While weathering US threats to invade their island, Greenlanders have also been conducting business as usual this month, with pensions reform under discussion – and the Arctic territory’s only pension fund considering its investment strategy.
On Wednesday, the Greenlandic government launched a brochure on how households could prepare for a crisis – and on the same day, reported on the first meeting of an expert group tasked with devising recommendations for “a comprehensive and coherent pension reform”.
Meanwhile, management of the DKK6.6bn (€880m) SISA Pension, whose 10 staff are based in both Nuuk and Denmark, goes on, with the Greenlandic pension fund planning to continue investing on home turf, after increasing its domestic investment over the last few years.
Søren Schock Petersen, chief executive officer of the DKK6.6bn (€880m) pension fund, told IPE: “As a pension fund, you often have a home bias, and likewise, we try to support local businesses and make local investments.”
He said SISA Pension has been increasing its investments in Greenland over the last few years, both in absolute terms and relative to assets under management (AUM).
“SISA Pension will continue to invest more in Greenland in absolute terms but not necessarily relative to AUM,” he said.
The pension fund’s efforts to invest in the Greenlandic economy, in which most of its 44,708 members work or have worked, have been going on for Schock Petersen’s entire 10-year tenure as CEO and before, he continued.
“To be very direct, though – it’s pretty hard. It’s very hard to find viable investments in Greenland, particularly being a small organisation with absolutely minimal resources for due diligence,” said the CEO, himself based in Copenhagen.
“It’s very hard to find viable investments in Greenland, particularly being a small organisation with absolutely minimal resources for due diligence”
Søren Schock Petersen, CEO of SISA Pension
One successful domestic investment was made back in 2018 alongside the Danish state investment fund, now called EIFO, and Nalik Ventures, the Greenland State Investment and Venture Group.
The two state funds set up a fund for commercial development in Greenland, each of them reserving DKK100m, and SISA Pension invested DKK100m in total in that fund, bringing the resources to a total of DKK300m.
“Here we’ve been able to benefit from the muscles of EIFO to do the due diligence and Nalik to know the entrepreneur environment in Greenland,” Schock Petersen said.
While “not the best” investment SISA Pension has made, the CEO explained that fund investment has not made major losses, and gains from other investments in the domestic portfolio have ensured the return of the whole pot is positive as of the end of 2025.
“So we are satisfied with that,” he said.
At the beginning of October, SISA Pension took a 5% stake in the shares of the local company Polar Seafood Greenland, becoming the first external owner in the group’s history, with the intention of acquiring a further 5% in the next few years.
“We now have about 2-3% of our AUM invested in Greenland, which may not sound much, but considering the size of the Greenlandic economy, it is,” the CEO added.
Right now, SISA Pension does have some domestic investments in the pipeline, he said, but many of them are quite small and mostly take the form of private credit.
“The reason we invest locally is to support the development of the Greenlandic economy and help people create jobs in Greenland, but we are looking at this in commercial terms,” Schock Petersen noted.
“This is members’ trusted money, and we cannot do whatever we like with it. We have to consider a risk-adjusted return on these investments, so you always have to balance that,” he said.
Other ways SISA Pension invests in the Greenlandic economy are through mining companies which have investments in Greenland, such as 80 Mile, and Amaroq Minerals, which both have listings in London.
The international political storm around Greenland since the turn of the year, triggered by US president Donald Trump’s threats to wrest control of the semi-autonomous territory from Denmark, has left locals shaken, Schock Petersen said.
The geopolitical uncertainty has also prompted SISA Pension to discuss whether changes should be made to the overall investment strategy, such as reducing its US exposure, he said.
However, so far, the pension fund has decided to leave its investment strategy unchanged.
