Pillar3a Investment options

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
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Hi Mustachians,
I was not sure if this community is for womens but seeing the vast Know-how I just jumped to login and although no mustache but can grow one :wink:. No I am kidding.

I have a question on pillar3a investment options, so now I have pillar 3a on AXA where I get 0.5% interest and it’s life insurance policy. I see no growth there and recently started reading about Viac, Selma, Finpension, swissquote, innoya.
Any expertise experience mustache or no mustache can help me decide where should I move my pillar 3 a to one of these accounts or should I create a new one or should I create just investment account without pillar3a.
I actually just wanted to grow the money and recently I woke up so any good advice would be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance
Best regards

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There are dozens of posts about the 3a and why you should not invest witha a insurance company.
Plase take some time to read and if you feel the need to change your investment strategy cancel you policie and move to a different platform, like VIAC.

The MP way to invest with 3a is not with a insurance since the returns are low, the fees high and the overall benefit of the life insurance is only usedby a small % of people. VIAC or Frankly offer better products.

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Welcome to the club of anonymous victims of 3a life insurance companies! I guess 95% of forum members had this experience. Swallow this bitter pill, cancel your 3a life insurance as soon as possible and move on.

Btw if you actually have got any profit from your 3a life insurance contract, consider yourself very lucky. Most people end up with few kCHF loss if they are lucky and with > 10k CHF loss if they aren’t.

If you actually need a life insurance, there are better options with pure risk insurances, such as SafeSide.

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Yes!

Yes!

Yes!

(More characters)

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off-topic:

Why not? Saving, investing and early retirement aren’t in any way gender-specific, are they?

Agree. I prefer the liberal range of investment strategies, the fund selection and the more no-nonsense approach. I don’t need insurance. Even if it’s touted to be free, it probably isn’t entirely. finpension seem more of a small upstart though, lack the direct backing of an established bank that VIAC enjoys, and the (albeit small) error in their T&C wasn’t confidence-inspiring.

In the end, I am keeping about half of my investments with VIAC, as I don’t believe in putting all my eggs in one basket. The couple of hundreds above 6000 I invested with frankly, just for fun (and curiosity that got the best of me).

Wouldn’t say 95% (without being boastful, I for one haven’t. Then again, I’m one of the low earning apes here, so can’t afford it), but it’s perplexing how many did. I mean, did or does anybody even understand these policies before signing up to them?

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Welcome to the club. I also didn’t sign any 3a insurance, so we are at least 2 people already :slightly_smiling_face:

I did a good amount of due diligence when I created my first company. My insurance broker also pushed me hard to sign a 3a insurance. Which lead to my natural stubbornness kicking in and really checking the contract thoroughly. It’s almost impossible to understand all the clauses and calculation models, unless you are a mathematician working for an insurance. Fortunately, they had a table with the buyback values after every year. The first 3 years, you wouldn’t get back a single Rappen (while having paid almost 20k). In the 4th year, buyback value was around 3k. Which meant that commission and fees were accounting for almost 24k! I confronted him with this, and his answers were just stupid.

The only advantage for the 3a insurance (from the perspective of a company owner) would have been the pre-tax money spent on the insurance from the company account. Not a great deal if you are loosing 24k in the first 4 years. Additionally, he couldn’t answer my question how this is working if I have other 3a accounts as a private person. Still interesting to see that the government is allowing 3a as an insurance to be paid by the company (they don’t allow it for finpension or VIAC).

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Was this just the word of the broker or did you have a source on that to confirm? I did some research on this a while back and, as far as I remember, life insurance is not allowed to be paid from pre-tax company money. There have been court rulings about this. KTG premiums can be paid in full by the company, though, as long as all employees (if any) get the same benefits.

I have a 3a life insurance myself as I don’t have a pillar 2 but it’s just an insurance, not combined with investment. The premium is just 4% or so of my total 3a. The rest goes to Viac. The broker tried to convince me of a combined life insurance, of course, but fortunately, I checked the numbers and rejected that offer.

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I didn’t do any further research on it, so it was just the word of the broker. Some brokers would sell their mother, so I’m not surprised.

Nevertheless, it was one of the big companies in Switzerland, and I’m sure they have offered the same contract to other companies before. Which doesn’t mean it’s legal, but they would try it anyway.

I think that’s a good approach. If it’s only 4% for the premium of the insurance, that’s a good deal.

I just double-checked the old contract (still have it), and it’s not as bad as original thought. Still, it’s far from good. First two years, you don’t get any buy-back. After year 3, you are guaranteed to get back CHF 6’731.- (from total amount of 20.5k = 3x 6’826.- back then)

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I am also surprised how many in this forum fell for it, but surely it’s not 95%, I am also a lucky one who understood to steer clear from insurances early on.

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Viac, Frankly, FinPension or whatever
 as long as you don’t chose an insurance everything will be better.

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I was one of them, but I’ve subscribed to a 3b in Geneva, which was tax deductible on the first CHF 2’200.-. Then, when I moved to Vaud, I ask to transfer it to a 3a (in march 2020). However, I’ve made some due diligence before paying the 3rd premium and I cancelled it once I discovered the “trickery”. If I subscribed to a 3b in 2018, it’s because of my lack of knowledge and because I just followed what my parents did when they were young.

I’ve learned my mistake and since then, I make all the due diligence I need before subscribing to anything, especially with insurance.

I totally agree with that.

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Thank you all for your genuine input on my post.
So after reading all your good feedback, this would be my path forward:

Ok first don’t kill me for saying this, I had this 3a with AXA through a guy who approached me in 2016 and I just went with it as I had 0 knowhow on how this investment etc etc works, so now I am going to change to AXA and then ask them what I pay and what I don’t pay and then weigh my benefits. After that I am either going to finpension or Viac.

I woke up recently :cry:. Had no idea where I am paying the money.
Anyways better late than never.

Thank you all so much.
May be you will hear from me again


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Yes you can see clearly that I am learning quite well since 2016 :wink:.

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