Mortgage discount linked to insurance capital kills pension status

A depot pension insurance that is bundled with a mortgage-rate discount fails the pension-insurance conditions where the policyholder gives up market return on the insurance capital in exchange for cheaper borrowing.Skatteverket Högsta förvaltningsdomstolen decided so on 9 September 2026 in HFD 2026 ref. 41 (case 333-26), affirming an advance ruling from Skatterättsnämnden.

The arrangement concerned P.L., who planned to take out a depåförsäkring for tjänstepension with life insurer X AB and to have the insurance capital placed in kapitalandelsbevis issued by Y AB, while taking a mortgage with housing-credit institution Z AB. The three companies were linked by ownership. Z AB was to be financed in part through loans from Y AB at below-market interest. Y AB's business would consist mainly of issuing the certificates and lending to Z AB, and the certificates' annual coupon would be set by reference to, among other things, the interest Y AB received from Z AB. Anyone who had X AB manage the insurance capital, borrowed from Z AB and chose the Y AB certificates received a discount on the mortgage rate, with the size of the discount depending on how much capital was placed in the certificates.Skatteverket

Pension insurance and capital insurance are taxed differently, and only insurance serving a genuine retirement purpose qualifies. Under 58 kap. 6 § Inkomstskattelagen an insurance is a pension insurance only if it does not entail a right to insurance amounts other than age pension, sickness pension or survivor's pension.Skatterattsnamnden Agreements by which the policyholder or beneficiary is supplied with funds from the insurance capital or otherwise disposes of it contrary to 58 kap. disqualify the insurance,Skatteverket as the preparatory works state and HFD 2015 ref. 9 confirms.

The court found that the return on the Y AB certificates must be assumed to be negatively affected by Y AB lending to Z AB below market rate,Skatteverket and that this lending in turn enables Z AB to grant P.L. the mortgage-rate discountSkatteverket. By accepting that construction P.L. foregoes a market return on the insurance capital in return for a lower mortgage cost,Skatteverket and is therefore regarded as disposing of the insurance capital in a manner contrary to 58 kap. 6 §.Skatteverket The transactions are not carried out to fulfil purely retirement purposes either. The insurance therefore does not meet the pension-insurance conditions,Skatteverket and there was no need to test the further provisions the advance ruling had also considered.

The boundary is narrow but clear in the case law the courts cite. Withdrawals accepted in practice have been limited to financing the administration of the pension capital and advice on the design of the insurance itself, as in HFD 2022 ref. 21 and HFD 2024 ref. 24. A discount on private borrowing that scales with the amount of insurance capital committed falls on the wrong side of that line.Skatteverket

In practice, avoid linking a mortgage-rate discount to the amount of insurance capital placed in related certificates. The judgment turns on that link:Skatteverket the discount grows with the capital committed,Skatteverket and the certificate yield is depressed by the below-market on-lending that funds the discount,Skatteverket so the policyholder is treated as disposing of the capital.Skatteverket Test any bundled insurance-and-borrowing proposal against that mechanism before the policy is taken out.

Legal basis is 58 kap. 6 § Inkomstskattelagen (1999:1229)Skatteverket as applied in HFD 2026 ref. 41 (mål nr 333-26, dom 9 september 2026), with prop. 1975/76:31 p. 117 and HFD 2015 ref. 9.