Denmark’s Sampension said it saw incoming pension contributions rising by more than a quarter in the first half of 2024 – mainly as a knock-on effect of it having won a number of new business customers.

The DKK271bn (£36.3bn) labour-market pension provider said total contributions amounted to DKK8.4bn from January to June 2024, setting a new record for a six-month period, and having risen by 27% from the DKK6.6bn seen in the same period last year.

Ongoing deposits increased by 3% to DKK5.4bn in the first half, while one-off customer deposits more than doubled from the year-earlier period, to DKK3bn from DKK1.3bn, the Copenhagen-based institution said today.

Hasse Jørgensen, Sampension’s chief executive officer, said the growth in contributions was a “vote of confidence”, which the firm was very happy about, and which it had to live up to by ensuring the best possible pension schemes for employees.

Jørgensen said the development was driven by several factors.

Many customers had paid extra into their pension savings this year, he said, and on top of that, the year’s collective bargaining negotiations in Denmark’s public sector had resulted in an increase in pension contribution rates in several areas at both state and municipality level.

“But the primary reason for the development is that we’ve welcomed a number of new business customers this year,” the CEO said.

“When this happens, we generally find that a large proportion of the employees involved in the switch transfer their previous pension schemes to us,” Jørgensen said.

That had been the case this year too, he said, contributing to the big boost in one-off deposits that Sampension saw in its accounts, he noted.

In the first half of this year, Sampension’s tally of customers and members grew by just over 5,000 to a total of about 347,000, the firm said.

In December 2023, Sampension announced it had won a tender to provide pensions for DLBR – a network of consultancies around the country owned by Danish farmers – saying the new corporate client would be its largest ever.

Through that gain alone, Sampension increased the number of its individual pension customers by around 3,000.

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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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