Pension - Transparency Initiatives

Pension customers must make choices on an informed basis

It is important that consumers have access to essential information so they can make informed choices. This is particularly important in the pension market because pensions are about an individual's financial security in old age.

The decisions one makes about their pensions – or those made by their employer or union – can have a significant impact on their future life. F&P - Insurance & Pension Denmark is working to ensure that these choices are made on the most informed basis possible and that the industry contributes to a high degree of openness and transparency.

For the Danes, it is important to be able to see how good each pension company is at generating returns for their customers, what costs customers incur on their pensions, what the risk of the pension product is, and so on. This becomes increasingly important because a larger and larger share of retirees' income comes from workplace pensions and other private pension schemes. In 2020, pension payments accounted for an average of 40% of retirees' income, and this share is expected to rise to 55% in 2040 and 60% in 2080.

Comparing pensions is important for customers and competition

Transparency is also crucial for competition in the pension market, which benefits individual pension savers. The ability to compare pension providers' performance in terms of returns, costs, and more is essential when corporate pension customers choose a pension provider for their employees and when boards of trustees in workplace pension companies benchmark their own pension company against others.

For this reason, Insurance & Pension Denmark has developed digital consumer tools that make it easy to compare information from different pension companies, such as Sammenlign Pensioner (Compare Pensions) and Min Pensionsrisiko (My Pension Risk).

In addition, all Danes can get a comprehensive overview of their pension agreements and associated insurance coverage on PensionsInfo.dk, as well as how much they can expect to receive as retirees. PensionsInfo is visited over 5 million times a year, making it the industry's most visited tool.

Continual improvement of industry rules and information

For many years, the pension industry has worked for openness and transparency in the Danish pension market. This has resulted, among other things, in Insurance & Pension Denmark setting detailed industry rules on what information pension savers should receive from their pension company on behalf of the industry. We have also, as an industry, developed detailed calculation methods so that pension companies calculate customers' costs in the same way. This is important so that consumers can compare the information as effectively as possible.

Furthermore, Insurance & Pension Denmark continues to work on improving information for pension customers. The pension market is changing, and there is an ongoing need for adjustments. An example is the emergence of market-rate pensions. Here, individual pension savers bear the investment risk, making it particularly important for us as an industry to illustrate the risk for each individual. Insurance & Pension Denmark also continuously works on refining the calculation methods for calculating costs to match the investment universe of pension companies