IPE Nordic Briefing: ATP expert review backs strategy but flags reputational risks

With ATP spending more time explaining its business model to the public and stakeholders, leadership of the Danish statutory pension fund took the bull by the horns in early 2025 and convened its own panel of independent experts for an external evaluation. 

That assessment has now been published, in part at least, and despite resounding approval of many aspects of ATP’s operation, it also contains warnings of reputational risk arising from others – such as the high required return on investments, the complexity of the investment strategy, and the operation of the supplementary hedge portfolio – a new element introduced in 2023 as part of ATP’s then new business model. 

Even though that portfolio works with buffers, the experts warned that sufficiently large losses in the portfolio, which was designed to exploit the value created by applying an illiquidity spread, reduced the bonus potential and might affect ATP’s ability to meet its guarantees.

The evaluation – which ATP CEO Martin Præstegaard has vowed “actively” to use in developing the pension fund’s strategy - is likely to prompt more rather than less discussion around ATP at least over the next few months, with full publication planned for late August and a conference on it in September.

In Sweden, Alecta has named its new CEO, picking CIO Pablo Bernengo to take over from Peder Hasslev – brought in three years ago to steer the Swedish pensions giant through a bad investments scandal – when he retires in September.

With the Swedish FSA having concluded both its investigations into Alecta’s bad investments – US niche banks and residential company Heimstaden Bostad – the pension fund may feel a line can now be drawn under the sorry episode.  

Stockholm-based pensions and insurance group Folksam, on the other hand, has yet to receive a verdict from the watchdog’s probe into its investment in Heimstaden Bostad. 

Iceland’s Gildi and Festa pension funds are to start discussions on a possible merger, which they say would create the country’s second-biggest pension fund.  

The mid-June announcement puts another large pensions merger in the offing in Iceland, two months after early merger talks between the Pension Fund of Commerce (Lífeyrissjóður verzlunarmanna, LV) and Birta Pension Fund stalled. 

Items to note:

• AP Pension says it is devising ideas for using pension savings and other means to finance upskilling in the population – citing research showing a quarter of all employees are expected to find they need different skills in the next few years. 
• This year’s IPE Iceland event for senior Icelandic pension fund investors will take place on 14 October in Reykjavik. 

Rachel Fixsen

Nordic Correspondent