Swiss Fintech Innovations (SFTI), an independent association of Swiss financial institutes, is calling on federal authorities to force the set up of a dashboard for second pillar pensions by means of regulatory intervention.
In its recently published position paper Open Pension, which assessed the transparency and efficiency in Switzerland’s pension system, the organisation concluded that “an opening mandate by a federal authority is indispensable” to quickly implement a platform for digital access to data on second pillar pensions.
This approach would also follow EIOPA’s recommendations to introduce national measures to set up pension tracking systems, it added.
The SFTI believes it is hard to align the interests of the approximately 1,400 pension funds in Switzerland, differing in terms of their level of digital maturity and structure, and that could decide to block access to pension data. In light of such a complex challenge, the association is therefore supporting a binding legal framework against a voluntary approach and self-regulations.
Switzerland could follow the same approach adopted in Germany, where pension schemes are required to connect to the pension dashboard Digitale Rentenübersicht by the end of this year.
The country currently lacks the necessary infrastructure that would make people share personal pension data securely with third-party providers, SFTI said in the paper.
The association has outlined five strategic options to implement a second pillar pension dashboard, split into two clusters: central platform and self-sovereign data sharing.
The first cluster includes central platforms, provided by federal authorities or third-party providers, serving as the primary access point for all pension-related data, or to exchange data, with individuals giving their consent to make data available to third-party providers, or to pension funds, according to the paper.
In a second cluster, individuals proactively manage and share their pension data using a personal E-ID wallet application, or using a personal data media, for example a QR code, it added.
The SFTI has published its position paper on the pension tracking system after the Federal Council has instructed the Federal Department of Home Affairs to examine how digital access to retirement provision data can be promoted.
It has focused on the second pillar pension system given the crucial role of occupational pension provisions, and “the complex situation with many interest groups involved”, it said.
In the first pillar, the MOSAR project, started in 2023, already aims to digitise services, introducing a Digital Individual Benefit Statement (DIBS), it added.
Innosuisse, the Swiss Innovation Agency, has funded the DIBS project to develop a prototype for a pension tracking system, including a pension dashboard called e-rentes, also connecting second pillar pensions via the OpenPK API. The project ended in March this year.
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