3rd pillar investment solution from VIAC

In the event of disability or death, you now receive up to 25% in addition to your pension assets. For every CHF 10’000 of assets invested in securities (calculated on the basis of the previous month), VIAC will provide you with free insurance coverage of CHF 2’500 (max. CHF 100’000) in the event of death or disability (70% – degree of disability).

This coverage is paid to you or your beneficiaries in the event of a claim in addition to your VIAC 3a retirement assets.

So it’s either disability at least 70% or death.

I agree with you, but they’re literally giving something away for free… I dont feel not cared about. Ofcourse lower TER would be amazing

Not limited to 10k, it’s just 25%. So 2.5k for every 10k.

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Right, sorry

Maybe, this is also due to the pressure from Frankly (TER: 0.47) and Finpension (TER: 0,39 + VAT, so 0,42%)

You guys are hilarious.
Talking about useless features and switching, and then offering others to join them. :rofl:

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From a business perspective: they chose not to compete on price.

I don’t think that it is necessarily stupid.

Speaking from the experience of a small business owner:
if you look at it from their side, there will always be someone who can offer it cheaper. As a small company you can only go so low with the price until you stop bothering about offering the product at all.
Better to address people who care about more than the price.

By adding features they make themselves less comparable.

People on this forum here will of course switch to a even slightly financially better offer but I suppose that for the majority of their existing clients it will probably make it more likely that they will stay.

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It should be more in the range of 1/45*5-6%*25% = 3 basis points. The average risk per year is important.

I think Viac is realizing that their core business is really a commodity business.
If the value proposition is to provide low fees outsourced ETFs for a 3a pillar with a cool App/Website, your only differentiating point is how low your TER is.

Therefore it is only a matter of time until a competitor with enough firepower comes into the market with another solution/app/website with an even lower TER, and this is what we are seing with Frankly/Finpension.

The rule of the game in this paradigm is to get enough AUM to be able to charge a low enough TER so you are profitable at this level but your competitors are not, like what Vanguard and Blackrock are doing.
This is a winner-take-all paradigm which is especially enforced if it is easy for customers to switch from one provide to another.

In the long term, i could even imagine one of the legacy big players offering a ridiculously low TER where nobody is profitable (but which is subsidized by their main operations) so they can get all the market to themselves and weed out small players.

So yeah, i guess VIAC realized they are fighting an arms race to the bottom… in this situation, either they change their offering (not easy, see below), or they stay in a commodity business and their only hope is that all their competitors screw up…

A new player who don’t want to play by the rules and be more profitable has only hard choices:

  • either sell a crappy product (3a life insurance anyone?)
  • or they need to differentiate themselves by insourcing the asset management and hire an outstanding manager (which is rare, expensive and needs a ridiculously long track record)
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I think many of us were waiting for the response from Viac before deciding to swich to Finpension. I see the response and I’m not happy with it. Therefore I will switch. Finpension is using the same Credit Suisse funds. And if I compare them it looks something like:

Viac Pros:

  • Minimal Disability/Death Insurance for free
  • Minmally longer track record

Finpension pros:

  • 0.05% FX Fee instead of 0.75% on Viac
  • TER 0.42 (incl. VAT) instead of 0.51% on VIAC
  • 99% invested instead of 97%
  • More flexibility in terms of fund allocation
  • Schwyz domiciled (might become important if you leave country)
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Afaik also no securities lending (Blue funds)?

I could also see a play, where this move brings growth by marketing to all the folks that get sucked into the life insurance 3a.

Based on my calculations (using the current insurance rates), it’s around 5 - 6 basis points.

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Totally unnessecary cost. It’s not even a good insurance. If I die with 80k in 3a, what difference will the 20k make for my family? Or if I get disabled, what’s the point if it aren’t regular payments?

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@Cortana I’ll gladly accept 20k for free…

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As you can see, as soon as someone starts posting referal codes again, this topic starts going nowhere and degenerates into who will post the most codes.
The rule is still the same, we do not allow posting referal codes in public, please do it via DM.

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I will maybe finish this year with viac and next year start with finpension (in addition I am thinking of leaving the country before 65)
Is it easy to manage “strategies” etc with Finpension?
Now that I’m used to Viac …

I don’t understand why are you complaining about this new features from VIAC ? They implement something free for you, just take advantage of that… Don’t forget that for some people, having a free life insurance can be really usefull, for exemple independant who are using VIAC 3a and who can maximise not CHF 6’826.- but CHF 34’128.-

Yes, the TER of 0.52% is higher than Frankly (0.47%) or Finpension (0.42%) but don’t forget that is only true for the maximum allocation… When you have a strategy between 0-60% equity allocation, VIAC is still cheaper than Frankly and Finpension.

Personaly, I take this new feature as an advantage (don’t want it, but since I’m not paying for it so, everything is fine) and I think that I will open 2 others 3a account in the next years : one to Frankly and one to Finpension.

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What are you talking about? We are paying for it! Instead of reducing the TER down to 0.46-0.47%. they added this useless insurance.

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Nothing is free in this world.

Some money went into this and many here, myself included, would have preferred to see that money go into lower TER.

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For the non-equity part, VIAC uses liquidity. Frankly and Finpension use bonds. In a way, it’s normal that liquidity is cheaper.

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