If UBS Passive US fund can recover the tax withheld for their investors , then it’s a completely different situation versus what I always assumed . Because this would make these funds superior to IE ETFs for Swiss residents
I think this is only possible if tax credit documentation is made available for their investors to somehow get refund from tax office. However as per ICTAX since they are CH domiciled fund, they are not showing any foreign tax situation.
In actual performance it’s not actually visible looking at their factsheets. Since these funds are accumulating , any recovered WHT should ideally be part of fund and hence NAV. But performance is not able to show this
With 0.15% TER & ability to get tax back, no stamp duties, this UBS fund would be a great fund
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The response from UBS was following when I enquired about this last year
Quote
The information I can share is that the IE-domicile fonds is better because it can reclaim a bigger part of the tax at source in USA compared to the CH-domicile. Unquote
I asked them directly in their support chat regarding US WHT.
tl;dr
Bad news, you lose full US WHT on their funds.
Full answer:
wir haben lange über dieses Thema diskutiert.
schlussendlich haben wir uns für den Indexfonds entschieden, wo halt die QST verloren sind, infolge tieferer Produktkosten als zB über eine IE Struktur.
das aber nach wie vor bei uns pendent das Thema. Es gäbe intererssante Alternativen wie zB einer swap based Struktur.
worin kein QST Verlust anfallen würde (also gross Return ausgeschüttet würde).
aber da hätten wir halt einfach einen viel höheren Aufklärungsbedarf bei den Kunden was das Thema betrifft.
The dividend yield of MSCI USA is 1.23%
30% of WHT
MSCI USA is 67% of the MSCI ACWI
So it would add 0.25% of fees compares to funds which have no WHT like synthetic or US fund with DA-1
What I dislike about the custom strategy is the fact that one needs to have 5 funds in order to replicate a All-World portfolio.
So one needs to do the rebalancing manually.
…or pick one of their strategies with at least 40% swiss equity
Agreed, I don’t like this either. Same issue as TrueWealth.
As they anyway now have their own funds of funds, I would imagine it to be relatively straight forward to also open a market cap-weighted World fund that holds other funds (or a wrapper for a UBS World index fund).
While I’m anyway not in the target segment as I’m ok with investing with regular brokers, it could be a reasonable recommendation for people who need a hands-off solution. However, with ‘global’ strategies with an excessive home bias and no world fund for a custom strategy, that’s not going to happen.
While finpension Invest also doesn’t seem to offer a regular world index fund, at least they offer global strategies without home bias, although they might be missing a few countries.
Personally , I think a new product launch should have an added innovation or lower cost
VIAC invest is neither low in cost versus existing solutions (I.e Finpension), nor it’s more tax efficient & it even have reduced functionality to customise portfolios
One time cost (stamp duties) is reduced at expense of higher TERs and tax loss.
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Having said that I understand that even 1 billion of assets would result in only 2.5 million in „management fees“. It’s tough business.
Robo advisors have a challenge that for institutions they are not big enough (and not competitive vs UBS/ Swisscanto), and for retail , they are not cheap enough (versus broker solutions) to move big portfolios towards them.
The thing is that in their 3a-solution they do have World exCH funds (Swisscanto and UBS).
So why make it more complicated with Viac Invest, especially now that they seem to have their own funds.
Another swiss competitor is the game never a bad thing.
I have my hypothek by WIR Bank with Viac. They are not supposed to increase the debt but I’ll try to negotiate with the director of the local succursal “what if I put 150k by VIAC Invest as a garantie?”
For what it wants to be I think the VIAC offering is interesting, another cheapish option for those who want to have it easy and in Switzerland. It’s not meant as competition for IB+VT.
I actually found the dis-investing side more interesting than the investing one. They offer a regular payment plan for those who want to get regular capital income payments from their portfolio. It’s basically automating payouts. You wouldn’t have to check dividends payments or decide how much to sell when at what price, you’d simply get a regular payment, so you could decide to receive a monthly pension on your 3a-savings after retirement, same as with your second pillar, for example.
I also found their calculator motivating. It’s too optimistic, I’m sure, but it is suggesting that you might be able to receive a 60k yearly payout on a about 1m portfolio for basically forever. Based on past returns, which are rather high and not guaranteed, so you could never rely on that, but still, if you ignore that I like the sound of it.
Do you see any real arguments toward VIAC Invest (except a lack of fee in 2025) in comparison to finpension? I already have a 3a account at VIAC and I’m pretty satisfied, and if they use the same funds in VIAC Invest I would most likely go straight there, but these custom “proxy funds” make me confused… Also the US tax optimisation in finpension seems to be a significant benefit, so I have a feeling finpension is still a winner.
I don’t know what Finpension offers in the way of mortgages but my guess is that’s one of the advantages of going with VIAC.
Pledged 3a, indirect amortization and potentially/probably pledged taxable portfolio should allow for high borrowing and high allocation to stocks. A margin loan at IBKR would be better but it’s a all in one solution that could find its niche (also a recipe for disaster if one maxes their borrowing potential and invests it all in a 100% stocks solution).
I have reviewed all 15 of their fund factsheets. With the exception of one fund (VIAC Real Estate World, CH1336969154), all are based on UBS products—primarily UBS funds, with some CSIF funds included. This raises concerns, as it suggests they may have a special arrangement with UBS, possibly including volume-based discounts. This could create a situation where they prioritize UBS funds, rather than selecting the best options available in the market, in order to boost their volumes and secure better commercial terms.
In contrast, other digital solutions like Finpension and True Wealth construct their portfolios using ETFs and index funds from various providers, likely choosing the best-in-class options for each investment type.
Yes VIAC has decided to use UBS funds and maybe they have some commercial discounts. But we should always look at total cost rather than breakdown (TER, Management fee)
I think since they want to use funds, they went with UBS. UBS & Swisscanto are only big providers
Depends how much safety margin you have. Taking out 1M on a 4M portfolio would be too heavy for me. Taking out 1M on a 10M portfolio would be fine for me but keep in mind that you propably get better rates for real estate at a swiss bank than through IBKR as you need to have a really really high volume loan to benefit from lower interest rates:
Benchmark is similar to SARON and the fixed rate is their margin. 0.75% margin is standard with a normal mortgage so to really benefit the mortgage(s) would have to sum at least 46M.
Also IBKR has very strict margin requirements where they could in theory request you to pay back the loan without any reason. In market stress scenarios they also state that they will auto liquidate in their terms & condition.
Summary: I would only take out a margin loan at IBKR for real estate in Switzerland because:
My portfolio is big enough to not have to worry about any margin calls
I somehow don’t qualify for a normal mortgage
I willingly want to pay higher interest than a normal mortgage (as long as the loan value is < 46M)
I want speed since paying out a margin loan and paying the seller of real estate can theoretically be done in one day whereas getting a normal mortgage takes some time (not a problem if you plan in advance)
One differentiation for Viac Invest is that its structure seems to comport less risks than other reasonably cheap alternatives.
Finpension is its own bank. IBKR holds all asset in omnibus accounts. In contrast, Viac Invest holds assets in client denominated accounts at an established bank (Regiobank Solothurn). Furthermore, the WIR Bank covers loss up to 100.000.000 if Viac were to be bankrupt.
For people (such as myself) who consider counterparty risks, Viac seems worth considering.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am about Viac‘s solution. Its actually quite a smart move.
They consciously decided for CH based Index Fonds instead of ETF. That decision is not straight forward but I see the logic. Foreign ETF are a tough Sale for people that don‘t want to deal with Investments. They removed this complexity and this way win over all the huge hordes of people that get lost with the complexity of IE ETF, Taxes and the like. Its a mass product with massive potential for scale.
When and as you decide for CH Index Funds / ETF, their choice for their own „feeder funds“ is also quite smart. This way, they retain their ability to let the market play among Index Fund Providers. Meaning that they can squeeze down the price they pay to UBS.
Example: at the Moment, there is only two credible Index Fund Providers - ZKB/Swisscanto and UBS. ZKB probably didn’t want to be part of it. This as they work on their Frankly for Non-3a and don‘t want to support their competition. So for now, UBS is the only one that offers such Products (at good quality & cost).
Once (and if) VIAC Invest kicked off and they hit their first 500M+ of investments, they will probably reach out to Swisscanto and slowly (with investtments and redemptions) turn their funds into dual feeders. Swisscanto will want to join the party as the volumes have increased. And from there - Viac can let the market play and simply every X months see who was cheaper and re-direct future investments there / redemptions the other place. Long story short, VIAC can (if they get sufficient volume) constantly challenge and improve its cost and as well hopefully its pricing. That was not possible if your Portfolio directly held either ETF or UBS/Swisscanto Index Funds.
Its probably a long shot with 50% fail ratio. But if theey manage to build up volumes, they will be in a much better place than any of their competitors that have given up any negotiation power towards Investment product providers. I am not Viacs customer, that is a clear case (as I self invest) but unlike other Robo Advisors, they at least have a customer that exists and they can benefit from scale.
Now, lets wait what Frankly was up to. That may be an interesting one too… my fear is that Frankly will simply have 4-5 CHF Portfolio Funds, that would make taxes even more simple; but Viac couldd always address this if it later on became a Problem, their existing feeder funds setup would allow for easy conversion and setup of additional, Portfolio funds of they were at scale (and they realized that they lost on this against Frankly)
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