Consumer protection

The client should contact the national supervisory authority/ombudsman with a complaint. In case their problem is not resolved, they could escalate their complaint to the European Ombudsman.

Answered by: European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority

BaFin would be the right person to contact, we have a formula on our website and any citizen with a question regarding pension plans is free to use it to contact us as consumers or even as a whistle blower, we have a section for complaints.

If you have a problem with a certain company then, of course, you have the opportunity to tell us about your complaint and we will check up on that and maybe get in touch with the respective pension planner or company and we will let you know what happens. But only if we are responsible for the specific issue and we can do something about it -maybe because the respective company is not complying with the law – we will get in touch with them and regularly or usually we ask them to tell us their point of view and in many cases this already helps that the respective company starts to rethink their acting and reconsider what they are doing and change their behavior. It’s necessary to first check the issue, it’s also possible that the company acts as it should and that the citizen has misunderstood the company’s obligations. We have complaints that are rectified and complaints that are not, so we always check up on it and then get in touch with the company if the complaint is rectified.

Answered by: BaFin (Federal Financial Supervisory Authority)