Swedish government launches new AP fund inquiry

Changes to the Swedish AP funds are once again in the pipeline as the government has launched a new inquiry into the governance, structure and investment regulation of the five national pension funds. Tord Gransbo, director at the Swedish ministry of finance, has been tasked with investigating how to modernise and create a more efficient management of the AP funds. The launch of the inquiry is backed by the parliament’s cross-party pension group, which has a say in all matters relating to the pension system. The proposal with possible changes to how the AP funds are run and their assets invested will be submitted by the end of March next year.

In 2019, the AP funds new investment rules came into force. The changes followed years of debate and various proposals going back and forth – some of them looking to make a dramatic overhaul of the AP funds by merging them into fewer entities. While AP1, AP2, AP3, AP4 and AP6 are all national buffer pension funds, the investment scope and size of AP6 differ from the rest with a mandate to only invest in private equity, in contrast to the much larger multi-asset portfolios of the other national pension funds. At the end of last year, the national pension