Stéphane Rossini, the director of the Swiss Federal Social Insurance Office (FSIO), responsible for overseeing the first and second pillar pension systems, will step down at the end of June 2025.
Rossini has decided to leave FSIO to find a new job on a part-time basis, according to FSIO’s official announcement. The Swiss government (Federal Council) was informed of his resignation at a meeting on 23 October.
Rossini served as a member of parliament (MP) for the Swiss social democratic party (SP) in the National Council, the lower house of Parliament, from 1999 to 2015, and was president of the National Council in 2015, before being appointed by the Federal Council as director of the FSIO in 2019.
He went through a storm of criticism earlier this year, and was nudged to resign, following a mistake made in calculating the financial outlook of the first pillar AHV in the period through 2033.
AHV’s expenses appeared “implausibly high in the long term”, according to FSIO.
The office quickly reacted to the mistake, using two alternate calculation models that gave as a result 3.6%, or CHF2.5bn, lower expenses for the AHV in 2033, compared with the results recorded with the calculation models used previously.
The FSIO learned the lesson, saying that it will rely on several models in the future to be able to check the plausibility of the financial perspective in the first pillar, and develop models to provide a reliable basis for policy decision-making.
Nonetheless, the minister of the interior, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, ordered an administrative investigation to clarify what caused the error. The results of the investigation are expected for the end of this year, according to the interior ministry Eidgenössische Departement des Innern (EDI).
At the time, Baume-Schneider did not rule out personal consequences for the mistake, but it is not yet clear if the investigation has ended, and resulted in Rossini’s resignation.
EDI promised to take the necessary measures together with the Federal Social Insurance Office (BSV) to ensure the reliability of financial prospects. Fears have emerged that the mistake could damage the public’s trust in the first pillar system, and political parties reacted with consternation when the error became public.
The organisation representing women within the social democratic party went so far as to demand a repeat of the referendum vote on the first pillar reform AHV 21 that increased the retirement age for women because the first pillar’s outlook had improved.
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