“The incision we have made is very important and the benefits from its creation TEKA they will be seen over time and are multiple. I want to focus in particular on something that all three young people on the panel touched on, the question of the concept of individual ownership of a part of personal savings as a result of a young person’s work. This concept of the individual piggy bank, that this money is yours, they write your name on it, no one can touch it, at least the state guarantees that you will get your contributions back and certainly something more. This completely overturns the perception we have of the distributive concept of social security, that essentially our own contributions pay the pensions of the previous generation.

Precisely this individual piggy bank, which the insured will see growing every month, is what changes our perceptions about the concept of savings but also about the importance of insured work” the Prime Minister emphasized Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the event of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security for the two years since the start of operation of the Subsidiary Capital Insurance Fund (TEKA) held at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation cultural center.

The prime minister began his speech by expressing his thanks to those who envisioned, designed and implemented TEKA, the first chapter, as he said, of a very large reform concerning our insurance system and underlined that it is the brainchild of Deputy Minister Panos Tsakloglos.

“Today in our country we still face a problem of underinsured work, in a little while we will increase the minimum wage again, but we know that there are workers in our country who are nominally insured at the minimum wage, but are paid more than that. What they earn today, they lose in contributions, which are theirs and which would go into the individual piggy bank to offer them a bigger pension in the long run” said the Prime Minister.

“It is important to break this prejudice that to a certain extent exists in the new generation, that pension does not concern me and even worse I will not get a pension. So why should I invest today in what I see as an uncertain future. We have to break this mentality because the saving forecast is a very important educational process with which young children must become familiar” he added.

“The possibility given through TEKA to choose different investment tools, the familiarity with the concept of risk and return, all these are important educational processes that our young people must gradually go through” said the Prime Minister.

“Abroad, there are large insurance organizations everywhere, with a great deal of know-how, who are committed above all to protecting the contributions of the insured. This is what we are going to do with TEKA, to build an organization with great technical know-how, under the supervision of the Bank of Greece, which will guarantee the best possible returns, based on the risk that the insured wants to take but also on the basis of what is in the cycle of his life”, he emphasized.

He also said that these funds will be invested in the Greek economy. “Today we are at 112 million, but soon TEKA will find itself managing billions” he noted.

“This great reform, by its very nature, will be tested in time,” said the prime minister, emphasizing that he must gain the trust of the young.