Pension-capital-for-mortgage-discount policy fails pension test

A deposit insurance policy (depåförsäkring) for occupational pension that links insurance capital to a mortgage-rate discount does not qualify as a pensionsförsäkring.Skatteverket In HFD 333-26, decided 9 September 2026, the Supreme Administrative Court confirmed the advance ruling that the policy fails the conditions in 58 kap. inkomstskattelagen (1999:1229)Domstol.

The arrangement, as described in the ruling, involved three connected companies: life insurer X AB, Y AB issuing kapitalandelsbevis (capital participation certificates), and mortgage lender Z AB. The policyholder planned to take a deposit policy with X, have X place all or part of the insurance capital in Y's certificates, and take a mortgage with Z. Y would fund Z partly through loans at below-market interest, the certificates would pay an annual coupon derived partly from Y's interest receipts from Z, and the policyholder would receive a mortgage-rate discount whose size depended on how much insurance capital was placed in the certificates.

Only insurance serving a genuine retirement purpose qualifiesDomstol: under 58 kap. 6 § the policy may not confer rights to benefits other than old-age, sickness or survivor's pensionDomstol. Agreements letting the policyholder or beneficiary receive funds from, or otherwise dispose of, the insurance capital contrary to 58 kap. disqualify the policyDomstol (cf. prop. 1975/76:31 and HFD 2015 ref. 9, where capital could be invested in a debenture tied to the policyholder's own mortgage). Here the court shared the board's reasoning: the coupon return on the certificates is presumably depressed by Y lending to Z below market rate, that lending in turn enables Z's mortgage discount, and the policyholder gives up market return on the insurance capital in exchange for lower mortgage interestDomstol — disposing of the capital contrary to 58 kap. 6 §Domstol. The transactions were also not carried out for purely retirement purposes.Domstol

Skatteverket has already incorporated the judgment into its legal guidance on the conditions for a Swedish pensionsförsäkring (updated 15 September 2026), alongside the earlier HFD 2015 ref. 9 line: a deposit policy whose terms let the holder dispose of the capital — whether by direct investment in the holder's own mortgage debt or via the certificate-and-discount structure in 333-26 — is not a pensionsförsäkring.

For advisers the consequence is direct: a client considering this kind of bundled pension-capital-plus-mortgage structure cannot count on pension-insurance tax treatmentDomstol, since the policy breaches the 58 kap. 6 § benefit restrictionDomstol and the retirement-purpose requirementDomstol.

Legal basis: Högsta förvaltningsdomstolens dom 333-26 (9 September 2026) applying 58 kap. 6 § inkomstskattelagen (1999:1229); cf. HFD 2015 ref. 9.