I jumped on VIAC when they first introduced their leading 3a offering. Since then other competitors have joined in.
Is it worth switching to another? Has anyone done this already?
I switched from VIAC to finpension around 1.5 years ago mainly becquse finpension offers the CSIF World Quality fund. More than happy so far with the performance xD
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What is your reason?
Is the difference significant or not.
I know of finpension and Viac, but are there others worth considering too?
Truewealth is on my radar: no flat fee and pretty cheap funds, resulting in overall cheaper fees than Viac & Finpension. However, being a robo-advisor primarily, they somewhat restrict your choices, making it more difficult to recreate a global market cap weighted portfolio.
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I use Viac and True Wealth.
Viac previously had an advantage of using tax-optimized institutional funds, whereas True Wealth used funds for private investors. But True Wealth recently moved to institutional funds as well, at least for its predefined global portfolio.
Viac lets you select the exact funds you want to use (from a limited selection), with some interesting options like gold, private equity, etc. in addition to funds that track stock indexes. In some cases you can choose between different funds that track the same index. True Wealth lets you choose the makeup of your portfolio, but you can’t choose the specific funds. That isn’t necessarily so relevant in the big picture though.
For cases in which Swiss withholding tax is a concern (e.g. you will move to a non-EFTA/EU country), Finpension has the advantage of being in Schwyz (lowest withholding tax rates). Basel-Landschaft where True Wealth’s foundation (the BLKB) is located has reasonable withholding tax rates. Basel-Stadt where Viac’s foundation (Terzo from Wir Bank) is located has notoriously high withholding tax rates.
Fees for early withdrawals are similar across all three.
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I guess if I held VIAC and planned to move overseas, I’d probably transfer first to Finpension.
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Would be sensible, unless you find another Schwyz foundation with lower fees for emmigration-based withdrawals.
I was looking at the article (see below link) where MP uses the Handelszeitung’s Comparison of the best 3a.
“Best 3rd pillar in Switzerland (2024 comparison)”
Taking Handelszeitung’s Comparison from june 2024 (see below link) I see no mention of BLKB which has by far the best 3yr and 5yr return (for passive) and the highest score.
blkb iq responsible equity world ex switzerland b (usd), passive, TER 0.53%, 3 year performance 19.10%, 5 year performance 51.8 %.
Why does MP not include BLKB in his top 5?
Try tagging @_MP and see if he answers 
Update of my article to be published this Thursday (including my opinion of BLKB offering).
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Great thanks MP, love the blog, its a great resource.
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Thanks Kawansky, you may have guessed I’m a newbie at this.
Yup, I gave it some thought, which is why I came up with a solution for you .
Welcome on board !
Check the PDFs at the foot of this article for recent retirement fund comparisons and pillar 3a robo advisor comparisons:
Thank you for this! I stumbled upon an article in Tages Anzeiger where this was listed, too. The difference between TrueWealth in terms of total cost (which is not TER) is huge. So for a person that is happy with a generic Global 100-ish portfolio (I am currently with VIAC), shouldn’t it be advisable to switch to TW? I mean CHF 1400 vs. CHF 4k+ total cost over 10 years for CHF 100k is quite something. Interestingly, TW’s Global 90 portfolio had the best 1y return of them all…
While the current fee structure of TrueWealth is obviously excellent, we don’t know whether it remains like that for the next 10+ years. This is generally the case for all services, however, TrueWealth’s 3a offering is not sustainable on its own as they don’t charge any fees of their own at all, so I think there is a real risk that they will stop cross-subsidizing 3a at some point.
I also prefer the custom strategy options of VIAC and finpension over TrueWealth (mainly missing MSCI World but also some others). And moving has a cost (spreads and potentially missed gains while not being invested during the transfer), so I don’t want to move my investments around frequently. And I want to keep my current strategy, which TrueWealth doesn’t offer.
That said, TrueWealth may well remain the option with the lowest total fees over the next decade, so if you’re happy with TrueWealth’s strategy options, it could be a great choice for you.
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I would also recommend to check out some other threads on this post to estimate the actual cost of Truewealth which should include the following
- tax loss for dividends WHT (in foreign jurisdictions) that are being lost because of use of standard ETFs instead of Pension funds.
- Then there is also a currency conversion cost based on your selection.
- stamp duties will incur for ETFs which don’t incur for CH domiciled pension funds
- And of course as @jay pointed, how long a zero management fee offering could last ? Maybe it can forever. Who knows
For example -: Japan fund is not pension fund. US hedged ETF is not pension fund. Unhedged US fund used by TW is pension fund so that’s okay.
I think the actual cost might be higher than what it says on the headline. I don’t think it would be as high as Finpension (0.39%) but I think it wouldn’t be 0.15% either
Personally I looked into it and decided to use simplicity over cost for now. I might use 2025 to really understand the total cost to serve.
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Happy New Year and many thanks for the differentiated inputs. May I ask what your VIAC strategy looks like?
Thank you, too - great points. I cannot find any info on the possible 3a strategies and neither on the actual ETFs and pension funds offered. I’ve written them.