Swedish occupational pension fund AMF says a new poll shows that banks offering mortgage discounts is an increasing motivation for its scheme members to transfer their pensions, and warns that such commoditisation of pensions risks worsening outcomes for savers.
Some 18% of people who migrated their occupational pension away from AMF in 2024 said they did it to get discounts, compared to 14% last year, according to the latest of the firm’s annual pension transfer reports.
In the report, which examines the pension transfers market for collectively-agreed occupational pensions, the SEK865bn (€74.6bn) blue-collar pension fund, said one of the questions it had looked at was what caused people to move their occupational pension.
It said the survey showed that so-called conditional offers, such as a discount on a mortgage or a “whole customer discount”, were becoming more common in connection with people moving their occupational pension.
Malin Omberg, AMF’s chief of staff and deputy chief executive officer, said: “The occupational pension is an important benefit and part of one’s future livelihood.
“That it is increasingly seen as a commodity to be exchanged for temporary discounts, such as slightly cheaper mortgages or a few kroner off home insurance, is a problematic development,” she said.
Omberg said this development made the benefit less valued by people, but the trend also risked leading to more savers actually receiving worse pensions than they would otherwise have received at AMF.
The poll carried out on behalf of AMF, Sweden’s second largest occupational pension fund, showed that of those savers who had been prompted by a financial firm to move their pension, 33% said the prompt had been in connection with discussing mortgages – a proportion that is up from 24% in the 2023 survey, AMF said.
The research also showed that for 35% of customers switching their pension provision away from AMF, it was their bank that had raised the idea of moving their occupational pension, which AMF said was a higher percentage than a year ago when 25% of respondents said this had been the case.
The survey behind the report was carried out by Demoskop for AMF, and included interviews with 1,084 people who transferred their occupational pension from AMF during 2024.
Sweden’s financial watchdog said recently it is concerned that the growing market for occupational pension transfers is creating incentives to switch pensions for the wrong reasons, and has called providers in to its offices on 25 November to discuss the problem.
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