Ellen Dalsgaard Zdravkovic, director at ATP, which manages the DKr50bn (€6.7bn) scheme, told nrpn that the idea of offering Folkebørsen to Danish investors had received limited interest from Danish pension funds.

“After discussing with eight to 12 Danish pension funds about the possibility of offering Folkebørsen as an investment option to their members, we realised that offering the platform to individual clients could become too expensive, especially if they got only a limited number of clients to use it,” she said.

Ms Zdravkovic also names the general lack of interest in independent saving as another reason why ATP backed off from its plans. So far only 6,200 people have made active choices on the platform.

“It is unlikely that the members of Danish pension funds would show notable interest in the platform, which remains little known among the Danish public,” she added.

“The popularity of the platform has not increased because the Danish government has suspended further payments to the scheme until 2007. It is not clear when payments will be continued. It is also unlikely that the situation with low participation rates will change unless real effort is made,” explained Ms Zdravkovic.

In May 2006, DKr166m was invested in Folkebørsen. Global equity funds are becoming increasingly popular. Amongst the 15 most popular funds three invest mainly in the domestic market and three in Russia and Eastern Europe. The remaining nine invest in global equities, Latin America, China and Japan.

Foreign fund providers are also gradually gaining a foothold on the platform. In May 2006, the most popular non-Nordic fund on the Folkebørsen was Baring’s Hong Kong China euro fund, which was the sixteenth most popular with investments totalling DKr3.68m. This is a notable improvement in comparison to the situation in April, when the most popular non-Nordic fund on the platform was Baring’s Eastern European euro fund in twenty-fifth place.
RC

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