October 2022

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...

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...

June 2022

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...

April 2022

Swedish regulator to screen funds for ‘green painting’

Sweden's financial regulator said it will start reviewing funds to enforce new sustainable regulations and to prevent "green painting." The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, or Finansinspektionen, said it will review "whether the information provided about the funds that are classified as most sustainable meets the strict requirements" of sustainable finance disclosure regulation rules implemented in March 2021. In a notice on its website Tuesday, FI said that as demand for green and sustainable funds increases rapidly, "this entails the risk of...

February 2022

Swedish Centre-Left Govt Proposes Raising Pensions in $1 Billion Reform

Sweden's centre-left government said on Monday it would propose raising pensions for the elderly with the lowest incomes in a reform that will cost 9.4 billion crowns ($1.00 billion) in 2023. The Social Democrat minority government agreed with the Green and the Left parties to raise pensions by up to 1,000 crowns tax free per month for the half a million pensioners with the lowest incomes, the parties told a joint news conference. "Nearly every other pensioner is covered by the...

September 2021

Sweden. AP2 continues sustainability journey with stellar returns and costs

Swedish buffer fund, AP2, has incorporated Paris-aligned rules into its benchmark construction for global and emerging market equities. This year it turns its attention to Swedish and Chinese equities. The moves come on the back of the best-ever half year return for the SEK421.2 billion fund and its lowest ever costs. AP2 is one of the originals, a long-time ESG investor that has sustainability at its core. It started to divest from fossil fuel exposed companies in 2014 with a rationale...

August 2021

Sweden’s biggest pension manager cuts stocks on inflation concern

The specter of accelerating inflation is prompting the biggest pension manager in Sweden to cut its holdings of stocks and bonds. Read also Ireland. Pensions gap widens as pandemic deepens the divide Alecta, which manages $130 billion, is instead boosting exposure to alternative assets such as infrastructure projects and residential housing in an effort to preserve returns. Read also New Zealand. Super-sharers: How small contributions can push back against inequality "Longer term we may see rising inflation and that is one of the...

March 2021

Sweden wants to tax pensioners in Portugal

Swedish Parliament is set to vote on unilaterally ending an agreement with Portugal to not tax citizens receiving their pensioners here Following in the footsteps of Finland in 2018, Stockholm now also wants to see its expat pensioners in Portugal taxed as they would be in their home countries. Portugal recently changed its non-habitual resident regime to enforce a blanket ten percent tax on foreign pensions, but Sweden argues this is inadequate and not in accordance with an agreement signed with...

November 2020

Swedish pension giant and LGIM launch sustainable EM equity fund

Swedish pension fund AP1 and LGIM have collaborated to launch a new EM equity fund. The L&G Emerging Market Equity Future Core fund will link the allocation of capital to clear sustainability requirements for companies it will invest in. The rationale behind the launch is to meet institutional investors’ need for index-linked funds with an extended sustainability profile. According to AP1, the need for this kind of product has increased as more investors choose passive or index-linked management models....

Sweden’s Kåpan ups green bond weighting, expands fossils strategy

Swedish government employees’ pension fund Kåpan Pensioner announced a series of environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives it has taken so far this year to up its game in sustainable investment, and said it plans to extend the scope of its fossil-fuel strategy. The SEK100bn (€9.8bn) fund also said it was increasing its mandate for green bonds, with its holdings of the environmental debt having grown in 2020, and had taken action to cut sustainability risk in its global...