Expats may be required to produce regular savings proof

Nordic countries have a very good reputation with international students, and Sweden is no exception. But where in the country offers the best environment for study?

The Swedish National Union of Students (SFS) has recently announced the winner of its 2017/2018 Student City of the Year award. The award goes to the city that actively works to improve the welfare of students, and this year it went to the city of Gävle.

Gävle is the capital of the Gävleborg County, located at the very lower end of Norrland. It’s the country’s 13th most populated city and is perhaps best known to the public for its unique Christmas tradition. Every year, a large straw goat, known as the Gävleblocken (or “the Gävle Goat”), is erected in the centre of the city and then, in a more unofficial tradition, tends to get destroyed by the locals.

There’s quite a buzz around pensions at the moment – and rightly so, as they provide the backbone of our income in our later years. But currently, pension deficits are hitting the news, and figuring them out can still prove difficult.

Pension deficits concern what are commonly known as “final salary pensions” or Defined Benefit schemes.   Final salary or defined benefit (DB) schemes are essentially occupational pension schemes that provide a set level of pension at retirement, the amount of which normally depends on your service and earnings at retirement or in the years immediately preceding when you retire. Because your pensionable salary is used as one part of the formula in order to calculate your pension, a final salary scheme is commonly referred to as a ‘salary related’ scheme. Two common examples of ‘final pensionable salary’ would be your last year’s pensionable earnings or an average of your last 3 years’ pensionable salary.

Recently, there have been high-profile failures of these systems, such as the folding of Monarch Airlines – and the collapse of their pension fund. Initially, it appeared that owners could still walk away with a profit (after new hands tried to turn the airline into a more accessible and “Ryanair-like” product) by offloading debts, and this included dropping the pension fund. Ironically, this was once a major credit to the business. The fund, which is now in the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), had been under speculation of being left short when the business first began to struggle back in 2014, after years of asset-stripping.