The Swedish Pensions Agency announced it is making another batch of refunds to unfortunate savers in the first-pillar premium pension system whose investments in East European and Russian funds offered on the system’s official platform were de-registered last year.

Savers and pensioners who owned the funds Baring Eastern Europe, East Capital Eastern Europe and Nordea Russia Fund will receive just over SEK247m (€21m) in repayment after sales in the funds, the agency said last week.

Rasmus Bjälkeson, head of fund trading at the Swedish Pensions Agency, said: “The Swedish Pensions Agency is contining to monitor deregistered Eastern European funds and Russian funds to see whether further repayments are possible.”

These latst repayments had been possible because the firms managing the funds had divided the Eastern European funds into a Russian and a non-Russian part, allowing them to sell the non-Russian assets, while Nordea had succeeded in selling part of its Nordea Russia Fund, the agency said.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, four Russian funds and three Eastern European funds were deregistered from the premium pension fund market.

The latest refunds follow around SEK233m of repayments made in June, and compensation of 0.5% and 25% respectively of the last share prices of the Russian and East European funds given when the agency took the funds over.

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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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