The challenges

Company pension and employee benefit plans have developed rapidly over the past ten years due to two main reasons:

• The difficulties faced by the basic pension and health insurance schemes have increased the need for complementary collective or individual plans
• Due to the burden of taxation and social security contributions paid on salaries, companies increasingly offer additional remuneration benefits that qualify for preferential tax and social security treatment with the aim of encouraging staff loyalty.

Companies and insurers require assistance with the implementation of these plans given the growing complexity of applicable legislation.

Our practice areas

We advise our clients on the following matters:

• Implementing employee benefit plans (additional healthcare, disability and life insurance)
• Implementing complementary pension plans (defined benefits, defined contributions, collective pension plans, company pension plans)
• Compliance audits of these plans particularly with regard to the new rules laid down by the Fillon law and health insurance system reform act and regulations
• Managing the impact of corporate restructurings on complementary employee benefits
• Legal issues relating to mutual insurance (mergers of mutual insurance undertakings in different categories, regulatory compliance audits, etc.)
• Advising insurers
• Litigation relating to complementary employee benefits (disputes with the social security authorities relating to pension and employee benefit plans, application of the Evin act prohibiting smoking in the workplace, etc.).

Our approach

Our approach is based on:

• Expertise developed by our teams through their regular work in this field.
• Access to the firm’s other areas of expertise (taxation, company law, employment law, insurance law, brokerage practices, etc.). The complexity of the issues requires synergies of legal expertise, for example by working with taxation experts in order to deal with categories of staff that are entitled to pension and employee benefit plans or with company law experts in relation to restructurings.
• Methodological attention to detail.
• Appointment of a special team of multilingual lawyers to handle international cases.

Our clients

Medium-sized enterprises, French and international groups and their subsidiaries in all business sectors.