July 2023
21Jul

Pension Reform, Incentives to Retire and Retirement Behavior: Empirical Evidence from Swedish Microdata

By Lisa Laun & Mårten Palme This paper investigates to what extent the 1998 reform of Sweden’s public old-age pension system contributed to the increase in extensive margin labor supply among older workers seen in the country in recent decades. We use a large data set containing all males and females born in Sweden between 1927 and 1950 and observe their retirement behavior during 1991–2012. The data show that the reform changed the incentives to remain in the labor force...

July 21, 2023
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May 2023
05May

Swedish watchdog to scrutinize Alecta over U.S. bank investments

Sweden's financial watchdog will investigate Stockholm-based pension fund Alecta's risk management in the wake of its investments in collapsed U.S. banks. Finansinspektionen, the Financial Supervisory Authority of Sweden, will in particular investigate how Alecta measures risks in various investments, the watchdog said in a notice Thursday. The starting point for its investigation is the 1.12 trillion Swedish kronor ($108.4 billion) pension fund's investments in Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank and Signature Bank. The pension fund had a total 12 billion...

May 5, 2023
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April 2023
14Apr

Swedish retirees demand fairer pensions for women

"Old ladies need more money!" a group of grey-haired women chants in front of Sweden's parliament, as their recurring protest against the country's pension system enters its 10th year. During the warmer months, members of the red-hatted "Tantpatrullen" (The Old Lady Patrol) gather every Thursday on the cobble streets of Stockholm's Old Town, right across from Sweden's parliament. They have just begun their 2023 protest season. In a country that prides itself on being a champion of feminism and gender equality,...

April 14, 2023
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05Apr

$2 Billion Loss at Sweden’s Pension Fund Has Stocks Chief Put on Leave

Sweden’s biggest pension fund Alecta has put its equities chief on leave and announced a plan to reduce risk exposure after reporting $2 billion in investment losses tied to last month’s US banking crisis. On Tuesday, Alecta said it would scale back large stakes in companies far from its home market and named Ann Grevelius as acting head of equity portfolio management. Liselott Ledin, the equities chief responsible for making Alecta one of the largest shareholders in Silicon Valley Bank...

April 5, 2023
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March 2023
22Mar

Sweden’s Biggest Pension Fund Loses $2 Billion in US Bank Crises

Sweden’s largest pension fund, Alecta, is facing losses of almost $2 billion as a result of a failed investment strategy that made it one of the biggest shareholders in two collapsed US banks and another that is embroiled in the ongoing banking crisis. The scale of the losses has become clearer since the private pension group sold all of its First Republic Bank stake at a loss of 7.5 billion kronor ($728 million), according to Chief Executive Officer Magnus Billing....

March 22, 2023
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15Mar

Sweden’s New $90 Billion Pension Plan: Non-ESG Funds Not Welcome

Sweden has announced a plan to promote Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) oriented companies through the targeted investment of its pension fund. One trillion Krona (90 billion USD) of pension savings will be allocated for investment into firms that abide by ESG standards. This plan is the most recent of a series of initiatives put in place by the Swedish pension system to contribute towards the fight against climate change, human rights and other pressing issues. The wave of societal contributions...

March 15, 2023
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December 2022
05Dec

Swedish pension funds invest in cryptocurrency

Swedish public pension funds have invested hundreds of millions of kronor in a cryptocurrency company that has lost 87 per cent of its share value, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported on Saturday. Four public pension funds, which manage the pension money on behalf of the Swedish public, have invested more than SEK200 million (USD19 million) in Coinbase, a cryptocurrency trading company, according to the report. Details of how many shares have been bought and sold were not revealed. But DN...

December 5, 2022
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October 2022
14Oct

Orange Report 2020 Annual Report of the Swedish Pension System

By Pensions Myndigheten The Orange Report 2020 describes the financial position of the national incomebased pension system at the end of 2020, its evolution in 2020, and three scenarios for the future. To put the national income-based system in context, it is related below to, inter alia, information on occupational and private pensions. However, data for these insurance systems are so far only available up to and including 2019, thus the amounts below refer to 2019. Private pension refers only...

October 14, 2022
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07Oct

Investors’ Activity in Response to Information About Their Pensions

By Amedeus Malisa This paper uses individual-level data on fund choices in the Swedish Premium Pension to analyze how investors respond to information about their pension savings. The Swedish Pensions Agency mails an annual information letter, the Orange Envelope, to investors to provide them with tailored information about their public pension accounts. This paper examines the effect of pension communication in the Swedish Premium Pension System (PPS) by exploiting the staggered roll-out of these letters across different Swedish counties. Results...

October 7, 2022
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June 2022
23Jun

Swedish parliament passes mini-budget after pensions compromise

Sweden's parliament passed the government's extra budget on Wednesday after weeks of disagreement over extra money for pensioners, paving the way for increased spending on the police, defence and additional aid to Ukraine. The minority Social Democrat government, which hopes to win a third successive term in power at a general election in September, was forced to vote against its own budget last week to avoid having to adopt the opposition's finance bill. It then reintroduced interim spending plans, including around...

June 23, 2022
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