Out of curiosity, and provided that I have understood you correctly and that you are making a distinction between pension funds covering companies offering financial services and other pension funds, why this difference? Better performance, better management or structure of the people insured (high salaries and low number of pensioneers)?
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I just checked the conversation rate that I’m getting at 65, currently it’s 4.6%. That’s low enough to stop transfering asset yields of workers to the already retired people.
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So you are worried that workers pay for you as a retired person?
The conversion rate is the yearly pension you get at 65, if you want a pension. Paying out the capital is the other option. Both cases are independent of the fact that asset yields are transferred from the workers to the pensioners.The difference between pension fund performance and paid interest on the pension capital is more relevant wrt transfer.
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I’m not sure. I guess that the higher is the conversion rate (for pensioner) the higher the redistribution effect and therefore less $$ flowing into your own pot, no ?
If capital is paid out instead of converting it to a pension, then asset yields are still transferred from workers to pensioners. The choice for a pension doesn’t change that.
This is clear.
I think that @Cortana 's statement was: if the pension fund lowers the conversion rate then it has to pay less $$ to the people who will opt for the pension (the majority) and therefore less $$ will be “wasted” from the pension fund and this allows to increase the % return.
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Mine [Edit my conversion rate] just decreased to 5%. That should explain quite a lot regards the lower rate of interest credited to me vs @Cortana
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I wouldn’t mind if they decrease the conversation rate even further. More yield for younger people 
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My 2nd pillar just announced 4.5 % for this year. It’s incredible. Pity that what I have bunkered there is so low due to self employment.
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Conversion, guys, not conversation 
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That’s indeed a huge surprise (given average interest is usually in the 1-2% range) and a substantial payout
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Big surprise: the interest credited to members of my employer’s plan for 2021 is >3.5% 
I also made a signficant voluntary contribution to the plan as I am increasingly likely to resign or partially retire in the next 2 years. When that happens I plan to put the funds in Valuepension or VIAC Vested benefits
Thanks to everyone for their contributions in this thread which helped my decision - especially the detailed explanations from @TeaCup
In case it is of interest, to fund it I took a margin loan from IBKR. Over the past year I have been consolidating my previous brokerage accounts in IBKR so I could have this kind flexibility and the amount I have just borrowed is 5% of my account, so low risk.
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I second @Barto .
My intentions are similar to @Barto and my actions were the same (except I didn’t take a margin loan). I will make a further significant “freiwilligen Einkauf” begin 2022.
My thanks to all, notable mention @TeaCup for very well-founded and explained contributions on the topic of PK.
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It’s pro rata. So if you do a buy-in now, you’ll get around 0.08% on that.
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Only effective from the date of pay in - but check the regulations of the fund if you want to be sure
At Interactive Brokers you can borrow at 1.5% variable interest rate using your assets as collateral. Disclaimer: this is not advice. Only consider it once you have researched and understood the risks
In my case I borrowed a small amount relative to my IBKR assets and the investment period when my cash will be locked in my employer’s PF will be short. So the operation pays out due to the one off income tax saving.
I would probably not borrow at a variable rate to invest in a PF over a long period.
If I RE my plan would be to transfer the pension to a vested benefit fund at Valuepension for at least 3 years
That is the million dollar question. The answer depends on each person’s circumstances
With the benefit of already being old, relatively speaking, my personal opinion is that most people your age should prioritise stock market ETFs. Over a 30 year period the higher historical return from stocks is likely to more than off-set the one off tax saving and lower annual return in 2P. I would suggest you model the 2 scenarios in a spreadsheet.
However each person has different circumstances so it really depends. One point to remember is that as you get older by default you are likely to end up with a high % of NW in 2P even without making any top ups. As a result I find it becomes more and more challenging for me to achieve my targeted long term annual return of 7% of NW p.a.
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Interest rate mandatory: 1%
Interest rate extramandatory: 1%
I suppose it’s because we are a small company or whatever. I wonder if I can fish some better deal and send some advice to my boss.
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Mine announced 3.25% for the mandatory part for 2021. Not bad but not too great either since last year we got 2.75%.
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Reading this I wondered where I would land at, it was announced today: 7% total, so 6% on top on mandatory and extra-mandatory.
I even heard that some companies like pwc should have or already granted something around 14%… (rumor, not sure if its true). But of course the pension fund can only do that if its in a good health (few retirees) and the reserves are already fully stocked.
Furthermore, some Funds decided to grant capital directly, for example my father got 40k granted this year from the pension fund (he is close to retirement, so he contributed for over 20 years in that fund, with a “normal” salary below 100k.)
If you are a small company with an interesting employee-structure (young, healthy and not many retirees), your company can join almost any pension fund with a healthy structure easily, which would provide such benefits as well.
The low performance is mostly a structural problem due to the retirees already associated to that pension fund.
Do you guys believe these high yields will continue in the next and following years?
I think @TeaCup did somewhat of an analysis earlier on.
From that I would conclude that in the past years most were still “fixing themselves” and should from now on be in “better health”? 
Aaand…
I’d like to eat my words now. 
A good reminder I should do some rethinking (before acting based on “old data”, with the former company) more often. 
Guess I could still amend that by extra voluntary in-payments (if I knew the above were true).
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