Until the structural reform of 2012, it was possible for public pension funds with a state guarantee (consciously or unconsciously — invoking the perenniality and the public guarantee) to apply a mixed financing of pay-as-you-go and funding in advance. This means that current pensions and vested benefits of active insured persons were not backed by sufficient capital (“partial capitalisation”). With the reform, this system is now only tolerated, with the aim of achieving a minimum funding ratio of 80% for these pension funds by 2052. A pension fund under public law that was to be run under the partial capitalisation system had to fulfil the following requirements according to Art. 72a BVG:

The pension fund does not meet the requirements of full capitalisation when the BVG revision of 17 December 2010 comes into force and thus has a funding ratio of less than 100%.

There is a state guarantee in accordance with Art. 72c BVG.

The supervisory authority approves the deviation from full capitalisation.