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To: IceShark who wrote (58584)	8/25/1999 12:32:00 PM
From: per strandberg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86076

Ice, Swedish retirement system Last year it was decided that about 2% of your income should be placed in a personal account and be used for buying into different stock market funds. A typical government agency was hastily put together, with the responsibility to create and maintain the system to handle the individual accounts. Obviously, the political merits weighed heavier than computer system knowledge (not very rare, anywhere). The agency got 8 months (and plenty of money) to implement this new system. They spent the money on bringing in a US consulting company that promised to bring the system up within the allotted time frame. The deadline passed and the whole approach was scrapped. Now all taxpayers have an account with the Swedish central bank, accruing some interest hopefully. The new deadline is set at the end of this year. If there is a working system by then, I expect Jan-Feb to be strong as all the money collected will be invested then. A good point is that the government has set a limit of around 0.2% for the fund management charges, instead of the usual 1% - 2%. Another good feature is that you can change between funds as often as you wish without any charges at all. The problem, as I see it, is that it will create big differences in future pensions for different people. If somebody bets on a winner and the neighbour bets on a loser, one of them is going to be very upset. With regard to the Royal Swedish Envy, a burden put on everybody's shoulders is not that bad, compared to the success of a lucky few. Successful fund-picking is not that simple, particularly if you have never meddled with stocks, bonds and funds before. Anyway, most banks and insurance companies have had on-line fund accounts for years. Just using an existing, working system and scale it up from 500K to 5M accounts would have been so easy. Perhaps to easy, when the new agency had to prove that their existence is a necessity. If the new scheme survives Y2K, I'll report how it works out. Regards Per S