Sweden needs a minPension for debt

Sweden has built a national pension portal capable of finding money scattered across decades, employers, public systems and private pension companies, then presenting it as one comprehensible forecast.

But if you want a complete picture of debts currently being collected from you, the official workflow is apparently remember every company that might have bought one.

This is an interesting definition of digital government.

A debt may begin with a lender, telecom company, landlord, energy supplier, region, online shop or some business whose checkout flow turned pay later into the default because restraint performs badly in conversion metrics. It can then move to an inkasso company, be transferred to a new creditor, migrate again when a portfolio is sold, and acquire a different company name because firms merge, rebrand or emerge from the financial-services spawning pool.

Each participant may have its own portal, case number, payment instructions and authentication flow. Some use BankID. Some send paper. Some use digital mailboxes. Some expect you to locate the correct customer portal from a letter sent three corporate identities ago. The information exists, but it is distributed across organisations whose ownership structures are changing while the citizen is expected to maintain the index.

We have reinvented distributed systems, except the consistency model is anxiety.

I do not think the first answer needs to be abolishing inkasso, redesigning every fee or pretending legitimate debts stop existing when the interface is hostile. Those are separate political arguments, and some are already happening. I want something both less revolutionary and more immediately useful:

Build a minPension for debt.

One secure public portal. Every company conducting inkasso against private individuals connected by law. Every active claim visible to the person it concerns. Current amounts, current owner, original creditor, payment instructions, status, history and the correct place to ask questions or object.

Not debt forgiveness.

Not a new way for lenders to inspect people.

Just the radical proposition that a person should be able to see who says they owe money.

The missing layer#

Kronofogden already has Mina sidor. If a claim has reached the authority, you can see debts, balances and payment demands there. That service is useful.

It is also downstream.

An inkassokrav comes before a debt necessarily reaches Kronofogden. If you act during that period, you may be able to pay, object, correct a mistake or arrange a plan without the claim proceeding further. Once a claim arrives at Kronofogden, additional costs and consequences can follow. The best time to discover an active inkasso case is therefore not when another authority finally receives it.

Today, that earlier layer belongs to whichever companies happen to be handling the claims. The citizen sees fragments; each company sees its own ledger.

This is backwards. The moment when quick action matters most is the moment when the overview is worst.

The fragmentation is not merely annoying. Debt changes how people process information. Financial stress consumes attention and makes administrative tasks harder. Someone managing several claims may also be dealing with illness, unemployment, disability, addiction, separation, insecure housing or a mailbox that has become a paper-based denial-of-service attack.

Our current response is to give that person several portals, reference numbers and opportunities to miss something—then describe the result as personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility requires usable information. You cannot responsibly manage a system whose state is hidden behind an unknown number of vendor dashboards.

We already know this pattern works#

minPension is not the pension company. It does not seize custody of every pension asset in Sweden or answer every question about every policy. It collects information from the Pensionsmyndigheten and participating pension companies, gives the individual a consolidated view, and directs detailed questions to the organisation responsible.

That separation is exactly what a debt portal needs.

The portal would not decide whether a claim is legally valid. It would not replace an inkasso company’s case handling, Kronofogden’s statutory role, municipal budget and debt counselling, or a court. It would not need to hold anyone’s money. It would provide the missing coordination layer between systems that already exist.

The happy path is almost offensively ordinary:

1citizen
2  -> signs in once
3  -> sees every active collection claim
4  -> opens one claim
5  -> sees who currently owns it
6  -> sees who administers it
7  -> sees principal, interest and fees separately
8  -> pays, contacts or objects through verified instructions

This is not moonshot technology. It is an authenticated read model with notifications. Sweden has built more complicated systems to let me declare the sale of a house and check whether a pharmacy has my prescription. We can probably aggregate a few ledgers without first inventing a blockchain and appointing a minister for synergies.

What every company should have to report#

A legal obligation without a common data model is just a future spreadsheet incident. The responsible authority should define a versioned technical standard, certification tests and strict update deadlines. Connection should be a condition of permission to conduct collection activity involving people in Sweden.

For each claim, the minimum useful record should include:

• the original creditor and a plain-language description of the claim,
• the current legal owner and collection administrator,
• a stable identifier that survives transfers,
• original and remaining principal, with interest and fees shown separately,
• the applicable interest rate, important dates and last update time,
• current status, including disputes, payment plans, transfers and closure,
• verified payment instructions, contacts and objection routes,
• and a history of transfers and material status changes.

The stable identifier matters. A debt should not become a new creature merely because a portfolio changed hands. If Company A sells a claim to Company B, the citizen should see one continuous timeline:

1original creditor -> first collector -> new owner -> current administrator

Not three unrelated letters and a side quest through Bolagsverket.

Finansinspektionen’s rules already require useful pieces of this behaviour. Since July 2025, its inkasso regulations say that a collection claim should identify the basis of the claim clearly enough for the debtor to understand and assess it. The rules also require information about whom to pay, whom to contact with an objection, and notification when a claim has been transferred. FI took over full supervisory responsibility under the Inkasso Act in 2024.

So the conceptual obligation already exists: keep records, identify claims, communicate clearly, disclose transfers.

I am asking for the information to be delivered through a standard interface as well, so clarity does not depend on finding every individual envelope.

Put it near Kronofogden, but keep the boundary clear#

Kronofogden is the obvious public home because it already handles debt, enforcement, payment orders and debt restructuring. It already operates services through which people can see claims that have reached the authority. Extending the citizen-facing overview to the stage before enforcement would close the most dangerous visibility gap.

There is a legitimate argument for Finansinspektionen owning the reporting standard because FI licenses and supervises inkasso companies. There is also a legitimate role for Digg in identity, interoperability and digital notifications. Public administration is allowed to contain more than one competent organisation without making the citizen attend the coordination meetings.

A sensible division could be:

1. FI defines reporting duties and sanctions inaccurate or late reporting.
2. Kronofogden operates the citizen-facing service and combines pre-enforcement claims with the information it already holds.
3. Digg provides or certifies identity, notification and interoperability components.
4. Collection companies remain responsible for source data, payment handling and case decisions.

The public portal should clearly distinguish between reported by an inkasso company and established or enforced by Kronofogden. Displaying a claim must not magically grant it legal authority. A disputed claim must look disputed, not acquire a state crest through proximity.

That boundary is essential. The portal is an index and interface, not a machine for converting allegations into judgments.

Authentication should not mean BankID or exile#

The service should support BankID and Freja+, but it should not build permanent dependence on one private identity provider. Digg already lists both among approved Swedish electronic identities, Sweden-id is planned for December 2026, and Sweden is developing a state digital identity wallet under the revised European framework.

Use the national identity infrastructure, support notified European e-identities where required, and design for the European Digital Identity Wallet rather than bolting it on later.

And keep a non-digital route.

A portal does not help someone who lacks an e-ID, device, accessibility support, stable housing or confidence with digital services. The same consolidated view should be available through authorised service channels and municipal budget and debt counsellors. A person should be able to grant a counsellor explicit, limited and revocable access instead of arriving with a carrier bag of letters and hoping it contains the complete economy.

Digital first is fine.

Digital only is how efficiency becomes exclusion while everyone admires the dashboard.

Notifications are prevention infrastructure#

The portal should not only answer when someone remembers to log in. It should notify them when:

• a new collection claim is registered,
• a balance or payment deadline materially changes,
• a claim is transferred to a new owner or administrator,
• a payment is registered,
• an instalment plan changes status,
• a company records or resolves an objection,
• or a claim is about to move to Kronofogden.

Notifications can be sent through digital mail, email or SMS without exposing sensitive details in the message itself. “You have a new update in the national debt overview” is enough. Authenticate before showing the contents. Financial data does not need to appear on a lock screen merely because product management discovered push notifications.

Speed matters. A person who learns about a new claim immediately has more options than a person who finds a forwarded paper letter six weeks later. Early visibility can prevent fees, mistaken payments, missed objections and claims escalating by administrative momentum.

This may be the least dramatic anti-debt policy imaginable: tell people promptly what is happening.

Do not turn it into a lender surveillance portal#

A centralised view of debt is sensitive enough to glow in the dark. Any proposal like this should trigger privacy questions immediately, not after a consultancy has already uploaded production data into an analytics lake called citizen360-final-v2.

The purpose must be narrow: give the individual an operational overview of claims being collected from them, support authorised advice, and allow regulators to enforce reporting quality.

It should not quietly become a general database through which landlords, employers, advertisers or curious lenders inspect people. Sweden has separately discussed debt and credit registers intended to improve credit assessments. That is a different purpose with different access rules and different risks.

The 2023 over-indebtedness inquiry proposed a Skri register covering many consumer credits and payment delays, primarily to give credit providers a fuller basis for lending decisions. That is a different purpose from this proposal, which includes collection claims whether they began as a loan, electricity bill, healthcare fee, rent or subscription because the citizen needs a complete action list.

Access should be tight: the person concerned, an explicitly authorised representative, the reporting company for its own records, and authorities only where law and purpose require it.

No search by neighbour.

No “financial wellness partners.”

No targeted offers for consolidation loans arriving eleven seconds after login.

No lender API disguised as consumer empowerment.

The citizen is the user, not the data source.

This does not replace the harder reforms#

On 9 July 2026, the government published SOU 2026:43, Åtgärder mot överskuldsättning. It proposes changes to debt restructuring and a special order for allocating payments on overdue consumer claims. The larger debate includes absolute limitation periods, how payments are divided between principal, interest and fees, lending practices, and how people remain trapped as so-called eternal debtors.

Those questions matter.

At the beginning of 2026, almost 450,000 people had debts registered with Kronofogden. The total was SEK 154 billion, up twelve percent in one year. More than thirty percent consisted of interest and fees. This is not an edge case affecting twelve unusually disorganised people and a man called Conny who refuses to open mail.

A portal will not solve unaffordable debt. It will not make an unjust claim just, lower an interest rate, create income, negotiate an instalment plan or repair the consequences of decades of over-indebtedness.

But material reform and usable administration are not competing ideas.

While politicians, creditors and consumer organisations fight over fee structures and limitation periods, we can also stop forcing debtors to perform corporate archaeology. Better information helps under the current rules and under whatever rules replace them. It helps people who can pay immediately, people who need a plan, people who need counselling and people who need to dispute a claim that is wrong.

It may even help inkasso companies. Fewer payments sent with obsolete references. Fewer calls asking who owns a claim. Fewer cases escalated because a notice disappeared during a transfer. A shared standard makes compliance auditable instead of interpretive theatre performed separately in every customer portal.

This is why the principle should be hard to oppose, even if the implementation will not be. It does not abolish anyone’s right to collect a legitimate debt. It does not decide the politically difficult question of what a creditor may charge. It says that if a regulated industry is allowed to pursue individuals for money, it must also publish accurate case data into a public interface those individuals can actually find.

That is not an attack on collection.

That is the minimum observability requirement for a system with consequences.

The diagnosis#

Sweden does not lack debt data. Creditors have it. Inkasso companies have it. Kronofogden has the part that reaches Kronofogden. Municipal counsellors reconstruct it manually with the people asking for help.

What Sweden lacks is a citizen-facing read model.

We would never accept an online bank that said, “Your money is probably held by four institutions. Please remember which ones, authenticate to each separately, account for any mergers, and call around if the totals look incomplete.” That is close to how we handle debt, where missing one record can have much worse consequences than forgetting an old savings account.

Debt is not a moral exemption from interface design.

People who owe money still have the right to accurate information, timely notice, accessible services and a complete view of decisions affecting them. Making a debt easier to find does not make it easier to escape. It makes it easier to address.

Build the standard. Require every collection company to connect. Authenticate the citizen once. Show the original creditor, current owner, current collector, full balance, status, history, next deadline and verified action routes. Send immediate private notifications when something changes. Keep lender access out. Preserve non-digital support.

We already built minPension to answer a difficult question about money spread across institutions and decades:

What will I have?

Now build the version that answers the question people are currently expected to solve with letters, browser tabs and dread:

What do I owe, and who do I owe it to today?