My two cents regarding the pension fund contribution of an employer as I have just changed job.
My new job contributes slightly less to my fund versus my old job, which is about 100.- difference per month. “Not too bad” I originally thought… But it is actually a 300k CHF difference at 65 yo when I will retire.
As far as I know it is not something that you can negotiate, but it is worth asking when you are discussing your package.
How do you come up with 300k?
Same question.
Just checked, 40y of yearly contribution of 1200 CHF at 1.5% return makes about 65k.
Hard to negociate upon hiring since specific plans can’t include only one employee of the company (so your plan would have to cover a class of employees).
The employees should have a delegate involved in the discussions involving the pension fund, though. This should make negociating pension aspects possible on a company level. I wouldn’t know since I’ve only ever worked for terrible companies who didn’t implement this representation properly and never took it upon me to fight it.
Simply compared my new and old pension certificates that you receive from the insurance. They give you how much you get depending on when you retire.
The difference is not only the 100 CHF less contribution then, but also other aspects…
Exactly, there is a kind of board for that, I have the names of everyone directly in the certificate, which is think is very nice as it means it is taken seriously.
Could be! I am not an expert, that’s the difference I immediately spotted. For reference, I am 37 yo, compensation packages are also slightly different.
that is actually mandatory, also part of the work contract should be the Pensionplan contract. Tried to read it once, beeeh impossible to understand.
I think the problem with the 2nd pillar is :
Mostly you see that the delegate for the pension plan is someone from HR, who is not expert in these kind of questions, getting screwed by Swiss Life etc. (Swiss Life btw did a record profit in 2019, if you are wondering where your contributions are going…)
@Oliv : I would suggest to go with your old certificate to the HR or your delegate, tell them that “Hey! 100 CHF at 1.5% should mean a difference of Xk, not 300k. What is going on in your 2nd pillar”
Maybe they find it is time to shop around again 
(I mean the HR has also an interest, since he will get personnaly more money out of his contributions)
Since you consider pension matters important (most of us here probably do, most people I’ve met IRL don’t), it may be worth it to get in touch with the delegate named in your certificate. Knowing that you care can give them leverage if they’re interested in representing the employees interests in the best possible way. If they’re not, it may help you identify if the whole thing is not taken that seriously outside of legal necessities, after all.
The companies I’ve worked for took care to put someone who was favorable to the direction/didn’t really care about their duties/power at all, which made it difficult to discuss the topic without ruining the work environment. Leaving the company was easier.
ETA:
Which always made me wonder: wouldn’t good practice want that it was someone with less direct ties to management, i.e. ideally an operative/lower ranked employee who has an interest in pension plans? I’d think that would be part of HR studies (past the basic certificates aimed at satisfying the complex legal obligations of companies in that regard) but maybe I’m mistaken.
I have swiss life as 2nd pillar … so they are not good?
From what I saw, I recognized the names of one hr, one legal, one person from the insurance, and one very senior employee.
But that’s always the same issue, as a new employee it’s rather difficult to go and ask these questions, especially once the package has already been negotiated (and I negotiated a lot 
). So it’s very easy to give up and not question what you get.
I don’t care about my pension fund. The only thing I care about is the possibility to reduce my contribution to a minimum (2.5% where I am right now). In 2020 I switched employers twice and invested my 2nd pillar (17.9k) with ValuePension. Right now it’s at 22.1k (+4.2k / +23%), in 9 months. My pension fund would take 10+ years to get me this yield. So I’m better of investing as much as possible in the stock market.
All depends what your company negiotated with Swiss Life…
especially larger companies have a higher leverage and might have some better personnel negotiating than a small one.
It’s not a family if they’re screwing you on your comp… a healthy and respectful family doesnt do that to its members.
I think you have to check the policy thoroughly. There are many variables which can lead to big differences in the end amount.
I’m talking from the employer perspective here, and I compared several BVG providers in the past. The differences can be quite substantial. Things you need to check for is the projected annual interest. If one provider is calculating with 1% per year, while another one uses 2.5%, of course the end amount is hugely different.
From what I can say: SwissLife is offering the worst package in terms of the final amount.
Still, I’m puzzled about a 300k difference. I can only imagine huge differences in projected interest rates between the providers and maybe your employer also contributing far less than your old employer.
You can PN me if you want, and we can check together.
It it good to verify the certificates, but then you only compare your current situation. The difference might be that the increase of contributions (normally at 35/45/55 y.o.) will be much lower for you with your new job. In order to know that you would have to compare the pension fund regulations.
Similar to the post I published about the NW progession, I put all your numbers in a chart 
Here you go:
Unfortunately, it’s a bit messy and unreadable. But hopefully you can extract value out of it.
I think there’s a decent number of people in here who would beat me if they published their numbers.
