Denmark’s AkademikerPension is overhauling its management structure and cutting its top management team to three from seven in a bid to speed up decision-making and gain clarity about which projects to prioritise.
The labour-market pension fund, which admits academic degree holders, announced that with a new strategy, increased digitisation and a completely new core system, a lot had changed both internally and in the industry since 2017, when the existing organisation had been established.
It said: “Management has therefore decided to carry out a major organisational change, which aims to modernise the organisation to adapt to the challenges and tasks it faces.”
One of the main changes is to scrap the previous seven-person business management team, and set up a new executive board consisting of chief executive officer Jens Munch Holst, chief investment officer Anders Schelde, and Vibeke Aagaard, the management for members, AkademikerPension said in the statement released last week.
Munch Holst said: “With leaner management, we can make faster decisions and can prioritise projects and resources more clearly. And that gives us the opportunity for a fresh start, when we can look at old habits with new eyes.”
In the revamp, several departments have been shifted so that in future they report one of the three people on the new executive board, according to the pension fund, which is based in the North Copenhagen suburb of Gentofte.
“This means that we will have a more efficient organisation, which to a greater extent will be given responsibility and a mandate to solve operational and development tasks,” Munch Holst said.
“We will strengthen cooperation across the organisation and look forward to developing even better products and services for the pleasure and benefit of our members,” the CEO said.
AkademikerPension, which has a staff of 130 and manages DKK127bn (€17bn), said the organisational change took effect on 7 October.
Separately, in announcing it was holding two information meetings for scheme members next month about a “new and improved product package”, AkademikerPension delivered a warning about its expected investment loss for the whole of 2022.
“We have good news and bad news. The bad thing is that it looks as if the year’s returns will end with a big red figure. But fortunately, your pension is well prepared for headwinds in the financial markets,” the pension fund said.
The good news, according to AkademikerPension, concerned the upcoming freedom of choice relating to the new product being offered.
Back in June, the Danish pension fund said its first-half return was -12%, blaming the war in Ukraine, high inflation, rising interest rates, falling rates and negative returns across the board for the dire result.
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