Altersvorsorge: Sorge vor Fehlstart für Kapitalrente: „Als Politiker würde ich jeden Tag für eine Finanzkrise beten“

Frankfurt: Sweden is often seen as a model for the capital pension, which is set to revolutionize Germany's pension system next year. Experts anticipate significantly higher returns with the Altersvorsorgedepot compared to the Riester pension. However, just months before the planned launch, market players are conjuring up a nightmare scenario that initially shocked the Swedes.

The state fund AP7 was barely active on the stock exchange at the beginning of the 2000s when the so-called Dotcom bubble burst worldwide. Stock prices plummeted, and the Swedes had to watch as the capital-part of their pension fell to nothing initially. Experts are now back in a critical phase: artificial intelligence (AI) has been driving stock prices for months, and skeptics fear an AI bubble that could burst and lead to a stock market crash.

If they are right, the German capital pension could face a similar failure as in Sweden. The newly launched state fund initially lost nearly a third of its value and has been in the red for three years, recalled AP7 CEO Pål Bergström at a Bundesbank financial conference on Tuesday. "As a politician, I would pray for a financial crisis every night," said Erik Podzuweit, the founder of the fintech Scalable Capital, jokingly.

However, his provocative statement hides an important lesson from Sweden. Podzuweit pointed out that the Swedes ultimately benefited from the initial crash in the long run: while the crisis, they stoically bought stocks. Despite the horror start, this remained their statutory duty. The advantage was that the fund acquired relatively many stocks at favorable entry prices, which gained significantly in value in the subsequent stock market rally.

However, former economist Ulrike Malmendier expressed concern at the Bundesbank's financial forum that politicians might buckle under such negative experiences and cancel the equity pension in a panic reaction. After all, the capital pension is still too often equated with a gambler mentality like in a casino in some political circles.

Podzuweit hoped very much that this would not happen in a crisis. For the Swedes, waiting out the crisis paid off: the AP7 has reportedly achieved an average annual return of about eight percent since 25 years despite the miserable start. In the Bundesbank, which competes with the state fund Kenfo for the administration of the capital pension, it is hoped that the German government will take Sweden's "governance" as a model: the lawmaker would only lay down general guidelines, while a panel of independent market experts would make the concrete investment decisions.