Doctors, dentists or medical auxiliaries, health professionals must, like everyone else, prepare for their retirement. It is for this purpose that they are affiliated to old-age insurance funds which provide them with a basic pension and a supplementary pension. They can also increase their income by building up personal savings in various ways.
Mandatory pensions
Like anyone who works, health professionals contribute, during their working life, to be entitled, when the time comes, to a basic pension and a supplementary pension.
This contributory logic makes it possible to calculate the amount of the pension according to the contributions paid. To be entitled to a basic pension at the full rate, the health professional must validate a certain number of quarters.
The calculation of the supplementary pension, which is also mandatory, is a little different. The contributions paid for the supplementary pension are converted into points. The value of the point changes every year. The calculation of the supplementary pension is based on the value of the point at the time of retirement.
For medical professions exercising their activity in a liberal form, there is also a supplementary pension, the Old Age Social Benefit, or ASV. It represents an important part of the overall retirement of physicians.
The pension, basic and supplementary, is based on a principle of distribution. This system calls for solidarity between generations. It is the assets currently working who contribute to the pensions of today’s retirees. This solidarity, which is also exercised between the healthy and the sick, makes it possible to maintain the level of pensions for people who have interrupted their careers because of illness.
Depending on their specific profession, healthcare professionals come under a specific pension fund. This is how doctors depend on the Autonomous Pension Fund for Doctors of France, or Carmf.
Health professionals can also join the CIPAV, which is one of the main pension and provident funds for the liberal professions. Dentists, midwives and all health auxiliaries depend on other pension funds.
Read also: Carpimko: the retirement fund for liberal medical professions
Personal savings as optional retirement
Like anyone concerned with compensating for the drop in income resulting from retirement, healthcare professionals can invest their money in financial products.
This other form of retirement, optional, is then based on the principle of capitalization. the people concerned then build up personal savings for retirement. They choose to place it in financial products designed for this purpose.
The Madelin retirement contract is one of them. It is reserved for the liberal professions. It makes it possible to pay money which, at the time of retirement, will be converted into a life annuity, paid until the end of the saver’s life. This professional health insurance is, for the subscribers of these contracts, the guarantee of a more comfortable retirement.
Under the Madelin law, passed in 1994, an optional supplementary pension scheme was also created for doctors. In this system, contributions are converted into points.
The amount of this optional supplementary pension is calculated on the basis of the number of points acquired, multiplied by the service value of the point, reassessed each year. Managed by the Autonomous Pension Fund for Doctors of France (CARMF), this savings scheme benefits from numerous advantages.
It is indeed a secure investment, which benefits from an attractive return and the deductibility of the contributions paid. Health professionals wishing to obtain complete information on the carmf pension will find a great deal of information on the sites dedicated to this subject.
The landscape of retirement savings products has however been modified by the passage of the law relating to the growth and transformation of companies, or PACTE law. Passed in May 2019, this law creates a new savings product, the Retirement Savings Plan, or PER, which can be taken out individually or in a company.
This PER is ultimately intended to replace existing retirement savings products. For health professionals, it is mainly the Madelin retirement contract and the Popular Retirement Savings Plan, or PERP.
Health professionals with a Madelin contract or a PERP can continue to deposit their savings on these supports under the same conditions. They can also, if they wish, transfer their retirement savings free of charge to a PER.
They also have the possibility, from October 1, 2019, to open a retirement savings plan. In any case, they must take into account that retirement savings products such as Madelin contracts will no longer be offered from October 1, 2020.
Finally, life insurance remains an attractive financial product for healthcare professionals as well as for others, whose savings can be converted, at the time of retirement, into capital or an annuity.
Read also: Life insurance for the liberal professions: the solution for a peaceful retirement
