The Control Committee Is No Longer an Obstacle to Launching an Employment Pension Plan

Simplified Employment Pension Plans? Yes—no need for an internal control committee or excessive paperwork. Law 12/2022 allows any company to join in just a few days thanks to the new enabling entities entering the pension ecosystem. Find out how in this article.

1. Executive Summary

The idea that any employment pension plan requires setting up an internal control committee within the company still persists.

Law 12/2022 and its regulatory development (Royal Decree 668/2023) prove otherwise: today, Simplified Employment Pension Plans exist, which feature an external and specialized control committee.

This facilitates the adhesion of companies of any size, public administrations, cooperatives, and self-employed associations, eliminating bureaucratic burden and reducing conflicts of interest in investment policy.

2. The Old Myth Holding Back Many Organizations

For decades, it was taken for granted that creating an employment pension plan required setting up a joint Control Committee within the company (50% company representatives and 50% workforce representatives). That obligation—established for "classic" plans in Art. 7 of the Pension Plans and Funds Regulation Act—involved elections, minutes, meetings, and civil liabilities: a cost that many organizations considered unaffordable.

3. What Changed with Law 12/2022 and Its Regulation (RD 668/2023)

The plan can be promoted by a sectoral agreement, a federation of cooperatives, a self-employed association, or a public administration—not only by an individual SME or large company.

The plan's Control Committee is designated "directly" at a supra-corporate level, without repeating the process in each adhering company.

Result: the entity joins the already established plan and does not need its own internal committee; signing the adhesion annex is sufficient.

4. Why an External Committee Is Better

When investment policy depends on internal representatives, biases can emerge: personal affinity with certain managers, excess or insufficient risk based on each department's interests, or short-term decisions to avoid accountability during adverse periods.

With an external and specialized body:

• Technical selection: assets and providers filtered by liquidity, costs, and ESG criteria.
• Whitelists: prevent individual preferences and guarantee low fees.
• Open digital minutes: permanent transparency for all participants.

These safeguards prevent conflicts of interest and ensure that assets are managed with the same discipline as an institutional fund.

5. Transparency and Efficiency Through the Common Digital Platform

The law mandates that all operations and participant information be channeled "preferably by electronic means" and that management companies use the system's Common Digital Platform.

This is where Arca's technology comes in:

• Convene and document Committee meetings: electronic signature workflows and automatic minutes in the app.
• Inform each worker of their rights: individual panel (mobile and web) with daily updates.
• Contribution calculation and payroll reconciliation: API integrations with payroll and discrepancy alerts.
• Investment and cost tracking: real-time net returns dashboard vs. benchmark.

"Arca is the Employment Pension Plan platform that enables better compensation for your workforce without administrative burden—all in the palm of the employee's hand."

6. What This Means for Your Organization

• Less paperwork: adhesion with a simple annex; no internal elections or own bylaws needed.
• Fewer biases: investment policy is decided by a professional committee accountable with objective data.
• Guaranteed compliance: sectoral bodies and the Special Control Committee assume legal obligations.
• Scalability: same plan for hundreds of organizations, from micro-enterprises to public entities.
• Employee experience comparable to mobile banking: balance, contributions, retirement projection, and tax information in one click.

7. In Conclusion

The requirement of "setting up a control committee" should no longer be the excuse for postponing your collective pension plan.

With Simplified Employment Pension Plans and the external supervision provided by Law 12/2022, plus the automated transparency that Arca delivers, any organization can offer a key social benefit with zero bureaucracy, lower risk of biases, and maximum trust.

Shall we take the first step? Schedule a call here and we'll show you how to have your employment pension plan running in less than a week.