It’s been a long time coming but great to see it’s finally here:
Anyone signed up, or considering to do so?
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There is a 80% stock limit when you do your own strategy. Just wrote them about that and waiting for a reply now.
ValuePension has a much better offer IMO.
Edit: So it’s max. 80% for the mandatory part and max. 97% for the rest.
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I find this (and other 2nd pillar VB offerings) absolutely amazing for people who would be leaving CH at some point. 
I hope they do leave you with same amount of “control” from abroad as well.
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Does ValuePension let you make individual choices in terms of index funds or ETFs?
Browsing through the investment options, it doesn’t look like it. And the partners’ options don’t look very appealing.
Of course they do. They are offering the same funds like Viac (and more), but almost everything in CHF. So no 0.75% FX fees like Viac. And you can go up to 99% without any limitations on fund or currency exposure.
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I can confirm that the offer of valuepension is better.
VIAC wins only on the following points:
-transfer to an other vested benefit is free. Valuepension: 400.- but only the first year
-with a high amount of bonds, VIAC is cheaper
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I’ve asked them for the detailed documentation of all the investment options.
If you have it and can share it, it would be of help.
You have the full detail on the simulator: https://www.valuepension.ch/index-solution
Quite detailed…
Thanks for the reply.
I’ve seen that part. I’ve seen that clicking the + one can see other options of funds.
From the comments of the forum, I was expecting to see more than the approx 25-30 choices available. Am I missing anything?
I went and looked up the ISINs and factsheets on Credit Suisse.
What I don’t see (or am not sure how to verify) is when a fund is in CHF or not (so as to avoid the exchange rate fees). If I click on the links of the VIAC funds - that they specify to be in USD - I still end up on a page which says currency of the fund CHF.
Also, on valuepension there is a summary at the end of the allocation stating foreign currency exposure x%.
So how do I know which fund is in CHF? (except for asking them, which I did already)
cheers
I’ve quit my job to focus on my studies. So I’ll be unemployed for ~half a year and need a Freizügigkeitskonto to move my 2nd pillar to. It’s quite the small amount.
I’ve two questions:
- Is VIAC the best options for a short term account? I see that valuepension might have better conditions but the transfer costs are high.
- If I choose VIAC does this distribution sound sensible? (It’s basically the highest risk in ETFs allocation I could find - max. 80% stocks and min. 20% swiss stocks.)
3% cash
17% CSIF CH Bonds AAA-AA
60% CSIF World ex CH - Pension Fund Plus
20% CSIF SMI
I wouldn’t recommend investing in a significant amount of stock for just half a year. While nobody can predict when the next downturn starts, a crash or serious downturn in the next 6 months is definitely a possibility. If you’re investing long term, the markets are expected to recover within a few years. However, if you sell the investment in half a year and transfer it back to a pension fund, you would not benefit from the recovery and thus, could lose a large percentage of the money.
You could choose a strategy with 20% or maybe 40% equity to at least limit the risk. However, for half a year I wouldn’t bother.
BTW: With CH Bonds AAA-AA you’d likely lose money as well due to negative yield (+fees), unless the (longer term) interest rate falls further.
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Generally makes sense, but I won’t be able to touch the money eitherway for the next 35 years or so. So the increased risk doesn’t really bother me, just interested in maximising the expected returns.
Or am I missing something?
Thanks for the advice on the CH Bonds, I’ll look into it. Seems it would be smarter then to just keep the bonds-requirement in cash?
If you don’t care about the risk, the strategy is probably ok. I would probably add small caps and maybe emerging markets. Maybe something like:
45% World ex CH
8% World ex CH Small Cap
7% Emerging Markets
10% SMI
10% SPI Extra
20% Cash or CH Real Estate
Yes, cash currently makes more sense than CHF bonds, in my opinion. As you want to maximize expected return, mostly ignoring volatility, CH Real Estate may be a better choice than bonds or cash.
Hi, I do not know if this is the right thread for my question, feel free to transfer it to the right thread if necessary.
I noticed that following the higher interest rates, Viac has decided to introduce again bond ETF’s.
It was the right choice to have cash instead of bonds as the rates were very low since bonds lost a lot (market value) during 2022. But is it now time to go back to bonds? For my 3a, it does not matter, since the stock part is 99%, but for my vested benefits account with only 40% stocks (shorter time horizon), it makes a huge difference.
There are three scenarios for bonds:
- interest rates remain constant.
in that case it is better to switch to bonds for the non stock part of our allocation (bond returns are in the range 1%-3% compared to 0.45% for cash at viac - interest rates continue to increase
in that case it is better to stay in cash, since market value of bonds will continue to decrease - intrest rates will decrease
in that case it is better to invest in bonds since their market value will increase and the overall performance (marekt value + coupon) will probably be >3%
In the end, I have the impression that investing in bonds is kind of a bet about the future change of interest rate. Do you share this opinion or have other views?
Depends on the duration, if your horizon is beyond the bond duration, and they’re held roughly to maturity it’s less of an interest rate bet and closer to a bond ladder.
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Viac offers for example this ETF:
Most of the bonds have maturity between 1 to 7 years. My horizon is 2-4 years. So there is a risk.
But isn’t a bond funds always a bond ladder where bonds going to maturity are reinvested? So the maturity of a bond ETF ramains roughly the same, never going to maturity like a single bond?
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Depends, I think many funds don’t hold to maturity.
That is correct. I did not think about that. Thank you for this answer.
Since keeping it in cash is only profitable when interst rates are raising, I like the odds of investing the non-stock part of my portfolio in diversified ETH bond funds (bonds is more profitable than cash in 2 out of three scenarios from my previous post)
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