Half empty, or half full?

The green shoots of economic recovery have been spotted in some sectors of the global economy, but with corporate insolvencies not tipped to peak until 2010 for those bodies charged with insuring pension scheme liabilities, the worst of the crisis may still be to come. Life & Pensions met with senior figures from pension scheme insolvency insurers around the world to discuss the scale of the task faced – and how it compares with previous recessions.

Life & Pensions: The past 18 months have clearly been a testing time, but many of the organisations present here have been through several downturns – how does this one compare?

Peter Lindblad, president, Pensionsgaranti: I have worked for Pensionsgaranti for more than 30 years and have been the managing director for 20 of these, so I have lived through a number of crises. I started in the late 1970s, when Sweden went through a structural change affecting the steel and shipbuilding industries