“Swimming Against the Current” of Demutualizations in the 1990s and 2000s: The Case of the Private Statutory Pension Insurance Sector in Finland

Abstract

The global insurance industry of the 1990s and 2000s witnessed a significant wave of demutualizations often regarded as a world-wide phenomenon. In this article, we describe the case of the Finnish private statutory pension insurance sector and the reasons why it eventually “swam against the current” by explicitly deciding to emphasize mutuals —that still today account for 96% of the particular sector in Finland and has ensured that the almost 150 billion euros of pension assets has stayed in control and in use of the Finnish people, organizations and entrepreneurs. As an empirical dataset, we analyze two interviews of high-level experts who participated in the working group drafting the guidelines for the Finnish Act on Pension Insurance Companies.Received: 28 April 2023 Accepted: 20 December 2023