Finpension invest – a new robo-advisor for non-3a ETF investments

So it seems it’s more or less same as 3a + higher cost funds. I would be curious to see which funds they actually use and if they are tax advantaged or not (most likely not)

This is what I see for their equity 100 portfolio:

That‘s pretty basic. Essentially a weird (less diversified) version of an msci acwi.

I wonder what they mean with “tax efficient”. I dont see any tax efficiency compared to a regular ucits msci acwi here.

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Thanks @oswand Snowden for publishing finpension leaks. :wink:

So in summary (provided this is not an older draft but the final conditions and nothing changes before launch):

  • fractional trading, up to 10 different portfolios
  • access to private equity (through a private equity ETF?)
  • no transaction fees on top of flat fee (what about stamp duty?)
  • global strategy looks like generic FTSE All-World
  • no degressive pricing depending on amount invested (findependent is cheaper from 250k upwards)
  • no benefit in having both free assets and 3a money with finpension

So if I would buy 3 ETFs per month and had over 200k, I’d pay about CHF 600 yearly with Swissquote (arguably an expensive broker), but here I’d reach these costs with 150k already.

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Probably just marketing. Most people have no clue about WHT, etc. So they just highlight that they use ETFs domiciled in Ireland or something like that. [1]

[1] https://finpension.ch/en/das-beste-fondsdomizil-fur-schweizer-anleger/

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Are you comparing a DIY investor at SQ to one that uses the finpension robo advisor?
If so, I don’t think that’s a very fair comparison, as a DIY investor needs to manually do the transactions.
BTW: The SQ robo advisor has a management fee of 0.6%.

We also offer reporting for the flat-rate tax credit (DA-1) of US withholding tax within selected ETFs. With a US dividend yield of around 2 % and a withholding tax of 15 %, the flat-rate tax credit generates a yield advantage of 0.30 % for you. Read on to find out whether your canton allows the lump-sum tax credit with our reporting.

This is what they write. I wonder how they will do that, without offering US etfs. DA-1 is not applicable for Ireland and Luxembourg etfs.

However: IF this is indeed true, than it would be a great offering. That basically would offset the robo-advisor fee of 0.39% and would make this a nice solution for the average investor.
DiY still better, but that‘s not for everyone.

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https://finpension.ch/en/invest-2/

It‘s not released yet but all the information is online.

I base the comparison on someone who wants to invest monthly in three ETFs, say 80% in a world ETF, 15% in bonds and 5% in real estate, rebalancing once a year. Which is not that uncommon a profile. And I compare how much having this automated costs.

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Do you have by any chance two portfolios, you are comparing? A robo one and a DIY one?

How‘s the performance?

Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would ever get excited about AuM-fee-based solutions (whether it’s a robo advisor or not).

That said, I do hope Finpension can attract more AuM in order for them to lower their fees for their 3a & vested benefit solutions.

Yes, I will get excited once Finpension charges less than 0.3% (the alleged yield advantage). There could definitely be some potential in withholding taxes, but this stands:

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I didn’t quite understand what this means … is it about L1TW or L2TW ?

I think that similar to a pension fund, if they guarantee that all customers are swiss based they might be able to get all the right paperwork.

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Would be interesting to see what is launched

The link that @Tony1337 shared was listing all IE ISINs for this US tax credit topic.

I am wondering if Finpension can provide reporting to reclaim L1tw then why individuals who own same ETFs cannot do so.

Very curious now :slight_smile:

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Equity indices are a mixed bag, honestly.

It might be a good option for fixed income products, which are difficult to get access to for small investors in Switzerland.

P.S. or maybe not :person_shrugging:.

Depends, 100% stocks or stocks/bonds mix?

For 100% stocks, you either simply go 100% VT, or do a combination of sub-regional etfs like VTI + VXUS or VTI + VEA + VWO. And for stocks/bonds, add bond etfs like GLAC to that.

The main advantage of a robo is that you set your allocation (or let the provider determine it together with you, i.e. with a questionaire for risk and goals) and then the robo keeps that allocation with automatic rebalancing and buys the stocks for you. You simply transfer money every month and that‘s it.

But essentiallly the return difference from a robo to diy, is the robo fee. So in this case 0.39%/year extra cost. And if your robo has only ucits funds and you cant reclaim withholding taxes, that‘s another 0.3% compared to the US etf diy method.

If comparing ucits diy vs. Robo, it‘s basically the 0.39%. But only with low cost providers like ibkr, that have essentially no cost.

Depends on the cost. For the majority of us, it‘s not interesting. But there are many average Joe people, that would mayber otherwise not invest. For them a hands-free solution, that they set up once and then just let it run, can be a good thing.

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Must be L1, there is no L2 for Ireland etfs.

But L1 is normally lost on fund level. I‘m very interested in what they plan to do here.

Maybe their USP really is that they’ve set it up in a way (US-based ETFs with TERs that are ~0.1% lower than European ETFs, the above-mentioned yield advantage of 0.3% for withholding tax) to offset their fees of 0.39%.

Otherwise they’d just be yet another robo advisor. From finpension I would expect some kind of twist to that formula.