The II pillar comprises an important part of your future pension. Each month, 2% of your salary goes into the II pillar, to which the state adds 4% from the social tax paid on your salary. Choosing the right fund is important, because it will affect your future pension. That’s why you can now choose and switch between II pillar funds in our internet and mobile bank.
Start saving smart today!
When it comes to long-term savings we’ve chosen to partner with Estonia’s own Tuleva, which offers low-fee funds across the board. This is important because when saving for the long term, low fees are the only credible predictor of future returns. The fees are simply deducted from your pension assets. Not one euro that you pay out to the fund manager will earn you a return in the future. Make sure the fund you choose charges 0.5% or less.
Tuleva offers index funds – this means that everyone saving in the fund owns shares in nearly 3000 of the world’s leading companies. This hedges your risks across a number of countries, enterprises and branches of industry and means that your eggs are in almost 3000 different baskets. Secondly, as an owner of these successful businesses, you benefit from growth in the global economy: as these businesses grow, so will your II pillar. Historically, index funds have shown the highest returns. Bear in mind, of course, that past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
Tuleva is a cooperative of people saving for their retirement. Therefore, there is no conflict of interest between the company and its clients. No Tuleva customer pays more than 0.38% in fees. Tuleva champions the interests of everyone saving for their pension in Estonia: thanks to them, the country has index funds, the law prohibits exit fees when leaving a II pillar pension fund and fees have to be communicated transparently.
The earlier you make the right choice, the greater the returns you’ll enjoy in the future.
For example, if you pay even 1% less each year from the age of 20, you will have 25% more in pension assets from your unpaid contributions. But it is never too late to decide. Even if you save 1% each year from the age of 50, this will still accumulate 10% more assets for your retirement.
This means that you invest exactly the same amount of money, but you can significantly increase its value by saving in a low-fee fund long-term.
Don’t put off choosing! Use the Tuleva II pillar calculator to work out how much you stand to gain.
To date, people have been able to contribute 2% of their gross salary to the II pillar, to which the state has added 4%.
Now you can apply to raise your 2% contribution to up to 6% from 2025. This change only pertains to an individual’s own contribution: the state will continue to add 4% from social tax regardless.
We encourage you to increase your contribution to 6%, because pensions in Estonia tend to be rather low: the average pension in the country is around 40% of the average wage, but the EU average is almost double that. So to prepare for your retirement, you need to make smart choices and build up your savings.
Increasing your contribution to the II pillar is a good way of saving automatically and tax-free for your future.
We constantly improve the range of services offered to our customers and therefore offer to invest in Tuleva's pension funds through Coop Pank's internet and mobile banking. Our aim here is to help people in Estonia save more effectively.
Tuleva shares a lot of our values: both of our companies are Estonian-owned, and we both contribute to promoting the financial well-being of people in the country. Likewise, we both aim to encourage people to think about saving – including those who, for a variety of reasons, have never really given it any thought. Stage 1 of our partnership involves giving Coop clients the chance to start saving in the Tuleva Third Pillar Pension Fund via the Coop website.
Further down the line, our partnership will guarantee a win-win-win scenario for Coop Pank, Tuleva and our clients, which is to say we’ll prove that 1+1=3.
Tuleva is an asset management company that takes the form of an association. Its aim is to grow the assets of people in Estonia, creating the best conditions for investing money long-term for anyone wishing to join. Its founders include Tõnu Pekk, Indrek Neivelt, Taavet Hinrikus, Kadi Lambot and other well-known Estonians. Tuleva’s third pillar has already become one of the country’s biggest pension funds. The association’s principles are offering low fees and investing solely in good funds.
Tuleva has introduced modern, low-fee index funds to Estonia. An index fund is an investment fund which seeks to emulate the average market returns by investing proportionally in all (or almost all) of the assets on the market. Index funds constitute a passive form of investment, which means that the fund manager doesn’t actively look to choose shares or other assets that might exceed the average market returns. As a rule, index funds come with low fees.
The second pillar or mandatory funded pension forms part of the pension system. The mandatory funded pension is collected at the rate of 6% of a person’s gross salary: 2% is contributed by the person themselves, while the other 4% is contributed by the state. These payments are automatically deducted from a person’s salary unless they have exited the mandatory funded pension system. Mandatory funded pension assets can be used during a person’s retirement or earlier upon exiting the system.
The third pillar or voluntary funded pension also forms part of the pension system. Payments can be made into the third pillar at times of your choosing, and the money you save in it can be used at any time.
Payments into the third pillar are exempt from income tax up to 15% of your taxable gross income, but no more than €6000 per year.
The funded pension, which is to say the second pillar, is based on pre-financing – when you work in Estonia you save for your retirement yourself by paying 2% of your gross salary into your pension fund. The state adds 4% to this from the 33% social tax paid on the employee’s income. These payments are made automatically.
The voluntary funded pension, which is to say the third pillar, is an additional way of saving in which you decide on the frequency and amount of contributions yourself, as well as on how you make them. Anyone can transfer up to 15% of their gross income (no more than 6000 euros per year) to their third pillar tax-free.
Up to 1 January 2024, 6% of a person's gross salary was transferred to the II pillar. Of this, 2% was contributed by the individual and 4% by the state. From 1 January 2024,
the amount of your own contribution can be increased from 2% to either 4% or 6%. The state will still contribute 4%.
You can check and change your contribution rate at any time by logging in to Tuleva, but the new percentage will only apply from 1 January 2025. From now on, applications submitted by the end of November will be valid from the start of January the following year.
You can swap your existing fund units for those of another pension fund or leave them in the same fund and reroute future monthly contributions to another fund. Swapping pension fund units is free of charge.
New contributions to the second pillar can only be made to one fund, which is the active fund. You can change your active fund at any time by submitting an application. This will take immediate effect, and all new contributions (starting from the next one you make) will be paid into the new fund.
Units amassed in the second pillar can be swapped for those of another fund three times a year on fixed conditions. The deadlines for the submission of applications to swap units are 31 March, 31 July and 30 November. Applications can be submitted on the Tuleva website or the Pensionikeskus website. You can change funds via your bank’s Internet bank as well.
If you have more specific questions, e-mail tuleva@tuleva.ee or call 644 5100.
Tuleva currently offers three funds for you to choose between:
Find out more (and ask for more information) on the Tuleva website.
Choose a pension fund with low fees. Tuleva started when Tõnu Pekk, Annika Uudelepp, Taavet Hinrikus, Indrek Neivelt and other like-minded Estonians began looking into why their retirement savings were so small and reached the conclusion that the high fees charged by banks had eaten away most of their returns. That’s why they set up Tuleva, where pension fund money is invested in low-fee index funds.
Tuleva believes in passive investment. Put simply, this means that all the money paid into our funds is distributed between the shares of thousands of the world’s biggest companies or government bonds. This ensures that risks are nicely hedged. After that, what’s needed more than anything else is the patience to stick with it and ignore scaremongering bank tellers and silver-tongued salesmen. Investment funds which invest their money passively are known as index funds.
Tuleva’s pension funds focus on long-term returns and aren’t put off by short-term fluctuations. Mitigating short-term risks would be expensive and leave those saving for their retirement less likely to achieve the returns they’re hoping for on their assets.
Tuleva doesn’t dabble in forecasting and never tries to outsmart the market, instead investing on a factual basis. The funds contributed by those saving for their retirement are distributed between the shares of the world’s most successful companies, because this has been shown to bring the majority of the world’s investors the best results.
Tuleva keeps its costs very low and only involves itself in activities that will generate value for savers, because the higher a pension fund’s management fees, the less money this leaves people with for their retirements. Tuleva doesn’t spend its money on expensive ad campaigns, the short-term mitigation of risks or armies of salespeople.
Keep an eye on your money matters wherever you are. Using the Internet bank and mobile bank of Coop Pank is really easy. Give it a try!
