**Table 7.  Assets and premium payments to occupational, individual voluntary and PPM plans, 2006**

||Assets|Premiums|
|---|---|---|
|All occupational and individual|||
|<br>voluntary insurance, billions of|||
|<br>kronor|2 270|193<sup>*</sup>|
|Percent of GDP|80 %|6.8 %<sup>*</sup>|
|PPM, billions of kronor|267|26|
|Percent of GDP|9 %|0.9 %|

*Voluntary individual insurance accounted for about 15 %. Source. Author’s calculations based on data from the PPM and Financial Supervisory Authority

From the information in Table 7 it is possible to calculate that in 2006 Swedes paid 29 billion kronor in premiums for private voluntary life and pension insurance, which is about 5 billion USD (with an exchange rate of 6 kronor per dollar). It is very difficult to make meaningful inter-country comparisons because of the differences between countries in institutional setups. If simply taken at face value, however, the data indicate that the market for voluntary insurance in Sweden is strong by international standards. This conclusion can be drawn through comparison with figures cited in Impavido, Thorburn and Wadsworth (2003). More specifically, according to Cardinale et al. (2002), total premiums in the UK for voluntary pension insurance amounted to £ 8 billion (about 15 billion USD) at the turn of the century.

It is not easy to foresee the future based on the present structure of benefit payments. What we know, however, is the following. First, Sweden’s pension landscape is dominated by the public mandatory and quasi-mandatory occupational schemes. Together, these command 23 percent of earnings. For the average worker, with a working career of around 40 years, the earnings related benefits from these two schemes together should be sufficient to provide an adequate pension. In addition, individual outcomes can be enhanced either by postponing retirement or through individual saving. Voluntary individual insurance constitutes one of the options available to accomplish this.

Second, we have seen that the restructuring of the mandatory public commitment created two new demand segments. One is persons with earnings careers that are too short to receive a public benefit much over the guarantee level. There are many reasons why this might occur, but the result is the same regardless of the cause, the need to purchase private voluntary insurance. The other is married women, who statistics tell us can expect to outlive their spouses by five to seven years (five due to longevity and two due to the average age difference between spouses). Given that Sweden has abolished the subsidy from unmarried to married couples implicit in a pay-as-you-go survivor (widow’s) benefit – the demand from women for longevity insurance can be expected to continue to increase. Finally, private voluntary insurance will remain the major form of coverage supplementing the public system for the self-employed.

The challenge for providers is to create products that cater to the needs of an ageing population with largely healthy younger pensioners and where many will desire to combine work with a retirement benefit into higher ages than previously. More generally, as career life income continues to increase, insurance provides a logical option for allocating personal resources to future (leisure) time in various ways, this also undoubtedly requires rethinking 26