How to choose an OFE? That's what you have to pay attention to

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In order to become a member of an Open Pension Fund, it is necessary to sign a contract with the selected fund. This means that you have to familiarize yourself with at least a few offers. What should you pay attention to when analysing the available solutions?

Where can I find information about funds?

Each General Pension Society (PTE), which manages and represents open retirement funds, prepares information material for potential members. They are available, among others, on the websites of individual funds. It is there that the information on the investment policy implemented by the fund and the investment results achieved by it in recent years is published. It is worth to familiarize yourself with these materials and choose a fund that achieves satisfactory rates of return. At the same time, OFE savers should remember that the historical investment results achieved by a given fund are not a guarantee of obtaining similar results in the future, and investing in them involves risk.

How to choose an OFE? Since the materials presenting the functioning of Open Pension Funds are widely available, it is enough to read them carefully. What should you pay special attention to? Here are some important factors that should have a decisive influence on your decision.

• Investment results

Funds manage their investment portfolios in different ways. As a result, they achieve different investment results, so it is worthwhile to familiarize oneself with the historical results and compare the investment results achieved by individual Open Pension Funds.

• Many years of experience

It is worth to entrust your funds to an institution which has many years of experience in the financial market and which employs experienced and highly qualified experts. This will increase the probability that our funds will be invested effectively.

• Level of fees charged

The fees collected by OPFs reduce the pension capital, so it is worth looking at them. Funds may charge, for example, a distribution fee or a fee for the management of customer funds. The lower the rates, the better - there will be more left in the OFE account of the future pensioner.

When to sign a contract with an open retirement fund?

People who have started work and for whom the employer pays the pension contribution, have 4 months to declare whether they are interested in saving in open retirement funds. The agreement can usually be signed at a branch of a selected fund, but most of the OFEs also allow those interested to fill out an online application form. The willingness to sign the contract can also be reported on the hotline. Then the contract will be sent by the consultant to the indicated address.

What about the selection of an open retirement fund?

After receiving the answer to the question of how to choose an open pension fund, it remains to sign an agreement with an open pension fund. Then part of the pension contribution transferred by the employer to ZUS (Social Insurance Institution) will be redirected to a selected fund. This is exactly 2.92% of your pay, which is about 15% of your pension contribution.

Each fund periodically informs its members about the amount of funds accumulated by them in individual accounts. Such information shall be sent in writing to the address for correspondence contained in the contract. Some OFEs offer modern solutions to provide access to an online account.