By Justin Fox

The headline from the Dutch business newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad caught my eye on Twitter a few weeks ago: “America is the example of how not to do pensions.” The quote was from an interview with Angelien Kemna, who stepped down on Nov. 1 from the top finance job at APG Groep NV, which manages the Netherlands’ biggest (and world’s fifth-biggest) pension fund. After reading it, it struck me that it might be useful to let U.S. readers know what one of the leading figures on the global pension scene thought was wrong with the way this country handles retirement savings.

The Dutch retirement savings system, considered one of the world’s best, is built around defined-benefit workplace pensions — as the U.S. system used to be. But while some pension funds are affiliated with a single company, such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC or Koninklijke Philips NV, industry-wide pension arrangements are the norm. APG manages ABP, the 405 billion-euro pension fund for workers in the public sector and education, and several smaller funds.

Before joining APG as chief investment officer in 2009 (she was promoted to chief finance and risk officer in 2014), Kemna was chief executive officer of ING Investment Management Europe and worked in various jobs at Dutch asset manager Robeco Groep NV. From 2007 to 2009, she taught part time at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where she got her Ph.D. in finance, while living in Atlanta, where she got some firsthand experience of how the U.S. handles retirement. I spoke with Kemna by phone in mid-December. What follows is an abridged and edited transcript of our conversation.

Justin Fox: Why is America the example of how not to do pensions?

I think that financial services organizations made a lot of money selling these things. People have extreme difficulty understanding pensions at all, and it’s very easy to convince them to do things that might actually not be good for them.

Read full interview @Bloomberg