As far as I know, there is no reimbursement of foreign L1 withholding taxes (or at least nothing that would be visible in your transactions). E.g. CSIF World ex CH - Pension Fund Plus. Gross dividend last year was CHF 22.392 (that’s after deduction of reduced L1) as per ICTax - Income & Capital Taxes and the reimbursement is CHF 7.84, which is exactly 35% because it’s reimbursement of Swiss withholding taxes.
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Hoi zame
Took some time to play around with replicating Developed world ex US (cca “VEA”) allocations (using Swisscanto funds).
Challenge is, as always, with South Korea (i.e. FTSE vs. MSCI indices):
- It is a part of VEA (3.76%)
- But it is a part of Finpension/Swisscanto/CSIF’s “Emerging markets” funds (with 11.30%)
So, with accepting the fact of missing South Korea in allocation (and adapting the 100% to dropping it), I came out with following approximate proportions.
Any differing outcomes, if you analyzed the same? Open for discussion.
| Share (100/VEA) | Fund | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| 51.18 | Europe ex CH NT CHF | |
| 8.43 | Switzerland Total (II) NT CHF | II - no sec. lending |
| 9.93 | Canada NT | |
| 19.60 | Japan NT | |
| 10.86 | Pacific ex Japan NT CHF |
P.S. How would you handle S. Korea, if you would target to have VTI+VWO in taxable, VEA in tax-deferred accounts?
Worth losing sleep over? 
P.P.S. On VIAC it gets a bit more problematic, as they require to have a % of assets in CHF/hedged; and not able to shoot the Europe ex CH fund above 35%.
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In viac, you could select msci world hedged in chf .
It will allow you to take different etfs invested in other currency.
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That’s what I’ll end up doing likely (short of moving everything to finpension) - although not perfect.
The ultimate goal however is to not do All World (e.g. VT) replication in 3a, but rather mimic just the Dev x US (e.g. VEA) part of it; and then hold the rest (e.g. VTI+VWO) outside od 3a.
But depends on the remainder of the portfolio of course, some might be able to strike a balance with a mix.
Just ignore it. Korea is 35+ percent Samsung anyway.
Not worth losing sleep over it.
It will be negligible in the grand scheme of things.
Same as for the Australian banks & miners …er… I mean “Pacific ex Japan” part.
Take MSCI emerging markets (IEMG) instead.
With that approach one can drop Switzerland and Canada too (even less %) 
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I have entered my 3rd year of 3a pillar with finpension. The first year I invested 99% in “CSIF (CH) III Equity World ex CH quality - Pension fund DB”, while the second year in “CSIF (CH) III Equity World ex CH Blue- Pension fund Plus ZB”; now in the 3rd year I’m back on the first ETF. Next year I’ll invest again in the second and so on… Do you think it’s the right strategy? Should I open a third portfolio with another ETF?
I think you could do the same rotation with 3 extra 3rd pillars. Or you split the monthly deposit to 5 wire transfer to each accounts.
At least every odd year.
Unless for experimentation purposes, I‘d recommend to settle on less ETFs, not more.
Also, since it seems you just started out with pillar 3a, you can open more accounts later.
Splitting between the MSCI World ex CH and MSCI World ex CH Quality seems pointless. Same fund provider, same index provider, same custodian - there’s only negligible additional diversification provided by splitting between the two. As for the Quality factor part, you either be true a believer. Or not.
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It’s not the same index, of course, as the factor is part of the index. E.g. the Quality index is quite a bit more concentrated. Top 5 positions of World ex CH are 11.9% of the index. Top 5 of World ex CH Quality are 18.9% of the index. The IT sector in the Quality index makes up 35.4% (21.3% of the market cap weighted index).
The Quality fund also costs an extra 0.13% in TER at finpension.
Meant to say index provider, and one is, if I‘m not mistaken, a subset of the other index. Corrected, thanks.
It actually makes sense if someone isn’t comfortable enough to invest 100% in factor-fonds.
I don’t see an issue behind investing in a mix of Bogle and Kommer/Felix.
Absolutely. The (only) true issue that required a slight attitude adjustment would then be his/her level of comfortableness. If you deviate (in your stock market index fund allocation) from MSCI World at all, you may just as well do it with conviction.
Whatever you choose, you’ll still be getting pretty much a similar investment results. Because Both they’re both they‘re both global stock market indices that have been and are extremely highly correlated. And the Quality index is - not only/strictly, but in effect - largely market-cap weighted as well. But out of these two very similar and correlated indices, why not choose the one that outperforms the other by two percentage points or so a year, over the long run?
If all you‘ve ever drunk before is Coke but someone just gave you a can of Pepsi-Cola that makes you realise how slightly better Pepsi tastes …why would you go on drinking them both in a 50-50 mixture?
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has outperformed
The fact there are explainable factors to that outperformance, and that one believes in them going forward, is another story (but agreed, the best one we can have).
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So this means you go allin quality without adding Switzerland, Emerging Markets or small caps?
This also means, that even for the non 3a stock investments, you go allin quality or some other factors, that aren’t available at Finpension?
Yes, very important to note. Factor investing fans sometimes tend to argue there’s a god-given right to a factor premium going forward. But noone of us has a crystal ball.
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Where I can, yes.
Can’t do at VIAC, where I still keep some capital, but finpension has become my number one 3a provider for that reason. I still have a small position of an emerging markets fund outside of 3a, but otherwise all my fund holdings can be considered quality funds.
I’m not aware of any MSCI World Quality though that would is accessible for retail investors - except the iShares (ex-AUS) one in Australia.
Certainly not god-given and while I may have a crystal ball, I’m not much gathering the future from it.
That said, the evidence on the quality factor is among the strongest and most long-lasting though.
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I’m not really sure what you mean by that.
There are tons of UCITS quality ETFs:
ETF Suche: ETFs finden & filtern | Finanzfluss
So it’s pretty much guaranteed, that there are US-ETFs with quality tilt.
→ But maybe I didn’t understand you correctly.
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