Assessing administration charges for the affiliate in individual account systems

Resumen

In any pension system based on capitalization, affiliates have to cover certain explicit costs which in a pay-as-you-go system would be implicit. In this paper we set out a model based on Whitehouse (2000) and Diamond (1999) to enable the explicit costs borne by the affiliate both during his working life and his retirement period to be assessed. It also shows the relationships between the different ways of measuring the costs that make up the total price finally paid by the contributors. Included in the model is the notable effect that some factors -such as gaps in contribution profiles, account transfers and changes in salary profiles- have on projecting the costs borne by the affiliates. Finally we carry out an international comparison of administration costs from the point of view of the affiliate, focusing special attention on the countries of Latin America and Spain. This has a double objective: 1.- To test the validity of criticisms made by some researchers as to whether the new capitalization systems introduced in Latin America are too expensive to run for the affiliates. 2.- To serve as a reference for the individual pension scheme system in Spain.