English Summary

Financed by open capitalization

For the professional pension schemes of the liberal professions is characteristic that they are financed not by the method of "pay as you go" as it is used by the Social Insurance Pension Scheme. The pension Schemes of the liberal professions, however, are financed by a method that ist called open capitalization. The characteristic of this method ist that it also integrates the future member into the equivalence relation between contribution and benefits. In general it can be said that one payment of contribution gives, no matter when it is paid, the same amount of benefits. This method can be placed between the genuine payas-you-go-method and the genuine capitalization-method as it is used by the private insurance.

The professional pension schemes are submitted to the general supervision of the responsible minister of the federal state and to the specific acturial supervision by another minister, mostly the minister of economics. Since the returns on the invested capital play an important role for the efficiency of the pension schemes the authorities of the federal states usually have decided to applicate certain dispositions to control the investment which are the same as for the private insurance companies.