Inclusion of current bank employees in the general social security scheme

20th October, 2010

Today, Associação Portuguesa de Bancos (Portuguese Bank Association - APB), on behalf of the credit institutions, signed an agreement to include current bank employees in the general social security scheme.

At the meetings between the State Secretariat for Social Security, Associação Portuguesa de Bancos and the banking sector's trade unions, the government announced its intention to include bank employees in the general social security scheme. This move will come into effect on 1 January 2011 and will cover all bank employees admitted before 3 March 2009, who have previously been enrolled in the CAFEB (the bank employees' social security system). The government included a provision in the 2011 State Budget bill for the purpose and will later publish a law regulating the matter.

The meetings managed to reach a consensus on a tripartite agreement between the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, APB and FEBASE, representing the bank employees' trade unions from the northern and central regions. The agreement sets out the terms of the employees' inclusion, including the following aspects:

1. Costs of parenthood (including adoption), old age (retirement pensions), occupational diseases and unemployment previously covered by the CAFEB will now be included in the general social security scheme.

2. The credit institutions will continue to cover illness, invalidity, death and surviving spouse pension.

3. Bank employees will continue to contribute the 3% that they paid to the CAFEB, which will now go directly to the general social security scheme.

4. The credit institutions will contribute 23.61% instead of the 11% that they used to pay to the CAFEB.

5. These two contributions, which total 26.61%, correspond exactly to the sum of the rates in the Contributions Code for eventualities that will now be covered by social security.

6. There will be no transfer of the credit institutions' pension funds to social security and employees admitted to the banking sector after 1995 will continue to contribute 5% to these funds.

7. Bank employees affected by this agreement will still be covered by all the provisions of the collective labour agreement for the banking sector or other applicable collective labour regulatory instruments.

8. The parties also agreed to set up a tripartite working group to monitor the effects of the agreement and its basic premises.