Company pensions and providence schemes have developed rapidly over the last ten years, for two main reasons:

• The difficulties experienced by the basic pension and health insurance regimes have led to an increased need for supplementary schemes, both collective and individual.
• The burden of tax and social security contribution on employees have led businesses to resort increasingly to systems of acomplementary pay, which receive favourable tax and social security treatment so as to increase employee loyalty.

Like insurance institutions, businesses require assistance with the implementation of such schemes, in light of the increasing complexity of regulations in the field.

Our areas of practice

We advise our clients in the following areas:

• Implementation of providence schemes (health expenses, incapacity, disability and death benefit)
• Implementation of supplementary pension schemes (defined benefits, defined contributions, French PERCO and PERE retirement savings plans)
• Auditing such schemes for conmpliance with regulations, particulary those under the “Fillon” Act, which reformed the law of health insurance, and its relevant statutory instruments
• Managing the impact of restructurings on schemes supplementing social security provisions
• Law of mutual insurances system (mergers of mutual insurance companies Books II and III, compliance audit with regulations, etc)
• Advising insurance institutions
• Disputes relating to supplementary provision (URSSAF disputes concerning pensions and advance protective provision, application of the “Evin” Act etc)

Our approach

Our approach is based on:

• The expertise of our teams, based on our regular work in the field.
• The availability of the firm's expertise in other fields (tax law, company law, insurance law, brokering practice, etc). The complexity of the issues which arise demands sinergy of legal expertise with tax law for example, when dealing with classes of employees able to benefit from pension or providence schemes, or with company law in a restructuring matter.
• Methodical precision.
• The ability to handle international matters through dedicated, multilingual lawyers.

Our clients

Our clients are French and international corporate groups and their subsidiaries operating across the full range of business activity, insurance companies, mutual societies and life assurance institutions.