After his first year as CEO at Danish pensions firm Velliv, ATP’s former chief risk officer Kim Kehlet Johansen has put a new investment strategy in place. Some changes have happened after the resignation last November of Velliv’s previous CIO Anders Stensbøl Christiansen, and in conjunction with deputy CIO Thor Schultz Christensen.

Now Velliv has a new permanent CIO on her way. Lea Vaisalo, private markets chief at Nordea Asset Management, is due to start work at Velliv’s Ballerup headquarters at the beginning of May. Ahead of her arrival, Velliv made its entire active equities and alternatives teams redundant, as it implemented the new index-based strategy.

Elsewhere in Denmark, the country’s largest pension provider, PFA, has been moving its equities management closer to a benchmark, but that does not mean the process is a passive one, group CIO Kasper Lorenzen says. 

A whole range of active decisions remain for the team to make, as they focus on concentration risk, calibrate elements such as home bias and solve the tough portfolio construction challenge of minimising tracking error while ESG screening removes 10% of the investment universe.

Kasper Lorenzen, PFA Group CIO

“There are always some biases when you run active risk; the stock pickers often convince themselves that growth equities are too expensive, at least that’s my experience,” says Kasper Lorenzen, PFA’s group CIO

The Danish government’s announcement of an extra €7bn for defence in February prompted the pension sector to express its readiness to invest in armaments and the forces, and Insurance & Pension Denmark has also proposed the government issue defence bonds. 

In Sweden, as part of its ongoing efforts to improve processes and restore confidence following the scandals around loss-making investments, Alecta says it has now developed an extensive improvement programme with the aim of becoming an industry leader in risk management. 

It has also announced a new governance model.

The SEK1.31trn (€118bn) pensions giant has named Magnus Hall as the man it plans to install as chair, having been without a permanent board leader since Ingrid Bonde resigned in October 2023. Hall has been approved by the Swedish FSA, which means he can now be nominated and then elected.

Norway’s dominant provider of municipal pensions, KLP, was beaten on annual returns in 2024 by independent pension funds, according to the funds’ lobby group. One of the larger municipal pension funds, Pensjonskassen for Fylkene, highlighted disability pensions outlay as a differentiating factor between it and KLP.

Items to note:

  • The city of Copenhagen will play host to the IPE Real Estate Global Conference & Awards 2025 event on 22 May, at Villa Copenhagen.  
  • Knut Kjær, the founding CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, has issued a warning to Norwegian politicians not to be lulled into a false sense of security by the country’s huge wealth. “The flow of money seems to give our politicians the illusion that we are not vulnerable to major changes in the world around us,” he says on LinkedIn. 

Rachel Fixsen

Nordic Correspondent

This news briefing was published earlier in the week. If you would like to receive it regularly, on your ‘IPE profile’, go to ‘My Newsletters‘ and select any from the list.

Rachel is IPE's Nordic correspondent. She has long been a freelance writer, and over the years, has written for The Telegraph, The Independent, The Observer, AMWatch and elsewhere. In 2001, Rachel's personal finance book Kickstart Your Money was published by John Wiley & Sons.View full Profile

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