Frankly for pillar 3a?

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
111

Is the question about the “Sustainable” vs “Responsible” lines of Swisscanto products or about allocation?

If the former:

They should look if the criteria applied suit their personal values. The quick browsing I’ve made seems to lead to differences mostly/solely in the exclusion criteria. They should look at the criteria for the two lines of products and choose what they like most: Various exclusion criteria for Swisscanto investment funds

Additionally, Swisscanto publishes their proxy voting record online. I would have a look at them and decide if I’m aligned with their practices: VDS Dashboard

That being said, the equity part of the “Sustainable” products is mostly just tech/AI with, for the 95 version, 22% of all assets invested in 4 stocks (NVDA, GOOG, MSFT, AAPL). That would be too much concentration for me and, if I really wanted to go that way, I’d dilute it with bonds and real estate (since that’s what Frankly. does), choosing a more conservative allocation than I would have had with another product (I would not go above the “Balanced” 45 and would not be shy to consider the “Cautious” 25 as my baseline). If AI/tech falls sharply, the versions of these funds invested heavily in equity would take a hell of a fall. Make sure they understand and are at peace with that if that’s the road they choose to take.

Taking a look at the factsheets and the 10 largest holdings can help direct the decision.

For example, for the 95 versions:

“Responsible”:

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“Sustainable”:

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Edit: I like Frankly but the “Extreme 95 Sustainable” and “Strong 75 Sustainable” products being offered as a 3a product without strongly emphasing just how concentrated they are should be financial malpractice. They really should add concentration guardrails to their investment guidelines and take out those two products from their offers (offering only the “Responsible” version for that level of investment in equities).

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112

As far as I can tell, CH1214207347 “Swisscanto AST Avant BVG Sustainable Portfolio 95 QT CHF” is the fund used for "Extreme 95 Sustainable”:

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113

You seem to be right. For some reason that I can’t reproduce (probably an error on my side), I ended up on on the “Swisscanto (CH) Equity Fund
Sustainable AA CHF” page (ISIN: CH0009074300).

That’s a bit less concentration with “only” 14% on the top 4 tech/AI positions. The “Sustainable” and “Responsible” variants are pretty close.

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114

I’m relieved that the “active” part only means exclusion from market cap. That way, it’s not an entirely discretionary strategy. And they went for the 45 strategy.

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115

Many active funds are de facto closet indexers as that prevents them from the career risk of diverging from the crowd (being wrong when everybody is wrong is ok, it’s being the only one to be wrong that bears bigger consequences).

When it comes to 3a solutions, I’d not necessarily reject active funds but check their cost and past performance. If both are similar enough to passive equivalents, that’s good enough for me.

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116

As far as I can tell, the active management goes beyond exclusion criteria. On their website, frankly mentions

Active investment strategies are designed to “beat the market” – that is, to achieve better investment success (performance) than the market average.

And Swisscanto also offers ‘responsible’ index funds, i.e., I don’t think frankly/Swisscanto would label these funds as active if the only difference was the exclusion criteria.

However, as Wolverine has explained, they will likely not stray too far from the index. You shouldn’t be surprised about some performance difference, though.

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