the idea of training, learning and investing with fewer constraints and more freedom, and above all in tools that allow you to spend much less!
In this way you could be more responsible for your investments and above all you could obtain a higher supplementary pension than you would get with this type of product.
In conclusion, I do not feel like advising you to invest using similar products, although of course the final choice is always up to you. But if you follow my articles on the blog, you will be able to see how with training you can pursue other paths and become an informed investor!
Happy continuation!
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