Ok I looked again. The ratio
“Reclaimed foreign withholding taxes” / “Securities income, divided into: shares and other equity instruments … + Shares of other collective investments”
gives me for different shares classes and different periods values between 8% and 22%. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that this fund is not paying more than 15% withholding taxes on Canadian securities.
As far as I understood, the CSIF used by finpension are not pension funds, but institutional funds.
The pension fund shareclasses are only available for the CS Anlagestiftung funds.
At least that’s how it works at the Anlagestiftung I’m working at. One shareclass is for our Anlagestiftung fubds, which can be bought only by penaion funds and the other shareclasses are for vested benefits/3a accounts. This way the they can at least profit from the low TER and spread from institutional funds as retail investors.
I’m not sure whether vested benefits/3a providers would even be eligible for pension fund shareclasses.
My wording was imprecise. They will continue to charge VAT, but rather decrease their administrative fee. The rest is marketing slang.
Edit: looking at the news published today by finpension, it really is a bit unclear with how they handle VAT:
“VAT increase? Not with us! We are abolishing VAT on the administration fee of our #3a securities #app altogether. This means that the gross fee will decrease from 0.42 % to 0.39 % (incl. VAT). And this already retroactively as of 1 October 2022.”
This is a great initiative, but unfortunately Swisscanto funds look like normal classes, no preferential treatment for withholding taxes paid to pension foundations.
However I might switch CSIF funds which are not classes for pension funds.
Additionally, the Swisscanto funds seem to be under custody of Swisscanto themselves (ZKB) and not Credit Suisse (Schweiz) AG. They react quickly, though their actual structure is still a bit opaque to me.
Comparing performances of CSIF vs. Swisscanto funds over 5 years (same benchmark/index and currency):
USA, pension fund shares without withholding taxes: no difference. Yearly performances are also almost the same with a small difference in either direction.
Europe ex CH: CSIF overperforms by 0.24%
Japan (3 years), pension fund shares without withholding taxes: CSIF overperforms by 0.03%
Canada: CSIF overperforms by 0.34%
Pacific ex Japan (very low L1 withholding taxes): CSIF overperforms by 0.02%
World ex CH (3 years, same composition but different index types: gross vs net total return): no difference. Yearly performances are also almost the same with a small difference in either direction.
This I don’t understand. CSIF funds overperform for individual geographic segments which have significant L1 withholding taxes (Europe ex CH, Canada), but for the whole “World ex CH” there is hardly any difference.
Switzerland total market (SPI): Swisscanto overperforms by 0.03%.
Emerging Markets (CS fund is not zero-TER): Swisscanto overperforms by 0.18%.
It seems that finpension kinds of promising to reimburse from now on TER for non zero-TER funds. However it is better to not rely too much on other’s promises. So the Swisscanto fund is clearly much better than CSIF one.
Furthermore, with the new pricing of finpension, the total investment cost for investing in MSCI Emerging Markets via the Swisscanto fund is now 0.2% to 0.3% p.a. more advantageous than via a US or IE ETF.
This is an even stronger argument to maximize investment in USA stocks in a taxable account (at IB?).
Following the work of other forum members I tried to replicate a world portfolio on Finpension (i.e, similiar distrubtion as VT).
74.0 % - CSIF (CH) III Equity World ex CH Blue - Pension Fund Plus ZB
11.0 % - CSIF (CH) III Equity World ex CH Small Cap Blue - Pension Fund DB
11.0 % - CSIF (CH) Equity Emerging Markets Blue DB
2.0 % - CSIF (CH) Equity Switzerland Large Cap Blue ZB
1.0 % - CSIF (CH) Equity Switzerland Small & Mid Cap ZB
1.0 % - Cash
First, am I reading your post correctly that a more optimal strategy would be to swap the two Swiss funds (CS) and the Emerging Markets Fund (CS) with the Swisscanto funds?
Second, I couldn’t find the passage where Finpension “promis[es] to reimburse from now on TER for non zero-TER funds”. Are you sure about that?
Normalerweise kommen zur Verwaltungsgebühr noch Kosten der Fonds hinzu, die im Fonds-Factsheet als Total Expense Ratio (TER) ausgewiesen werden.Bei der finpension 3a Vorsorgestiftung sind die Kosten der eingesetzten Fonds bereits in der Gebühr enthalten (Ausnahme: Crypto Market Index Fonds). Die Kosten für den Zugang zu den eingesetzten Fonds übernimmt die Stiftung.
On an other note: I think it’s about time to lower fees in the whole 3a/vested benefits sector. I don’t see much justification for a %-fee either. 3a/2nd pillar pension funds are comparable to brokers, so there should be a low fixed-price brokerage fee imho.
Paid by the fixed annual fee, just like broker-employees.
And maybe, if really necessary, some tiny trading fees, for those of us who want to trade a lot with their retirement funds (not me certainly ). But to be honest, trading fees are a thing of the past to me, see IBKR. They’ll soon have to disappear in Switzerland, we pay way too much for Swissquote etc.
Are you mixing up custody fees and trading fees, because you still pay trading fees at IBKR.
Also you can’t compare buying single securities/ETFs at IBKR with buying active mutual funds at a foundation. There’s a lot of work involved with funds sold at foundations, there are managers picking the investments, they have to comply to countless laws and regulations, there’s fund accounting to be made, rebalancing for mixed funds, marketing material to be prepared, etc., etc. In addition the volumes traded are lower as well as each individual can invest only up to a few thousands a year.
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