The agency procuring investment funds for Sweden’s premium pension platform has outlined its preliminary plan for next year’s tenders, involving five different categories of equity funds that currently cover around SEK250bn (€21.4bn) of assets.

The Swedish Fund Selection Agency (Fondtorgsnämnden, FTN), announced it intends to procure funds in the four active management equity categories of IT & communication, European small-cap, Swedish small-cap and US & North America large/mid-cap – as well as for the index management of the latter category.

The agency released the information on the intended timetable at a digital event for fund managers yesterday.

There are currently some SEK145.1bn of premium pension savings in privately managed funds in the IT & communication active equities category, with SEK6.6bn in active European small-cap and SEK45.4bn in active Swedish small-cap.

In the US and North America large/mid-cap category, there are currently SEK13.2bn of equities on the actively managed side and SEK31.4bn in passively managed funds, according to data from the FTN.

The agency emphasised that the procurement plan was preliminary and might be changed. It also said it had not yet decided the order for the procurements.

The plan suggests that the agency is delaying the procurement of global fixed income funds by a further year.

That category was originally slated to be put out to tender in 2024, but then replaced with a procurement process for actively managed global equity funds focusing on large and mid-cap companies, as the FTN said it wanted to prioritise fund categories with large savings volumes to get capital flowing to the procured fund platform more quickly.

With the plan announced yesterday, the agency is on track to have completed or initiated tenders for around SEK650bn of premium pension savings by the end of 2025.

According to data from the Swedish Pensions Authority, SEK1.3trn of premium pension savings were invested in private-sector funds at the end of September, compared with the SEK1.24trn held in the Såfa default option run by state pension fund AP7.

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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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