VIAC Invest uses wrapper funds (by VIAC) that contain UBS institutional index funds.
Because they use investment funds and not ETFs, there is no stamp tax to be paid, which differentiates them from finpension and others.
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In my view, the USP of VIAC Invest was:
- Reduced Tax Complexity; WHT was always aplied; meaning no “surprise Tax bill” for uniformed investors.
- No IE ETF exposure, assets are held by Swiss Index Funds
- Reduced Brokerage Risk, there is no Bank As such that sits in between the Offer (VIAC / FP) and the Funds
- No Stamp Tax
If you ask me, in the continuum from wealth management down to individual investing in ETF, they are in a more attractive niche than Finpension or Findependent or the likes. Clearly, we are probably all not their target customers, and we all would lean towards Finpension if we chose a robo. But when we leave us aside, I think that they can address a signifficantly bigger market than Finpension’s Robo Solution.
Gating is not applied at the individual Real Estate Funds. They are fairly illiquid anyways and issuance/redemption is a long process there anyways. Gating is applied at an Index Fund Level only. When we have a look at the 15M threshold of the UBS SXI RE Index Fund. If said Index fund was idk. 1.2B, that essentially means that if shit hits the fan, you worst case wait for 80 days until you get your money back. Quite drastic. But it makes sense, as the Fund (who was forced to sell shares of the RE Funds) probably just wouldn’t find any buyer for these shares, so they need Gating to ensure that deparing Index Fund Investors don’t cause harm to surviving Index Fund Investors.
ETF don’t have that problem because there, if we face a major disruption in the Real Estate Market, the trading price of the ETF will just heavily fluctuate from the NAV of the underlying, illiquid real estate funds. Meaning: An ETF will even in worst market turmoil be able to allow people to leave the ETF, without causing any harm to the remaining investors.
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Swiss funds should be less withholding tax efficient though?
Especially on US side you have double the wht, than IE.
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I still don’t understand what you mean by this.
Yes, that may be the biggest downside.
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Thank you everyone for your replies. I do not think a Roboadvisor is really adapted for my use case (at least my intended use case). To elaborate, I think I am not willing to take the “risk” to go with IBKR with the tax optimization process. But looking a bit more into the Forum, I think Saxobank offer may be more adapted: it is a broker that is located in Switzerland (easier to do the tax declaration, etc.) but at the same time gives me access to a lot of ETFs. If I understood correctly, this is not what VIAC Invest is good at?
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Correct. Viac lets you choose a strategy. Then Viac chooses the fund that matches this strategy. Saxo offers a huge choice of instruments (bonds, stocks, ETFs, funds, index funds, options, …), it does not choose anything for you.
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What exactly keeps you from going with IBKR? The lack of eTax documents? There are open source projects to create one yourself for free, or there are services available where you pay Fr. 50 or so.