According to René Birchen of UBS in Luxembourg the company plan is to register all their funds for the Swedish premium pensions scheme. This would mean the UBS funds would account for a large part of the fund catalogue that is going to be distributed to all Swedish pensions savers in the new premium pensions scheme.
The PPM originally assumed there would be some 800-1,000 funds to choose between but with the UBS strategy this number could be greatly increased. - If more fund managers act like UBS, the system may contain thousands of funds, says Hans Jacobson, director of the Premium Pensions Authority.
He adds that they may consider limiting the number of funds in the system either by adding a fixed annual charge for each fund thus making it expensive to run a great number of funds. Another way to limit the total number of funds could be to only allow funds receiving a minimum amount every year.
“I would prefer to limit the fund number by a yearly fee. That is a more agreeable solution than to come back to the managers every year and request them to take away funds which have not attracted enough capital, says Mr Jacobson.
The first choice for the Swedish pensions savers is to take place in the year 2000. Originally it was planned for 1999 but was postponed. Mikael Nyman

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