The green transition and sustainability in general are important to a lot of people, and many already have solar panels on the roof of their homes, have an electric car in their driveway, have introduced meat-free days, and are choosing more organic produce when they go to the supermarket. Despite this, very few people associate sustainability with their pension savings – but this appears to be changing.

From 2021 to 2022, the number of customers whose pension savings are partially or fully invested in Danica Balance Responsible Choice increased by 79 percent, bringing the total number of customers choosing this solution to almost 15,000. In the same period, the total amount of pension savings placed in Danica Balance Responsible Choice, in which at least 75 percent of the investments are sustainable investments, grew by 23 percent to DKK 3.3 billion. Sustainable investments are investments that in our assessment have an overall focus on contributing with solutions to climate, health and environmental challenges and that over time can deliver attractive returns on pension savings.*

Also, a December 2022 YouGov survey shows that 18 percent of us see pension savings as a way to make a difference, compared against only 12 percent in 2020.

“It’s positive that more and more people are becoming aware that their pension savings can contribute to and support the sustainable transition. Pension savings is a low-interest area for most people. Therefore, it is essential that we make it simple and easy for the customers to invest their pension savings according to their values and their sustainability focus,” says Dorte Eckhoff, Head of Societal Impact and Sustainability at Danica Pension.

Despite the positive development, Dorte Eckhoff highlights the major task facing the entire pension industry, as shown in the same 2022 YouGov survey, namely that 59 percent of respondents do not know what type of sustainability approach is employed in relation to how their own pension savings are invested.

“As an industry, we need to become even better at communicating the possibilities of investing pension savings in companies that are working hard to solve some of the world’s sustainability challenges. Our goal is for it to become second nature for people to consider their pension savings as something that contributes to the sustainable transition – in the same way as they already do with waste separation and recycling of plastics. And we'll be making an extra effort to achieve this throughout 2023.”

We will launch a new campaign to increase awareness of the possibility for customers to move part or all of their pension savings to Danica Balance Responsible Choice. The aim of the campaign is to inspire the individual customer to make a conscious decision about how they invest their pension savings and to communicate how doing so could contribute to creating a better future.

Standard pension savings solution

Until now, investing in Danica Balance Responsible Choice has been an option that each individual customer has had to actively choose. But because the sustainability agenda is also very important to our business customers – for whom we provide employee pension schemes – we have collaborated with these customers to develop the solution further. As a result of this collaboration, some businesses have now made Danica Balance Responsible Choice the standard investment solution for new employees joining their company pension schemes. This means that a specific percentage of the pension savings of new employees is automatically invested in Danica Balance Responsible Choice. 

“Many of our business customers have implemented sustainability measures and are working to minimise their negative impact on the climate and the environment. A number of these customers have wanted to include pension savings in their overall sustainability strategy, which we of course support. More and more businesses see their pension schemes as a tool to enable them and their employees to make a difference together, and we expect this tendency to grow over the coming years,” concludes Dorte Eckhoff.