Danish Pension Assets Swell to $680 Billion as Funds Add Risk

(Bloomberg) --

Denmark’s pension industry has grown to more than double the country’s gross domestic product after adding about $100 billion this year alone.

“The first nine months of 2019 saw considerable growth in the companies’ balance sheets as a result of substantial returns on pension wealth,” the central bank said on Tuesday. That followed a substantial increase in holdings of asset classes outside the traditional bond and stock allocations.

Pension funds have been shifting their allocation to alternative assets as they struggle to generate higher returns amid long-term negative interest rates. That’s triggered warnings from the financial regulator, which has cautioned that not all savers are aware of the growing risk embedded in their portfolios.

The Danish pension industry has about 4.6 trillion kroner ($680 billion) in assets, about $150 billion of which are in dollar-denominated securities, according to the central bank. Roughly 70% of that currency exposure is hedged, it said.

“The hedge ratio for dollar exposures has been declining over the last two years,” the bank said. “One reason being that it has become more expensive to hedge U.S. dollars. So the rising exposure in U.S. dollars has not been hedged on a current basis.”

Overall, the industry generated its biggest returns from its holdings in shares, bonds and interest-rate derivatives.

Assets other than bonds, stocks and allocations to investment funds made up 619 billion kroner of the total in the third quarter, up from 489 billion kroner in the second. At the end of September last year, Danish pension funds and life insurers held 345 billion kroner in the category “other assets,” according to central bank data.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christian Wienberg in Copenhagen at cwienberg@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.