Vita - Occupational retirement provision for companies

The Vita Collective Foundations work closely with Zurich to provide you with the best possible occupational retirement provision. While the collective foundations are responsible for investing the pension savings in the best interests of the insured, Zurich is responsible for risk insurance, customer and benefit services and servicing.

Fair play is the top priority: we pursue a sustainable and transparent investment strategy in order to accumulate the highest possible retirement savings capital for our insured persons. At the same time, we strive to minimize unintentional redistribution from active insured persons to beneficiaries.

Since companies’ needs differ greatly regarding their occupational retirement provision, Vita offers four different retirement provision solutions. During the needs assessment, we determine together which solution best suits your company in terms of employee structure, risk benefits, investment strategy and degree of self-determination.

You can find out more about our retirement provision solutions by phone (0800 80 80 80), email (bvg@vita.ch) or in a personal meeting.

Links

www.vita.ch – Find an advisor

The fact that we offer four different retirement provision solutions is due to the different needs of our customers. Which of the four products best suits your company depends, among other things, on the structure of your employees, their risk tolerance and the desired degree of self-determination.

Vita Classic, our most widely used offering and one of the largest semi-autonomous collective foundations in Switzerland, offers companies of all sizes and structures a flexible, needs-based and comprehensive retirement provision solution. The investments are diversified, sustainable and efficient. Investment income, including any additional income, is distributed automatically and fairly to the insured. The level of risk benefits and savings credits can be adjusted to your company's current situation at any time.

With Vita Invest, the retirement provision assets of the affiliated company are invested at all times to match its structure and strength. In addition, each company receives its own balance sheet and income statement, as with a proprietary pension fund. This prevents redistribution from the active insured to pensioners as well as to other companies, and the capital generated benefits your employees in full. During retirement, the capital is invested in a balanced manner, and the earnings are paid out as an annuity bonus in addition to the fixed pension. Vita Invest is suitable both for basic provision and as a supplement as part of a purely supplementary retirement provision.

Vita Relax pares occupational retirement provision down to the essentials. This offer is primarily intended for start-ups and SMEs with a great need for security. The investments are 100% reinsured by Zurich and there is a fixed guaranteed interest rate and profit sharing.

Vita Plus is a supplement to the mandatory retirement provision that allows you to insure death and disability benefits as well as retirement savings capital with a full capital guarantee. Vita Plus is ideal if you want to offer your management employees an additional incentive.

With Vita Select, the insured persons determine the investment strategy and the amount of the individual savings contributions themselves, both of which they can adapt to their life situations. Vita Select is the right choice if you want to offer your management employees more attractive conditions and greater self-determination in their retirement provision.

Downloads

• Vita Classic factsheet
• Vita Invest factsheet
• Vita Relax factsheets
• Vita Plus factsheet
• Vita Select factsheet

For newly established companies, we recommend Vita Relax or Vita Classic, depending on your needs.

Vita Relax allows you to adopt a cautious approach and pares occupational retirement provision down to the essentials. This retirement provision solution is intended for companies with a great need for security. The investments are 100% reinsured by Zurich and there is a fixed guaranteed interest rate as well as profit sharing.

With our most popular retirement provision solution, Vita Classic, you can flexibly structure risk benefits and savings credits and adapt them to your company's situation at any time. The retirement provision assets are broadly diversified and sustainably and efficiently invested, which is reflected in a higher than expected interest rate.

Thanks to the Vita Company Portal, you can handle most of the administration for both products digitally. You have access to all data via the online tool and can make all kinds of changes yourself.

If you have any questions, our experts are also available by phone (0800 80 80 80) or email. 

Links

• Mail: bvg@zurich.ch
• www.zurichbusinessinsurance.ch - Offers

Achieving good returns and distributing sustainable interest for the insured is a fundamental goal of Vita Collective Foundations. At the same time, it is particularly important in the case of retirement provision that assets are invested safely. How high the return potential of an investment is depends primarily on the equity ratio.

With our standard Vita Classic solution, the equity ratio is 30%. If you wish to have a higher share of equity, you have two options. The Vita Invest retirement provision solution allows an equity ratio of up to 50% – if your company has the necessary risk capacity. With Vita Select, employees with an annual salary of CHF 129,060 or more can determine the investment strategy themselves; the maximum possible equity ratio is 65%.

The Vita Invest and Vita Select retirement provision solutions are available if you wish to determine the investment strategy for the retirement provision assets in the super-mandatory area yourself. With Vita Invest, you can choose between the three investment profiles – "dynamic," "progressive" and "balanced" – based on your company's risk capacity. With Vita Select, on the other hand, each insured person can decide for themselves which of the eight available strategies will be used to invest their retirement provision assets for salary components above CHF 130,000 per year.

The idea behind occupational retirement provision is that all insured persons save for themselves and build up their own retirement assets, which are then used to finance their later retirement benefits. However, over recent decades, the framework conditions have changed fundamentally. Life expectancy has risen sharply, meaning that a retired person’s retirement savings capital has to last longer and longer. In addition, the number of pensioners compared to active insured is also increasing. Interest rates, on the other hand, have fallen. The current conversion rates are too high, because they assume a shorter life expectancy. This creates a funding gap. In order to plug this gap, today's working population will have to forgo part of the returns on their retirement savings capital for the benefit of those claiming a pension – this leads to unintentional redistribution from active insured persons to pension beneficiaries.

This unintentional redistribution is a fundamental problem of occupational retirement provision, and even those insured by the Vita Collective Foundations are not completely protected from this. To keep redistribution as low as possible, we use a fair, flexible process and regularly alter the guaranteed minimum interest rate in line with market conditions.

Vita Invest offers an opportunity to avoid this cross-financing entirely. With this solution, you set up your own pension scheme with its own balance sheet and accounting – and your employees'  retirement provision assets are managed independently of the overall collective. By joining Vita Invest, companies benefit from having their own pension fund while at the same time outsourcing risks and implementation tasks.

Further information

• www.vita.ch - Fair Play
• www.vita.ch - Fairness rather than redistribution in the second pillar – Part 1: Fairness – what does it mean?

With the Vita Collective Foundations, they can conveniently administer their occupational retirement provision via the Internet. We call this the Vita Company Portal. The online tool provides access to contracts, personal data, retirement provision strategies, account statements, the cost/benefits statement of your retirement provision solution and a status overview. You can also use the Vita Company Portal to make changes to personnel (entry, exit, retirement, in the event of death, inability to work or salary changes) and your company. You can also enter your annual salary registrations online.

To use the online employee pension plan, you need a personal login that you can request on our website.

Vita Company Portal for Vita Relax, Classic & Plus

• To the login
• To registration

If you have any questions regarding usage or technical problems, we can provide you with information by phone (+41 44 628 40 40) or email (ewp.support@zurich.ch).

Vita Company Portal for supplementary insurance

A separate online tool is available for the Vita Invest and Vita Select retirement provision solutions.
To use it, please contact the respective customer service department.

• Vita Invest: 044 628 43 43 / vitainvest@pfs.ch
• Vita Select: 044 628 46 46 / vitaselect@pfs.ch

Zurich offers suitable solutions for the investment and risk reinsurance of proprietary pension funds with its more than 150 years of experience in these areas. While Zurich Life Insurance Company Ltd can rely on a high level of expertise in the area of risk coverage, Zurich Invest Ltd, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Zurich, manages more than CHF 22 billion in retirement provision assets in Zurich Investment Foundation, the largest bank-independent investment fund in Switzerland.

• Risk reinsurance
• Investment solutions