At Zwitserleven you accrue pension by means of investing. Your pension payment is therefore dependent on the return on your pension capital. Via this message we inform you on what the return has been on the funds over the year 2019.
Smart Investing
We make sure that your pension investments match your age and income. Are you relatively young, then you are automatically investing more in the Return fund which is targeted at reaching a high return. The returns are needed in order to accrue a sufficient pension. The closer you get to your retirement date, the more you invest in the Matching funds which have a defensive nature. You use the money you have saved with us to buy a pension with an insurer of your choice when you retire. You hand over the saved capital to an insurance company and will receive a lifelong monthly pension for that.
Below you can find an overview of the achieved returns on our investment funds, both on the year 2019 as since the start of the investment fund (4 November 2014). The achieved fund returns will be compared to the returns of the fund benchmark, a measure of performance to compare and assess the returns of the our funds.
All shown investment returns of the funds are before deducting the yearly fund costs (OCF) and after deducting all transaction costs.
| 2019 fund return | 2019 benchmark |
Since start fund return (average per year) | Since start benchmark (average per year) | |
| Matching Kort fund | 6.48% | 7.48% | 3.14% | 2.51% |
| Matching Lang fund | 12.07% | 16.99% | 6.60% | 5.49% |
| Rendement fund | 23.71% | 23.37% | 8.83% | 8.49% |
Matching funds
You invest more and more in Matching funds the closer you get to your retirement age. This investment fund mainly contains French and German government bonds.
The goal of these funds is to keep the risk of a setback as low as possible such that your expected pension will probably closely match the pension you can buy at an insurer. Setbacks may occur when interest rates decrease or prices increase (inflation) in the period before retirement. With lower interest rates the insurers demand more capital for the same pension payment. With increasing inflation you can buy less pension as all becomes more expensive. Therefore, the benchmark of your Matching funds is linked to the tariffs of the insurers for converting your capital to a monthly payment with indexation based on inflation.
Interest rates have fallen sharply during 2019. A decrease in interest rates has a positive impact on the value of the underlying government bonds in the Matching funds. This effect is larger for bonds with a longer duration. As such, the return on the Matching Long fund in 2019 was higher than for the Matching Short fund. Because of the decrease in interest rates, the Matching Long fund achieved a positive return of +12.1%. The Matching Short fund achieved a lower return, although still quite prosperous investment return of 6.5%.
In comparison to the benchmark funds, the Matching Long fund lags behind. This is mainly because inflation-linked government bonds experienced less decrease compared to the interest rate used for the annuity purchase rates of insurers (the benchmark). However, the results since the start of the Matching funds are better than the benchmarks.
Rendement fund
This fund invests in a group of different investment funds with a goal to reach a good return at reasonable risk. We do not invest itself but choose the best asset managers to invest your money in the Return fund.
The financial markets regained during 2019, after a disappointing fourth quarter in 2018. Investors across the globe moved to investment product with a higher expected return, following the further decrease of the interest rate in 2019. There was also less uncertainty in the market as a result of clarity in relation to the trade war between China and America, as well as the “Brexit” (the United Kingdom leaving the EU). As a result of this, the stock prices of riskier investments, such as shares, rose sharply in 2019.
These market developments also had an impact on the performance of the Return Fund, which has the best year ever in 2019. All investment categories within the Return Fund achieved a clear positive investment return last year. However, just like in 2018, the differences were large. US equities achieved the highest return with +33.9%, while European corporate bonds achieved a return of +5.1%. By broadly spreading the investments across multiple global investment categories the fund return achieved in 2019 amounted to a whopping +23.7%.
Since its inception, the Return Fund has achieved a higher return than its benchmark year on year. Also this year, the performance of the Return Fund is better than that of the benchmark (+23.4%). On average, an additional return of 0.34% per year has now been achieved since the start.
Return on your pension capital
You can find your personal current annual return in 2020 and your personal investment mix under My Investments on your participant portal. You can see a forecast of your expected pension benefit in your Dasboard.
More information and Self Investing
For more information on the investment funds and the returns of the Self Investing funds, visit the factsheets.