The commercial pension companies compete for customers in more or less the same way as other financial enterprises, i.e. they basically seek to convince customers that they offer the best product in relation to price. The labour-market pension funds live a more quiet life. In many cases, their members have no choice of pension fund; this has been laid down in a collective agreement.
When analysing market shares in the Life and Pension sector, it only makes sense to consider the part of the sector where policyholders or enterprises have a real choice of provider. Based on this approach, the five largest pension companies accounted for approximately 90 per cent of the market at end-2005, in terms of both gross premiums and total balance sheet.