I came across a CH website / free service that searches across the 1’500 plus second pillar pension funds in CH to see if you have unclaimed/non-transferred funds in one or more of the pension funds.
As you know, the first pillar is AHV / AVS.
This service was developed by a start-up in the Swiss French area.
The website explains more of its “raison d’être” but in a few words, if you work in CH you will be/have been connected to one or more of these funds over your working life. There is a certain potential of funds not following you from job to job, and especially if you have left CH at some point in time.
Of the CHF 55B in second pillar funds, CHF 13B is unassigned because they were not transferred !
As it is a free service, you might want to do a check of your personal situation.
The LOB Guarantee Fund acts as the designated 2nd Pillar Central Office which collects the information of all 2nd pillar accounts (not just dormant and forgotten ones, but also active ones). This by law and by order of the Swiss Government . ( Art. 56 BVG and Art. 24a - 24f FZG )
Information available in Englisch, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
When I left my employer I was nagged by their pension fund to put the money in a vested benefit account. I'd have had to ignore a lot of correspondence for it not to shift.
When you leave employment you are given two options: transfer the funds to your new employer or transfer the funds to a temporary account with one of the pension institutions until you take up new employment or reach retirement age when you can access it. If you fail to do this the funds are transfer a state version of the savings account, depending on the industry, if I remember correctly, they are not left with the pension fund.
A while back I was involved in the reporting and auditing of Swiss pension funds and I can’t recall there being any large amounts of unallocated funds being reported... I think we were reporting on 97 or possibly 98 pension funds at the time.
And then there is the data protection aspect of it. How exactly does a private company get access to the pension records of the general public?
And then there is the ‘what’s in it for them’ aspect. It certainly would be a good way to built a database of potential candidates to sell pension products to, with the added advantage that most of the leads are going to be clueless about the pension process.
It would be very interesting to hear from someone who actually used the service.