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But what does it all mean? How to decipher Sweden’s orange pension envelope

If you live and work in Sweden, you may have received an orange envelope with important information about your pension. The document can feel intimidating, but here's what you need to know in order to decipher it.

Published: 17 February 2020 14:34 CET
Updated: 28 February 2024 12:31 CET
the so-called orange envelope is delivered to a mailbox
Understanding this brightly coloured document is the first step to making informed decisions about your financial future. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

The exact contents of your orange envelope (or orange kuvert as it’s known in Swedish) are unique to you. The numbers depend on things like your own salary, years spent working, and pension policy.

The first page of the document shows how your general pension and any premium pension has changed over the past year; this is your årsbesked or annual summary. 

All figures are given both for your inkomstpension (income pension, into which 16 percent of your taxable income is paid each year) and premiepension (premium pension, an extra 2.5 percent which goes into funds). The figures for the inkomstpension are almost always quite a bit higher.

Together, these two accounts make up your allmän pension (general pension), which would be added to any occupational pension and/or private pension once you reach retirement age.

The document is sent out in Swedish, but you can see an example of the pension statement in English here, which you can then compare to your own (here’s the 2023 version in Swedish). Here’s a closer explanation of what the key terms mean:

Värde 

This means value, and you’ll see a value for the amount that was in your pension at the turn of the year (2022-12-31) and, at the bottom of the table, how much was in your pension at the end of 2023 (2023-12-31). 

Beslutad pensionsrätt

This figure is exactly how much you had earned in your income pension in the last declared tax year.

Arvsvinster

Pension capital for a deceased person is sometimes distributed among their next of kin. If that’s the case, the amount goes in this row, the title of which literally means “gains from inheritance”.

Administrations- och fondavgift

These are the administrative fees you pay for your pension accounts.

Värdeförändring

Literally “change in value”, this figure is based on income changes across all of Sweden, and it’s a set percentage each year.

Summa intjänad allmän pension

This is the key line on the first page, meaning “total accrued general pension”, which adds together both your income pension and premium pension. This is the figure that’s used to make your pension forecast, which are on the second page of the document. 

Din premiepension

Also on the first page, you’ll see a detailed breakdown of your premium pension. This shows which funds you have chosen to put this portion of your pension in, and how they have developed over the past year. 

You can choose up to five different funds for your premium pension if you want to – otherwise it goes by default into AP7 Såfa, the Seventh AP Fund (National Generation Management Option). The table shows the change in value (värdeutveckling) and the fees associated with each fund (fondavgift).

Den genomsnittliga pensionsspararen

This row of the table shows a fee and total change in value for “the average pension saver” in Sweden. That gives you a starting point for deciding if you’re happy with the current funds you have, or if you would like to change them.

Beslut om dina pensionsrätter

Onto the second page, and this shows how much you have earned towards your public pension during the last declared tax year (that’s 2022, since taxes for the year 2023 haven’t been declared yet). It shows your pensionable income (din pensionsgrundande inkomst), and how much you have earned towards both your income and premium pensions.

The orange envelope does not show the occupational pension which is provided by many employers in Sweden, or any private pension you are saving towards.

If you have more questions about how you can maximise and keep track of your Swedish pension, however long you plan to stay here, check the articles below: 

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For members

WORKING IN SWEDEN

‘Reassess your cultural background’: Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

Many foreigners living in Sweden want to stay in the country but struggle to find a job, despite having relevant qualifications. The Local spoke to three experts for their advice.

Published: 7 May 2024 09:00 CEST
'Reassess your cultural background': Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

One international worker who found it hard to land her first job in Sweden is Amanda Herzog, who eventually founded Intertalents in Sweden with the aim of helping other immigrants find work in the country.

Herzog originally came to Sweden to study at Jönköping University and decided to stay after graduating.

“I thought it would take three months, maybe six months to find a job, I was prepared for that,” she told The Local during a live recording of our Sweden in Focus podcast held as part of Talent Talks, an afternoon of discussions at the Stockholm Business Region offices on how to attract and retain foreign workers in Sweden.

“What happened was it took over 13 months and 800 applications to actually get a job in my industry, within marketing.”

During this time, Herzog was getting multiple interviews a month, but was not getting any further in the process, despite showing her CV to Swedish recruiters for feedback.

“They were baffled as well,” she said. “By the time I landed my dream job, I had to go outside of the typical advice and experiment, and figure out how I actually can get hired. By the time I got hired, I realised what actually works isn’t really being taught.”

‘Reassess your cultural background’

Often, those who come to Herzog for help have sent out hundreds of CVs and are unsure what their next steps should be.

“My first piece of advice is to stop for a second,” she said. “Reassess your cultural background and how it fits into Sweden.”

Herzog, for example, discovered she was interviewing in “the American way”.

In the US, when asked to tell an interviewer about yourself, you’d be expected to discuss your career history – how many people have you managed? Did sales improve while you were working there? – while Swedes are more likely to want to know about you as a person and why you want to work in a specific role for their company in particular.

“A lot of people don’t know this, so imagine all of the other cultural things that they’re doing differently that they learned in their country is normal,” Herzog adds.

“Just start with learning, because it could be that you don’t need to change very much, you are qualified, you just need to connect with the Swedish way of doing things.”

 
 
 
 
 
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Networking is important

“Don’t hesitate to reach out for help and guidance,” said Laureline Vallée, an environmental engineer from France who recently found a job in Sweden after moving here nine months ago with her partner, who got a job as a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

“You tend to insulate yourself and consider yourself not capable, but you’re not less capable than you were in your home country, you just need to explain it to the employers.”

Another tip is to network as much as you can, Vallée said.

“Networking is really important here in Sweden, so just go for it, connect with people in the same field.”

This could be through networks like Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s Dual Career Network, which helps the accompanying partners or spouses of foreign workers find a job in Sweden, or through other connections, like neighbours, friends, or people you meet through hobbies, for example.

Make a clear profile for yourself

Another common issue is that applicants are not presenting themselves clearly to recruiters, Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s CEO, Maria Fogelström Kylberg, told The Local.

“If you’re sending 600 applications without an answer, something is wrong. We have seen many people looking for jobs working in a supermarket, and the next application is a managing director post,” she said. “You have to decide ‘who am I? What do I want to do?’, you have to profile yourself in a clear way.”

This could be editing down your CV so you’re not rejected for being overqualified, or just thinking more closely about how you present yourself to a prospective employer.

“Which of my skills are transferable? How can I be of use to this company? Not what they can do for me, but what problem can I solve with my competence?”

Job hunters should also not be afraid of applying for a job which lists Swedish as a requirement in the job description, Fogelström Kylberg said.

“Sometimes if I see an ad for a job and I have a perfect candidate in front of me, I call the company and say ‘I have a perfect candidate, but you need them to speak Swedish’, they then say ‘no, that’s not so important’. This is not so unusual at all so don’t be afraid of calling them to say ‘do I really need perfect Swedish?’”

Listen to the full interview with Maria Fogelström Kylberg, Amanda Herzog and Laureline Vallée in The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

Interview by Paul O’Mahony, article by Becky Waterton

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