Meine Erfahrungen mit VIAC und der Kontoauflösung / My Experiences with VIAC and Closing the Account

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
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English Version please see above

Ich möchte gerne meine Erfahrungen mit VIAC teilen und bin neugierig, wie es bei euch lief, als ihr euer Konto aufgelöst habt.

Vor fünf Jahren habe ich aufgrund der Empfehlung von Mustachian Post angefangen, meine Vorsorgegelder bei VIAC einzuzahlen. Die Transparenz bei der Anzeige der Gewinne hat mich begeistert. Diesen Sommer jedoch musste ich mein VIAC-Konto auflösen, da ich eine Immobilie gekauft habe. Dabei erlebte ich eine unangenehme Überraschung.

Zum Zeitpunkt meiner Kündigung am 31. Juli 2024 zeigte mir VIAC einen Kontostand von CHF 40.700 an. Das Geld landete erst 12 Tage später auf meinem Konto, am 12. August 2024. Mit Schrecken habe ich festgestellt, dass die Differenz zwischen dem Vermögenswert, der mir am Tag der Auflösung angezeigt wurde (40.700) und dem, was ich tatsächlich auf meinem Konto gutgeschrieben bekommen habe, (39.000) eine Differenz von fehlenden CHF 1.700 aufwies.

Ich fand es extrem irreführend, dass mir ein bestimmter “Kontostand” angezeigt wurde, dieser jedoch nicht dem Betrag entsprach, der letztendlich überwiesen wurde. Wie sich herausstellte, hatte ich keinen Einfluss darauf, wann VIAC die Verkäufe meiner Anteile durchführt. Zwischen meiner Kündigung und dem Verkauf meiner Anteile vergingen sechs Tage, und ausgerechnet an diesem Trading Day hatte die Börse einen schlechten Tag. Dadurch habe ich 42 % meiner über fünf Jahre erzielten Gewinne verloren!

Als Kundin hatte ich erwartet, dass VIAC mich in so einem Fall informiert, denn schliesslich vertraue ich ihnen mein Geld an. Ich habe sie direkt kontaktiert und nach einer transparenten Erklärung gefragt, wie dieser Verlust zustande kam und warum ich nicht über das Risiko eines so großen Verlusts informiert wurde.

Die Antwort von VIAC lautete:
“Beim Saldierungsanstoss wird man darauf hingewiesen, wann der nächstmögliche Trading Day ist und wann somit die Anteile verkauft werden. Der Saldierungsanstoss ist somit keine Bestätigung, dass auch dieser Betrag überwiesen wird. Zwischen Ihrem Saldierungsanstoss und dem Trading Day sind sechs Tage vergangen. VIAC ist eine vom Kunden selbst verwaltete Plattform. Wir bieten keine Anlageberatung an. Wir informieren unsere Kunden nicht, falls Kurse steigen bzw. sinken.”

Diese Antwort empfinde ich als schwach, besonders angesichts des Vertrauens, das ich in diese Plattform gesetzt habe. Wie viel von dem Verlust auf die Börsenlage zurückzuführen ist und wie viel VIAC daran verdient hat, werde ich wohl nie erfahren.

Welche Erfahrungen habt ihr mit der Auflösung des VIAC-Kontos gemacht?

English Version
I would like to share my experiences with VIAC and I’m curious to know how it went for you when you closed your account.

Five years ago, based on the recommendation of Mustachian Post, I started contributing my pension funds to VIAC. I was impressed by the transparency in displaying the returns. However, this summer, I had to close my VIAC account due to a property purchase, and I had an unpleasant surprise.

At the time of my cancellation on July 31, 2024, VIAC showed me a balance of CHF 40,700. The money didn’t reach my account until 12 days later, on August 12, 2024. To my dismay, I realized that the difference between the value shown on the day of the closure (CHF 40,700) and the amount that was actually credited to my account (CHF 39,000) amounted to a missing CHF 1,700.

I found it extremely misleading that a certain “account balance” was shown, but that amount was not what was eventually transferred. As it turned out, I had no control over when VIAC would execute the sale of my assets. Six days passed between my cancellation and the sale of my assets, and unfortunately, on that trading day, the stock market had a bad day. As a result, I lost 42% of the gains I had built up over five years!

As a customer, I expected VIAC to inform me in such a case, as I had entrusted them with my money. I contacted them directly and asked for a transparent explanation of how this loss occurred and why I wasn’t informed about the risk of such a large loss.

VIAC’s response was: “Upon initiating the account closure, you are informed of the next possible trading day and when the shares will be sold. The account closure request is therefore not a confirmation that this amount will be transferred. Six days passed between your closure request and the trading day. VIAC is a self-managed platform. We do not provide investment advice. We do not inform our customers if markets rise or fall.”

I find this response weak, especially considering the trust I placed in this platform. I’ll probably never know how much of the loss was due to market conditions and how much VIAC profited from it.

What was your experience so far?

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This seems pretty fair (and well documented), reduce equity exposure if you can’t handle volatility.

It’s also easy to check that the losses match, just check how the funds moved during that time.

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I think the reply is clear. Trading is every Tuesday. I think trading was previously done monthly, so weekly trading is already a great improvement over that. Of course it would be ideal if they did daily trading.

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I totally agree with nabalzbhf. The loss is due to market volatility. There is nothing Viac can do here.

I closed my accounts at Viac in May this year to purchase a property. I had no issue. The withdrawal process was fast and simple.

However, I was already 100% cash few months before to secure the funds.

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Everything they write is transparent on their website so there is no wrongdoing on their part.
Also you will receive the sell documents from VIAC where you can see the selling price and then compare that one to the actual price of that day. I strongly doubt that VIAC gave themselves some of your profit during the selling process :smiley:.

I think the best would have been if you would have reduced your equity (and thus risk) exposure from the time you knew you were going to use the money for a property. That way you would have been sure that the money in your account is the money you receive.

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Imagine they would not have sold your equity on day X, but instead waited and tried to contact you. You wouldnt have picked up the phone and they only reach you 1 day later.

But in that 1 day, market would drop by another 10% (happened this year already),and would stay there.

How would you feel now? You would probably think ‘why didnt they sell as they write on their website???’ and you could even sue (for the additional 4k loss) them that they didnt do so.

Bottomline, bad timing/luck, but nothing VIAC did wrong here.

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I also think VIAC has done nothing wrong here. But: At the same time, I see the risk that Viac (many other 3a providers as well) leaves to the customer. I assume trading once a week is cheaper, which is probably what makes the offer possible in the first place. But why don’t 3a providers offer a „sell-it-now, don’t wait for the next trading day“-option? It could be optional, including transparent costs.

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No, they trade once a week to pool all the trades, net the in-/outflows and reduce (in the best case eliminate) the buy/sell spread.

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Ah, I see.

https://viac.ch/en/article/pooling-and-netting/

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I see nothing wrong here.

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Also had positive experiences with VIAC and I continue to recommend them.
Moved my funds to finpension (at that date, VIAC did not allow 99% foreign currency); everything went smooth and hassle free.

Because of such scenarios as you mentioned, OP, I transferred every position (2x 3a and 1x vested benefits) to finpension with one or two weeks difference to each transfer.

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Actually, the experience is not good for you, but perhaps the issue could have been avoided all together by adjusting the strategy to cash only first (let`s say on monday of that week) and see what exactly is the balance on tuesday, and then submit the request to transfer. In this way, you didn’t have to worry about exact sell date after you submit the request.

The point is that sometimes as investors we want best of both worlds.
We want our money to be continuously invested during the time of transfer until last day and we expect the switch to occur the next day to another provider and reinvestment thereafter. This works well in most cases but in some cases one can have a bad timing and your experience is one of those cases.

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@logitacher: My portfolio of choice was Global 20%. How could I have reduced my equity exposure? Could you give me an example?

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By being 100% cash

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@Abs_max: Do you mean I should have adjusted my Global 20 strategy to e.g. 3a account (0.80% interest) strategy before submitting the request to transfer? Or what strategy do you mean with “adjusting the strategy to cash”?

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Yes or even 100% cash strategy. One of them would have been fine to avoid volatility

So lets take an example. Lets say i want to transfer after 15 OCT.
I will change my strategy to 100% cash on 7OCT. On 8 OCT (tuesday), all the assets would be sold. Then on 9th OCT, I submit the request to transfer the account money.
In this way, you would have fixed (known) amount to transfer

Assumption -: rebalancing happens on Tue

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Sorry for your perceived loss.

You have imagined your VIAC account to be a Sichtkonto – you can withdraw any (deposited) amount at any point in time with immediate or near immediate settlement.
Such accounts exist, e.g. at your local bank, and with 0% interest.

Your VIAC investment account was not such an account.

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That’s what I’ve done. Change of strategy to ‘3a account’ as soon as I knew I would be closing the account and cashing it out for a real estate purchase, with the understanding that the trading would be done the next Tuesday and the closure and transfer would be done sometime after that.

It happened exactly like that and I have no complaints.

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That would not have changed anything, except that now she would have waited a week longer for her 39k CHF. Unless of course you have a time machine and could have sold a week earlier…

It was a very unlucky end, especially with a 20% equity strategy, but VIAC is not at fault here.

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Also, simple litmus test:

If, between you putting in your notice on July 31st and the market going up in the mean time, let’s say by CHF 1’700 by the time VIAC sold per announced trading day, and in the end you received not just CHF 40’700 but CHF 42’400 … would you have complained to VIAC?

I understand you’re upset about what the negative difference of what was showing up as “account balance” between July 21 and your actual payout date, but it’s really just terms and conditions, VIAC’s rebalancing strategy, and markets settling conditions?

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