The president of the Board of Directors, Virginia Romero, announced that in the coming years the Bank will face a growing number of retirees: currently there are 10% of the active members who are between 55 and 59 years old and another 10% between 50 and 54 years old; Currently almost 20% of the Caja’s retirees are 80 years of age or older.
She also indicated that according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), professionals live longer than the general population: “A professional woman lives an average of 3.26 years longer than a non-professional woman in Uruguay; while a professional man lives 3.21 years more”, said Romero during the presentation.
The president affirmed this Friday the 19th that the current financial-actuarial situation of the Bank “is mainly due to structural aspects related to the working and demographic conditions of the professionals.”
“Professional activity is developing more and more in a dependency relationship and the majority of university professionals are women who have less exercise behavior and are longer-lived than men. In turn, life expectancy increases more at older ages,” she said.
He also expressed that the collection has grown less than the outflows due to liabilities because the exercise behavior of the affiliates has decreased in contrast to an increase in work in a dependency regime.
In that line, Romero said that most of the assets contribute by low categories and the income by art.71 of Law 17,738 is adjusted according to inflation and has increased less than the salary.
At the same time, outlays for benefits have grown, since the number of retirees per year has increased; liabilities also increased in real terms from 2005 to 2021.
According to Romero, US$ 35 million per month of benefits are paid. This includes retirement, pensions, subsidies and other benefits. Monthly operating income is US$ 33 million, representing direct contributions, income per art. 71 and other operating income. Faced with this situation, the president of the Caja’s board of directors assured that “the institute needs an urgent reform.”
For this reason, an “express law” is being worked on, different from the one presented by the Executive Branch, which will seek parametric changes, among which are: modifying the retirement age from 60 to 65 years, increasing the average basic salary pension, reduce the replacement rate and raise the contributing categories from 10 to 15 “so that the first jumps between one category and another are not so difficult,” explained Romero.
