The Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4) generated a return of 19.2 per cent, after costs, in 2021, it has revealed.

Publishing its full year results, the fund revealed that the net result for the year amounted to SEK 85.7bn. This is the highest result ever achieved since AP4 began operating in 1974.

Active management continued to be successful and contributed 3.5 percentage points to the return, corresponding to SEK 15.2bn in 2021. After net transfers of SEK 7.5bn to the pension system during the year, fund capital increased to SEK 527.6bn at year-end 2021.

AP4 CEO, Niklas Ekvall, said: “The strong economic recovery that began during the second half of 2020 continued with full strength in 2021. A key reason why the recovery has gone so fast and been so strong is the historically rapid development and the mass production of effective vaccines. The very powerful and swift monetary and finance policy measures that have been taken during the past two years to support the world’s economies have also been highly significant,”

Since the launch of the pension system in 2001, AP4’s return has averaged 7.2 per cent, per year, after costs.

“This exceeds the income index – the index with which the pension system’s liabilities side is indexed – by an average of 4.3 per cent, per year since 2001. AP4’s excess return in relation to the income index thus corresponds to SEK 307bn and entails that AP4 has made a significant contribution to the growth of the AP4 funds’ aggregate buffer capital from 10 per cent of the income pension system’s assets at the start in 2001 to just under 18 per cent at year-end 2021.

“We find ourselves in an uncertain macroeconomic environment, with a number of relatively likely economic scenarios with widely varying outcomes. The tug-of-war between these various scenarios will likely at times lead to nervosity and market turbulence. In general, in the coming years we cannot expect to see the same, favourable investment environment and very favourable returns on financial assets that we have experienced during the past ten years.”

In addition, AP4’s carbon emissions for the listed equity portfolio decreased by an additional 23 per cent during the year. Ekvall said that its work on managing climate risks in its investment portfolio has generated results over time.

“As an example, since 2010 we have cut the carbon footprint of our investments in listed equities by 60 per cent, and AP4 has set a target to have net-zero emissions by 2040 at the latest. AP4 also has an ambitious agenda to gradually increase the allocation of investments that contribute to the sustainability transition as well as benefit from it. In 2021 AP4 made such new thematic sustainability investments of SEK 13.7bn.

“AP4’s cost level for 2021 was 0.08 per cent of assets under management. AP4 strives to conduct its pension management as cost-efficiently as possible, and in an international cost comparison, AP4’s cost level was less than half that for corresponding pension funds internationally,” Ekvall concluded.

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