Viac is now offering Viac Invest, a fund-based savings plan solution. Up until now, Viac only provided retirement saving solutions for pillar 3a assets and vested benefits. Swiss financial service provider Viac first launched Switzerland's first pillar 3a robo advisor in 2017. Today, numerous pillar 3a robo advisors compete for customers.
15 Viac investment portfolios available
Initially, Viac is offering 15 investment portfolios for its new savings plans. Viac has three main groups of portfolios, each of which comes in five versions with different stock components.
These are the main portfolio groups:
- Switzerland: A minimum of 75 percent of the stock component is made up of Swiss stocks.
- Global: These funds are geographically diversified and include stocks from around the world, but Swiss stocks still make up a relatively large share.
- Global Sustainable: These funds are geographically diversified and include stocks from around the world, but Swiss stocks still make up a relatively large share. Viac excludes companies that are significantly engaged in controversial activities. Gold is also excluded.
The relatively high share of Swiss securities stands out across all of the funds offered. In the Global 100 and Global Sustainable 100 funds, both of which have stock components of nearly 100 percent, Swiss stocks make up 39 percent of the stock components. That share is a very large compared to the Swiss components of global stock ETFs, in which Swiss stocks typically make up just two or three percent.
Each portfolio group contains five different portfolios with stock components of 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent, and 100 percent.
The portfolios use based on passively managed Viac funds which, in turn, invest in index funds from UBS.
You also have the option of creating your own custom investment portfolio.
Savings plans without investing are also possible
You can also use a Viac savings plan without investing in funds. In this case, your savings are held in a savings account that yields interest at the rate of 0.6 percent per year, and there are no investment fees.
How much does investing with a Viac Invest fund savings plan cost?
The highest asset management fee charged by Viac is 0.25 percent of the portfolio value per year. You do not pay separate brokerage fees for buying and selling fund shares, or custody fees for holding your shares. However, the fees charged by the fund itself apply on top of Viac’s asset management fee. These add an additional cost of between 0.21 and 0.27 percent per year.
As an introductory offer for Viac Invest, the asset management fee will be waived until the end of 2025. Additionally, the part of your portfolio balance that falls below 2000 francs will continue to benefit from this waiver until the end of 2026.
How does Viac Invest compare to other fund savings plans?
The moneyland.ch Swiss Savings Plan Study 2024, published in November, compares 36 different savings plans based on mutual funds and ETFs. The study simulated the total investment costs over a 10-year term. Costs accounted for included asset management fees, custody fees, brokerage fees, and the fees charged by funds and certificate issuers. The simulation was based on the assumption that the saver would pay 200 francs per month into their savings plan.
Running the same simulation for Viac Invest reveals total investment costs of between 508 and 581 francs. That makes Viac Invest among the most favorable savings plans on the Swiss market at this time. But for savings plans that use broadly diversified global investment portfolios, there are solutions that are cheaper than Viac Invest, including those from Saxo Bank (261 francs with securities lending enabled), Neon (301 francs), and Yuh (386 francs). Note: The total costs of using Saxo Bank without enabling securities lending are similar to those of Viac Invest.
Conclusion by moneyland.ch expert Ralf Beyeler
With the Viac Invest solution, Viac has brought a comparatively low-cost fund savings plan to the market. But there are a few competing offers with lower costs.
Depending on the investment portfolio, the relatively high share of Swiss stocks (home bias) could discourage some savers from using the default investment portfolios for their fund savings plan. But Viac also lets you create a custom portfolio based on your investment preferences.
More on this topic:
Swiss mutual fund and ETF savings plans explained
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