Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority sets pension fund supervision priorities and reports 178 percent solvency coverage at end-2024

In a speech at the Pension Fund Conference on 20 May 2025, the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority set out its current risk assessment for pension funds and its supervision priorities, with a focus on maintaining and further developing resilience through solid capital and liquidity positions and strong governance and controls. The director general also pointed to ongoing regulatory developments relevant to pension funds, including a new Financial Supervisory Act, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, revisions to the Solvency II Directive and work on guaranteed products. Finanstilsynet warned that heightened geopolitical risk is reshaping the risk landscape and can affect financial institutions and markets through channels such as market volatility, economic downturn and stagflation, and increased vulnerabilities from dependencies and less predictable policy signals. As of 31 December 2024, aggregate solvency capital coverage was 178 percent and no pension funds breached the solvency capital requirement, but stress scenarios showed significant deterioration, with coverage falling to 149 percent under a 30 percent equity fall without adjustments and to as low as 152 percent under combined equity, interest-rate and credit-spread shocks. Under the most severe combined scenarios, up to 35 pension funds would fall below 140 percent coverage and up to 6 would fall below 110 percent, while remaining above the solvency capital requirement.