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| Regarding the occupational plan, if this is a company plan, they should provide you details. But the plans are set up either on a final salary or on a defined contribution basis. The employer must contribute to the plan at least as much as the employee though often the company will contribute a higher percentage. Usually, the amount of contribution is pre-defined as per the plan rules and thus no matching, as both employee and employer contributions are fixed. Defined contribution plans here is slightly different than in other countries as the investment risk is still with the company not with the employee, no reduction of the capital value year on year (more or less).
The plans, as far as I am aware, usually pay out an annuity but there is an option to take part as a lump sum on retirement.
The assets are invested by a Pension Trust Board (if it is a large company plan) who subcontracts to an asset manager or if a smaller plan is managed by an insurance company.
The employee does not have a say in how the assets are invested, for a final salary plan, it doesn't matter and for a defined contribution plan, employee will receive a credit based on the actual investment performance but there is no choice of investments as one would have in the UK or US (see point on investment risk). | |
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I have tried to carefully read the information here on pensions and tax-optimisation; thanks a ton for all the useful posts. Being new to Suisse, I am trying to work out the contribution etc. Most of my questions have been answered already, but dare I ask for a clarification? Clearly, you can contribute to pillar 3a on a pre-tax basis. Is that true for pillar 2 (i.e. your company pension) as well? I presume it is, but no one has said so explicitly here...
The reason I ask this is that my company has now offered a choice to increase my (i.e. employee) contribution by a couple % pts or so, with their contribution remaining unchanged. If I am comfortably able to put some extra money aside this way, is this a no-brainer? obviously assuming that this will be pre-tax as above. Any reason why it may not be tax-efficient to do so?