Finnish Pensions Companies Should be Consolidated

The Finnish pension funds have seldom been very open with pensioners because there is a massive self-interest to keep very rewarding jobs at too many cost-inefficient pension funds.

There are three big pension funds managing mainly private sector pensions, and two public pensions funds for the central and municipal government. It is difficult to explain why tiny Finland needs 5 pension funds when one would be ample. The best explanation is that the gravy train is rater big and generous…

Their large boards, their senior managements and over one hundred representatives from the employee and employer unions all know that the funds under their management are small in relation to most similar pension funds around the world. They also know (or should know) that they are relatively inefficient when compared to the pension funds in Norway and Singapore, 2 countries with populations of similar size.

There are three truths about investing over the long term that every fund manager knows:

1. The bigger the fund in absolute terms, the easier it is to demand and receive lower management costs. Smaller funds pay higher management costs to third parties.
2. The lower the costs in percentage terms, the higher the return.
3. Smaller funds, bigger fund management salaries, and higher administration costs mean lower total returns for the portfolio, which means that they eat up what pensioners should be receiving!

But you will never hear any of the above three items even though they know perfectly well that each statement is true.

All five of the largest companies exercise a lot of power in the Finnish economy even though most recently most of them have landed in trouble because they have been breaking rules:

1. They have commercial and political power through their board positions, and connections in many of Finland’s biggest public companies and banks. Their network is almost perfectly impregnable unless you are from the “right” organisation corporate and political.
2. They have political power through their relationships and connections with the main political parties, in addition to their very effective lobby organisations and related think tanks. 
3. They have very close relationships with the employee and employer unions, bodies that also have strong connections to the biggest political parties.
4. They also have strong connections with civil servants in the various ministries that are meant to oversee and supervise their activities, A revolving door keeps this supervision muted because who knows what high paying job you could be prevented from receiving if you are too assiduous in exercising your supervisory duties.
5. Most of them replicate what the others are doing so there is very little diversification, a fact that speaks volumes for consolidation.

The whole pension system in Finland is covered by one set of complex and protective legislation that forces employees and employers to make joint payments each month of some 25% of gross salaries into the pension funds. Current pensions to retirees are paid out of these funds, while a remaining amount is invested for future payments when working folk eventually retire. Ordinary pensioners currently around 50% to 60% of their last salary as a pension for life after they retire from their lifelong jobs.

The whole system is nicely closed up and works smoothly with the above mentioned boards, senior management and the over 100 administrative representatives from the employee and employer unions all enjoying rather generous benefits.

In fact, it is so well organised that there are no foreign-owned pension funds operating in Finland. Foreign pension managers must set up a fund in Finland as a domestic operation and the current laws here and the state of competition has stopped all efforts to enter this market. The whole system is so cleverly constructed between the three big funds that even the biggest foreign pension funds see no opportunities to enter such a closed market. 

They have large equity and bond investments which are separately managed at home and abroad with their annual investment costs, they claim, below 1% of the amount managed. The world’s largest funds make do with one-tenth of that amount. The impact of the claimed 1% annual cost reduces pensioners’ pensions by quite a large amount. The actual costs are challenging to measure because but judging from the results there appears to be leakage above this figure…

If you can invest at 3% real rate of return over 40 years, (this is the rate they claim they want to achieve open average each year), that means 6% assuming inflation is 3% on average over such a long period during which people work, then you would only need to invest 12% to 13% of your gross salary every year to receive most 100% of your last salary. 

The calculation can be made on an Excel spread sheet relatively easily. The assumptions are valid for such large groups because this pension system includes all workers and retired pensioners in Finland by law.

The pension funds are all talking about increasing employers’ or employees’ contributions to keep pensions at their present level, but consolidation would bring huge cost savings in administration and huge cost savings in fund management fees. This means that there would be no need to increase these contributions, even though a few hundred people would be looking for new jobs, including regulators who would become superfluous too!