What to do with a tiny 2a amount when moving abroad

[veteran1990]

Hi everyone, I did some googling and search of past posts on here but couldn‘t find much on my question, so I hope someone is able to point me in the right direction

I’m from the EU and just spent 6 months working in Switzerland for an internship. I‘m leaving the country indefinitely on Friday and just received a letter from Swisslife asking me to tell them what to do with my notably tiny amount of 2a money. In total it‘s only about 900Fr, but I feel like it‘d be stupid to not care at all about what happens to it.

From what I understand, I have two options which is either to do nothing and have them move it to their Freizügigkeitsstiftung or have them transfer it to a Freizügigkeitskonto where I can possibly invest it properly (Finpension or Viac I‘ve read?). This is all stressing me out a bit because I‘m a total newbie to the Swiss pension system so I would really really appreciate some input!

Is it even worth the hassle to open a Freizügigkeitskonto and invest that tiny amount of money? Is their „default“ Stiftung much worse? What would you do in this sitution?

Side note: I might move back to Switzerland in the future after finishing my studies, earliest in 1 1/2 years. This is a pretty short timeframe for investing the money in funds, but I‘ve read that the law that has you transfer the money from any Freizügigkeitskonto you have is not really enforced so is it a realistic plan to just invest it now and then leave it there indefinitely?

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this and any potential answers you have for me

 

[ausadhi]

@veteran1990 What is 2a?

 

[veteran1990]

@ausadhi Sorry, only *2 i guess Had it wrong in my memory

 

[bella96]

@veteran1990 First of all, chill. It’s only 900chf. As you said if after 6 months you don’t do anything it will be versed to the public fund and you can get it back when you come back to ch. In this case you’d do nothing. However what I would do is transferring the amount to VIAC (free, online) and investing it there by choosing one of their strategies and forget about it. Good thing is that you can update your address or anything online while you are not in CH and you continue to control this money. When/if you’re back in CH and get employed, you’ll transfer the amount back to the employers 2nd pillar fund (this is mandatory).

 

[veteran1990]

@bella96 Chilling is definitely the right way to go, I think I‘m less stressed about this specifically and rather packing chaos in general, but this letter just added a huge question mark in my mind

Thank you for the input! Any reason you‘d prefer VIAC to finpension? I haven‘t read up on it too much, but saw that they‘re pretty similar and some people recommend finpension over VIAC But first I gotta figure out all the documents they want for transferring the money

 

[bella96]

@veteran1990 Hi, no specific reason, I have used VIAC for pillar 3a for few years and I’m happy with them.
Also recently we transferred my husbands pillar 2 to VIAC as well while he was unemployed and it was super easy.
Actually the steps are:
1) open the account in VIAC. 10 minutes.
2) Fill in the form with your current LPP Pension Fund indicating the account number that you have obtained with VIAC and asking them to transfer there, sign the paper and send it to them.

That is all you need to do.
Good luck!

 

[veteran1990]

@bella96 Ohh omg you just made me realize that I probably misread their instructions! I thought you needed all these documents (see

https://imgur.com/a/1Hu0XjM

) even for just transferring the money to an account, but it‘s only if you want it in cash I guess ) amazing thanks!