As a part of the Swedish pension system all participants in the working population are given the control of an investment account, which is funded with their pension contributions. The purpose of the account is to allow everyone the possibility to tailor their pension investments in accordance with personal values about risk and expected returns. However, it is shown that many Swedish adults lack the knowledge needed to make informed financial decisions and are therefore at risk of hurting their pension when investing in these accounts. This thesis tries to identify whether a simple but effective investment criterion, namely the size of the management fee, can increase the probability of higher risk-adjusted returns for uninformed investors when participating in the Swedish pension plan. It uses the Graham-Harvey volatility matched approach to evaluate fund performance on an individual basis. The corresponding analysis is then conducted based on grouped statistics of the projected performance measures. The results indicate stronger risk-adjusted returns of low fee funds in two out of the three analyzed categories. Carhart computations of Jensen´s alpha is then used as a robustness check and it provides support for the results found using the Grayham-Harvey method. When testing for difference in performance using the entire sample, 1.2 percent higher risk-adjusted returns were concluded statistically significant in the sample of low fee funds.

Intention: The purpose of this thesis is to see if an active investment decision in the Swedish Premium Pension System would result in a higher return than a non-active investment decision. A non-active investment decision is equivalent to leaving the money in AP7 Premium Savings Fund. Method: This thesis is a statistical analysis and has a descriptive character in which the calculations are based on secondary data, thus the thesis has a quantitative character. Furthermore three active portfolios in different risk categories have been chosen. These portfolios are compared with the AP7 Premium Savings Fund’s returns. The thesis is deductive because it is using existing financial theories to do empirical examinations. Conclusion: Generally, higher risk is equal to higher returns. This thesis shows that an active investment of the premium pension should be done in portfolios with higher risk. Therefore the selected low-risk portfolio has lower returns than AP7 Premium Savings Fund. Further Research: The authors would find it interesting to redo this study in the future with the new AP7 Såfa as a benchmark. / Syfte: Studien avser att se om ett aktivt sparande och förvaltande av premiepensionen leder till en högre avkastning i jämförelse mot att låta pengarna ligga kvar i AP7 Premiesparfond Metod: Studien är en statistik analys och har en deskriptiv karaktär där sekundärdata ligger till grund för beräkningarna. Studien kan således ses som en kvantitativ studie. Vidare har tre stycken aktiva portföljval i tre olika riskkategorier tagits fram för att jämföras med AP7 Premiesparfonds avkastning. Studien är deduktiv då den empiriska prövningen sker med hjälp av redan befintliga finansiella teorier. Slutsats: Generellt sett ger högre risk en högre avkastning. Studien visar att om premiepensionen ska förvaltas aktivt bör detta göras i portföljer med högre risk. Då den valda lågriskportföljen gav lägre avkastning än AP7 Premiesparfond. Vidare forskning: Författarna anser det intressant att jämföra om AP7 Såfa skulle gynna icke aktiva sparare i högre grad än den gamla AP7 premiesparfonden. AP7 Såfa är en generationsfond där risken anpassas efter spararens ålder. Studien bör därför omprövas då det finns tioårig historik om AP7 Såfa.

Bakgrund: Förvaltningstjänster inom premiepension har ökat i takt med införandet av det nya pensionssystemet. Marknaden för dessa aktörer har vuxit och det har riktats kritik mot förvaltningstjänsterna inom premiepension och dess förvaltare. De problem som förvaltningsföretagen påstås skapa riskerar att hota funktionaliteten och förtroendet i premiepensionssystemet. Aktörerna är ett relativt nytt fenomen i Sverige vilket gör att det inte finns tillgänglig information och statistik om förvaltarna och dess förvaltning. Lagar och finansiella teorier på området vägleder i hur förvaltarna bör och får agera, men anger inte hur förvaltningsföretagen arbetar i praktiken. Det är därför intressant att kartlägga förvaltarnas praktiska tillvägagångssätt angående förvaltning och investering för att därefter utvärdera det utifrån teorier och empirisk forskning med fokus på investeringsprocessen. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att kartlägga förvaltningstjänsterna inom premiepension med fokus på investeringsprocessen samt kritiskt granska den utifrån finansiell teori, empirisk forskning och rådande lagstiftning. Genomförande: För att besvara studiens syfte har dokumentstudier genomförts för att sammanställa studiens referensram gällande de lagar, finansiella teorier och empirisk forskning inom området. Därefter har det praktiska tillvägagångssättet inom diskretionär förvaltning av premiepension kartlagts genom intervjuer med nio av totalt nitton observerade förvaltningsföretag. Slutsats: Kartläggningen av förvaltningstjänsterna har påvisat att det finns olikheter i företagens praktiska tillvägagångssätt och processer vilket gör det svårt att jämföra företagen med varandra. Det finns förvaltningsföretag vars praktiska arbete stämmer överens med finansiella teorier, empirisk forskning och spelregler gällande investeringsprocessen. Överlag tyder dock studiens resultat på att förvaltningsföretagen har ett tillvägagångssätt som inte överensstämmer med dessa aspekter, vilket kan innebära utrymme för förbättring. / Background: As a result of the introduction of the new pension system, portfolio management services within the Premium pension have risen. The market for these actors has grown and the portfolio managers have been criticized to threat the functionality and the trust in the premium pension system. These actors are a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden, which means that there is no information and statistics available about the managers and their management processes. Laws and financial theories tell us how these managers should act, but they say nothing about how the managers work in practice. Therefore, it is interesting to identify the managers’ practical approach concerning the portfolio management and investment in order to evaluate the process by the means of the theories and empirical research. Aim: The aim of this study is to identify portfolio management services within premium pension focusing on investment process and critically examines it based on financial theory, empirical research and current laws. Completion: To fulfill the aim of this study, document studies have been implemented to summarize the frame of reference concerning laws, financial theories and empirical research. Subsequently the discretionary management of Premium pension is identified through interviews with nine companies of total nineteen companies observed. Conclusion: The identification of portfolio management services has proved that there are differences in companies' practical approaches and processes. This makes it difficult to compare the companies with each other. Some companies have a practical work that is consistent with financial theory, empirical research and the rules regarding the Investment process. Overall the results of the study suggest that portfolio management companies within premium pension have an approach that does not consist with these aspects, which can be improved.

Bakgrund: Den finansiella marknaden och dess tjänster har blivit alltmer komplexa under åren. Utbudet av olika produkter som exempelvis olika typer av fonder och aktier har blivit allt större. Det finns idag många olika handelsplattformar för aktier och fonder. Samtidigt som utbudet av komplexa produkter ökar, läggs mer ansvar på individen i exempelvis hantering av premiepension. Det förutsätter att konsumenten är väl informerad och tar rätt beslut. Konsumenten kan välja mellan att ta hjälp av rådgivning eller att sköta investeringar själv. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka privatpersoners motiv gällande val av finansiella tjänster och investeringsbeslut, samt att analysera relationen mellan val av tjänster och sparmål. Genomförande: Sjutton intervjuer har genomförts med anställda på Linköpings universitet. Urvalsgruppen består av lärare av olika slag. Slutsats: Författarna har kommit fram till att det finns många brister hos konsumenten angående finansiella tjänster. Det saknas kunskap och tillräckligt med information, vilket gör att konsumenten inte kan utnyttja dessa tjänster optimalt. Valen av finansiella tjänster är inte alltid relaterade till sparmålen. / Background: The financial market and its services have become more complex during the years. The supply of diverse products, like different types of funds and stocks has steadily increased. Today there are plenty of different trade platforms for stocks and funds. Simultaneously as the supply of complex products is increasing, more responsibility is being placed on the individual, which can be seen in the Swedish premium pension. This assumes that the consumer is well informed and makes the right decisions. The consumer can choose between obtaining help from counseling, or handling the investments alone. Aim: The aim of this thesis is to examine consumers’ motives behind choices of financial services and investment decisions, and to analyze the relation between choice of financial services and goals for saving. Implementation: Seventeen interviews have been conducted with employees at the Linköping University. The selected group consists of teachers with different positions. Result: The writers conclude that the consumers fall short, regarding financial services. They lack knowledge and enough information. The result is that consumers cannot utilize these services in an optimal way. The choices of financial services are not always related to the goals of saving.

Background: Since 1998 Sweden has individual accounts as a part of both public and occupational schemes (Sundén 2006). Yearly, 2,5% of the pensionable income is set aside to the premium pension (The Swedish Pension Agency 2021) Individuals are able to choose how the premiums should be paid in the system and in what way the money should be invested, either by choosing from the fund market or by refraining from making an active choice and instead let the Swedish pension agency management their money in the passive alternative called AP7 Såfa. The passive alternative AP7 Såfa is a portfolio which adapts to the age of the investor and is built to fit a long-term pension investment.  Purpose: This study will focus on evaluating if the passive alternative AP7 Såfa has an excess risk-adjusted return compared to given portfolios in the premium pension selection system, or if the investor would benefit from managing the portfolio more actively. The study will also search for benefits using the Treynor-Black model to check the optimal allocation between this actively managed portfolio versus the passive alternative AP7 Såfa.  Conclusion: This thesis has shown that there might be superior strategies rather than the index fund to find risk-adjusted excess return in the premium pension system. However, those strategies require professional analysts in order to forecast securities. For households choosing between active management themselves or the passive index fund AP7 Såfa, the most beneficial investment is to be passive and to not actively manage the portfolio. The optimum strategy is found to be the Treynor-Black model with a combined portfolio of the index fund and the active portfolio.

In this magister thesis I will critically analyse the possibility to transfer one’s premium pension rights to one’s spouse or registered partner using Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach. After a short presentation of the Swedish pension system, I will use delve deeper into the policy and discuss what it acknowledges, silences, and contributes to. Several suggestions of improvement are discussed, but there are no obvious solutions to be found. The policy can be questioned from a gender perspective and the conclusion is that it would be wise to take a step back and reflect on the policy before expanding it.

We investigate the activity and performance of 64 Swedish registered mutual equity funds available in the Swedish Premium Pension System from October 2002 to December 2011. Fund activity is measured by applying the holdings based analysis Active Share combined with Tracking Error Volatility (TEV). Active Share is a relatively new measure that compares a fund’s holdings with its benchmark index constituents (Cremers & Petajisto, 2009; Petajisto, 2013). This is used as a proxy for the fund’s stock selection strategy. As a complement, TEV is used as a proxy for the factor timing strategy. Performance are measured by using Jensen’s (1968) model, Fama and French’s (1993) model and Carhart’s (1997) model. We document that Swedish funds in the Premium Pension System are relatively passive in term of Active Share compared to US funds. We attribute this finding to the relative number of stocks held by a fund compared to the market. Swedish equity funds hold a relatively larger share of the number of stocks in the Swedish market while US funds hold a relatively smaller share of the stocks in the US market. We run a panel regression analysis to test the relation between Active Share and various variables. We find that funds with higher TER fees and fewer stocks on average have higher Active Share. There are also indications that TEV is positively related to Active Share. However, the overall explanatory power of the variables is low. We attribute this as evidence that Active Share is an independent measure of fund activity. Overall, we find neutral performance for an equally weighted portfolio of all funds in the PPS. To examine the performance differences between different levels of activity, we sort funds into five portfolios based on Active Share and TEV. The results show that, given a medium-to-low TEV, funds with high Active Share significantly outperform funds with low Active Share. Furthermore, it appears that the fee rebate in the Premium Pension System is important especially for the passive funds. Without the rebate, the passive funds underperform significantly. We run a panel regression analysis on the future fund performance to test the predictive abilities of Active Share and TEV. The results indicate that Active Share does not explain future performance differences. Conversely, TEV is negatively related to future performance which can be explained by fund managers being overconfident

<p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka huruvida en aktiv individ får högre framtida pensionsutbetalningar än en individ som låter kapitalet vara kvar i Premiesparfonden.</p><p>Vår undersökning har en<strong> </strong>deduktiv ansats, då ekonomiska teorier har utgjort grunden för de beräkningar som har gjorts. Beräkningarna bygger på hårddata, i form av historiska fondvärden, och studien är därmed kvantitativ. Tidigare undersökningar och beräkningar används för att styrka uppsatsen, som i och med detta är en sekundäranalys.  </p><p>Den placeringsstrategi som<strong> </strong>visade sig ge högst framtida utbetalningar med hänsyn tagen till risken var den aktiva placeringen. De portföljer som de aktiva premiepensionstagarna har att välja mellan i vår studie, ger alla högre framtida utbetalningar än Premiesparfonden. Vidare kan tilläggas att Premiesparfonden är ett av alternativen som har för hög risk i förhållande till dess låga avkastning.</p><p>Det skulle vara intressant att om några år, då Premiespar-fonden har förändrats till generationsfonder, göra om denna studie och då undersöka om detta leder till högre pensionsutbetalningar för de icke-aktiva premiepensionstagarna.</p><p>Denna studie bidrar med och stärker, genom konkreta exempel, det som en del andra författare redan påpekat, att de icke- aktiva premiepensionsspararna får lägre framtida utbetalningar än de som är aktiva i sitt sparande.<strong></strong></p> / <p>The aim of this thesis is to compare if being an active premium pension saver give rise to higher future payments, than keeping the capital in the Premium Savings Fund.</p><p>This essay has a deductive approach, as we started to study financial theories. It also has a quantitative research, since our calculations are called statistical data, which are composed of these financial theories. Previous studies and calculations are used to prove our essay.</p><p>The best investment strategy with the highest future payments, regarding risk preferences, turned out to be the active choice. All the choices an active premium pension saver can make by choose one of our different portfolios, has proved higher future payments, than The Premium Pension Fund. Further, the Premium Savings Fund is one of alternatives which have a lower return, regarding to the high level of risk.</p><p>It would be interesting to remake this study, when the new funds "generationsfonderna" has been introduced, and to see if this alternative leads to higher future payments.</p><p>This study<strong> </strong>contributes, through substantial examples, what some other writers already have done. A non-active premium pension saver gets lower future payments then the active savers.</p>

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka huruvida en aktiv individ får högre framtida pensionsutbetalningar än en individ som låter kapitalet vara kvar i Premiesparfonden. Vår undersökning har en deduktiv ansats, då ekonomiska teorier har utgjort grunden för de beräkningar som har gjorts. Beräkningarna bygger på hårddata, i form av historiska fondvärden, och studien är därmed kvantitativ. Tidigare undersökningar och beräkningar används för att styrka uppsatsen, som i och med detta är en sekundäranalys.   Den placeringsstrategi som visade sig ge högst framtida utbetalningar med hänsyn tagen till risken var den aktiva placeringen. De portföljer som de aktiva premiepensionstagarna har att välja mellan i vår studie, ger alla högre framtida utbetalningar än Premiesparfonden. Vidare kan tilläggas att Premiesparfonden är ett av alternativen som har för hög risk i förhållande till dess låga avkastning. Det skulle vara intressant att om några år, då Premiespar-fonden har förändrats till generationsfonder, göra om denna studie och då undersöka om detta leder till högre pensionsutbetalningar för de icke-aktiva premiepensionstagarna. Denna studie bidrar med och stärker, genom konkreta exempel, det som en del andra författare redan påpekat, att de icke- aktiva premiepensionsspararna får lägre framtida utbetalningar än de som är aktiva i sitt sparande. / The aim of this thesis is to compare if being an active premium pension saver give rise to higher future payments, than keeping the capital in the Premium Savings Fund. This essay has a deductive approach, as we started to study financial theories. It also has a quantitative research, since our calculations are called statistical data, which are composed of these financial theories. Previous studies and calculations are used to prove our essay. The best investment strategy with the highest future payments, regarding risk preferences, turned out to be the active choice. All the choices an active premium pension saver can make by choose one of our different portfolios, has proved higher future payments, than The Premium Pension Fund. Further, the Premium Savings Fund is one of alternatives which have a lower return, regarding to the high level of risk. It would be interesting to remake this study, when the new funds "generationsfonderna" has been introduced, and to see if this alternative leads to higher future payments. This study contributes, through substantial examples, what some other writers already have done. A non-active premium pension saver gets lower future payments then the active savers.

In order to assure a livelihood for the working population after retirement, the national retirement pension was developed. The system is based on 18.5% of each tax-paying worker’s annual salary. The national retirement pension system in Sweden consist of two parts. The first and largest part contributing with 16 percentage points, of the 18.5%, is a defined benefit plan, named the income pension. The second part contributing with 2.5 percentage points, of the 18.5%, is the premium pension, which is a defined contribution plan. The premium pension is the sole part of the national retirement pension controlled by the individual employee, with the opportunity to actively invest in a broad selection of domestic and international funds. Investors not making a choice will be transferred into the governments default fund, named the seventh AP fund. By investing in funds, the premium pension is partly based on each worker’s annual salary but also on the development of the financial market. This thesis has two purposes, the first is to investigate if the default alternative, the seventh AP fund has had a superior risk-adjusted return compared to fifty of the most commonly selected equity funds available in the premium pension selection. The second purpose is to construct portfolios for active investors with different risk-tolerance in order to compare the risk-adjusted return between an investor that has made an active investment in comparison to an investor that has not made an active choice. To conclude, this thesis shows that there are superior funds to select, with regard to risk-adjusted return and risk-exposure, as an alternative to the seventh AP fund. In addition to this, the portfolio construction included in this thesis has proven that active participants can achieve results that are more compatible with their risk preferences in comparison to remaining in the default fund option. However, it is important for investors to remain active and alter their fund selections throughout the years, in order to attain the preferable outcome.