Norway’s Storebrand announced it has renewed its contract with the country’s employers’ association, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), to provide pensions for some 29,000 workers at more than 3,000 companies.
The financial group, which manages more than NOK921bn (€88.9bn), said the new deal took account of incoming regulations for individual or own pension accounts (Egen pensjonskonto, EPK) – a reform under which dormant pension pots will be consolidated into the pension scheme of a person’s current employer, unless they opt out.
Odd Arild Grefstad, Storebrand’s chief executive officer, said: “This is a great vote of confidence for us, and we are proud that we will continue to be the pension provider for companies and their employees in the NHO community.”
Storebrand, which has served as pension provider to the NHO since 2006, said the new deal had been adapted “to ensure companies and employees get the best solution for their individual pension account,” until 2024.
Christian Chramer, director for members and regions at the NHO, said: “By having NHO Pension with Storebrand, we are ensuring that the NHO community’s purchasing power benefits both large and small companies, through pension solutions at very competitive prices.”
Storebrand said it was looking forward to gaining more of the NHO’s member firms over coming years, after the new EPK reform took effect at the beginning of this year.
The new legislation is aimed at making it easier for individuals to keep track of their pension rights, and reduce administration costs for accrued pension rights, with defined contribution (DC) capital certificates (pensjonskapitalbevis, PKB) issued by previous employers transferred into an individual’s active scheme by default.
Norwegian pension providers secured deals with various sectors and trade organisations last year, gearing up to position themselves ahead of the incoming reform.
Nordea signed up to take on NOK4.2bn of DC pensions from insurer Frende Forsikring back in July, and Danica won a bid to provide pensions for Norway’s largest engineers’ organisation NITO’s 92,000 members in October.
According to the implementation plan laid out by the Ministry of Finance late last year, Norwegian employees will get information in the course of February from their company’s pension provider about which PKBs they have that will be transferred to their individual pension account – and which pension provider manages them.
They will also receive information from other pension providers who manage the certificates for them.
After this, individuals will have three months to decide whether to opt out of the transfer or actively accelerate it, after which an automatic transfer will take place.
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