The famous restaurants Karakter and Koraal on Coral Estate have recently obtained a collective pension plan with ENNIA for its permanent employees. This is unique, because many employees in the hospitality industry do not accrue a pension, despite the fact that the hospitality industry is one of the biggest industries in our economy. Jorrit and Marleen Heekelaar, who own the restaurants, know that the success of their restaurants depends on how well the entire team works together, and that high quality and great service are achieved by investing in people. That’s why they wanted to help their employees by providing them with a good pension plan.

“We think it’s important that we enable our staff to build up a supplementary pension. We worked with one of ENNIA’s Pension Specialists and created the right collective pension plan for our company. When our employees reach retirement age for example, they’ll receive a monthly pension that they’ve built up with the employer, in addition to receiving their AOV,” says Marleen Heekelaar of Karakter. "As employers, we have the responsibility to think about the future of our employees.”

“There is one condition: staff members must also contribute to their own pension accrual. They could choose anywhere between 1% and 3% of their gross salary as their pension contribution. Their contribution is tax deductible. And as the employer, we also contribute 3%," adds Jorrit Hekelaar.

“It’s interesting to see that every employee chose to participate, and that everyone chose the maximum personal contribution of 3%. For Jorrit and Marleen it’s great to see that the employees appreciate their efforts that much," says ENNIA’s Arie Groothuis.

"I heard they had been working on this and I am very happy with it," says Noeky, who works for the company as a server. “I think it’s a great initiative and it gives me peace of mind about when I retire. A pension plan like this would be very difficult for me to arrange on my own so I immediately opted for the maximum contribution level, because that makes financial sense.”

Karakter’s collective pension plan consists of a monthly payment for the employee after reaching retirement age as well as a payout for surviving relatives if the employee dies before retirement.