The Swedish Fund Selection Agency (Fondtorgsnämnden, FTN) has launched its biggest procurement process to date, inviting tenders from asset managers to provide global actively-managed equity funds for premium pension savers via the system’s revamped funds platform.

The deadline for submitting tenders is 16 December 2024, the agency announced yesterday afternoon.

The new category of actively managed global equity funds, focusing on large and mid-cap companies in developed markets, covers two fund categories on the current non-procured platform – global and global & Sweden.

There are 45 funds listed in those categories right now, holding more than SEK200bn (€17bn) belonging to around a million savers. This is a big slice of the approximately €100bn of total savings invested via the funds’ platform.

Erik Fransson, executive director of the FTN, said: “The procurement of global equities is our largest to date and global equity funds are an important component of many people’s long-term savings.”

The FTN has been working since 2022 to repopulate the premium pension funds platform with a more limited range of procured funds, in order to build confidence in the first-pillar system plagued in the past by fraud and mis-selling scandals. The platform was previously open to all private-sector providers meeting certain criteria.

“We know that we have a process that works and I hope that all fund managers with competitive funds will submit tenders thereby creating the conditions for more secure and higher pensions for Sweden’s pension savers,” Fransson said.

The FTN said the specifications of this latest procurement did not contain any significant differences from the preliminary details presented on 26 September.

It said specifications published today clarified that it intended to procure funds that promoted sustainability, reporting under Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) Article 8 during this procurement phase, while plans to procure Article 9 funds would be addressed at a later stage.

Fund managers can ask questions about the procurement via the agency’s e-Avrop platform until 6 December, the FTN said, adding that it would reply on an ongoing basis until 10 December.

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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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