Sweden’s financial watchdog is to launch an investigation into the individual occupational pensions market, scrutinising how investment funds are chosen and whether intermediaries serve savers’ best interests.
Publishing its 2026 consumer protection report, the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanstilsynet, FI) warned yesterday that funds can be far more expensive in these types of plans.
FI said that premium pension and collectively agreed occupational pensions had put downwards pressure on investment fund fees through procurement, but that the corresponding funds could be significantly more expensive within individual occupational pensions.
Moa Langemark, consumer protection economist at FI, said: “The fees in individual occupational pensions can cost hundreds of thousands of kronor over a working life,” adding that people with these products needed to be on their guard, or risk money going to the intermediary rather than their pension.
Savers with individual occupational pensions often paid the investment fund’s regular management fee, which could be 1.25%, FI said, compared with, for example, 0.34% in a collectively agreed occupational ITP pension for the same fund.
While not naming the fund in the example, in its report the authority showed that fees for the specific fund were as low as 0.23% within the premium pension scheme, 0.5% in the blue-collar SAF-LO collectively agreed occupational scheme and 0.7% in the AKAP-KR occupational pension for municipalities and regions.
While occupational pensions were one of the largest financial assets for many Swedes, FI said, such savings were rarely actively monitored and the differences in fees could be large.
This meant the design of the systems and the conditions in the market had a major impact on the outcome over time, the authority said.
“FI will, in the future, examine the market for individual occupational pensions to better understand what determines which funds are chosen and whether intermediaries look after what is in the best interests of savers.”
Outlining its consumer protection agenda for the current year, the authority said it would also complete its in-depth analysis of the market for transfers out of collectively agreed occupational pensions, to get a deeper understanding of the risks associated with this.
