A lot of work has been done in recent years to improve the transparency of the administrative costs. Dutch pension funds are ‘leader in transparency’ in this area and internationally they get a lot of compliments for it.
The Federation of the Dutch Pension Funds has invested much energy in improving transparency of administrative costs. That started with motivating asset managers to give more insight in the asset management costs. The Recommendations on Administrative Costs were first issued in 2011. The self-regulation of the pension funds to become more transparent has been transformed into legislation. In 2016 the Federation has made a revised edition of the Recommendations.In the new version a big number of types of costs are more clearly described. There is also a total overview of all types of costs categories that regards pension funds. With this overview a pension fund can check whether all types of costs are in view and these types of costs are part of the composing of the three main types of costs. The revised edition also makes it easier to compare the costs between pension funds.