Liberty Pension Ltd. once again achieved strong growth with its pension foundations, increasing its assets on platform (AoP) by 18% and its customer base (insured persons) by over 25% in 2023. The already established and successful areas of "Pension-as-a-Service" and "Transitions" (-> portfolio migrations) were also expanded further. To successfully develop the digitalization strategy further, we will adapt the organization as well as the IT strategy and architecture even more closely to future customer and market needs. At the same time, Liberty Pension Ltd. is licensing a tried-and-tested app solution, which creates greater strategic scope for action in customer segmentation and forms the basis for additional growth, benefiting both existing and new customers.
Schwyz, March 4 2024
The current strategy of Liberty Pension Ltd. and its pension foundations ("Group") for the period 2023 to 2026 envisions that, in addition to continuing the traditional advisory-oriented pension business, the Group will drive forward digitalization and expand the collective business. In this regard, the Board of Directors has initiated groundbreaking steps for the future direction of the Liberty Group.
In particular, the range of solutions for pension and foundation products will be even more closely networked in 2024, processes will be automated more consistently, Pension-as-a-Service (SmartGate) and the portfolio migration business (Transitions) will be further expanded and the distribution of our existing marketplace offering with compare-Invest.ch and vorsorgeexperten.ch will be intensified. To this end, this marketplace business will be bundled in a new company and repositioned as a kind of "pension exchange" under the independent brand "Prefex". This opens more extensive collaboration opportunities with existing and new partners and allows us to rethink the topic of pensions and develop new business models.
"Thanks to the new alignment, the Liberty Group and Prefex AG will have greater room for maneuver and a clearer focus for their further development. The aim is to create additional growth opportunities for the Group and to improve the sales structures for the Prefex, SmartGate and Transitions business. This is a logical continuation of the initiative to create an agile, independent pension platform that we have successfully built up in recent years and which is now entering the next implementation phase," says Oliver Bienek, founder, and CEO of Liberty Pensions Ltd..
As a subsidiary of Liberty Pensions Ltd., Prefex AG will take over the tasks and operation of the fund platforms compare-invest.ch together with the information platform "vorsorgeexperten.ch" from Liberty Pensions Ltd. and expand the activities into a "pension exchange" under the domain prefex.ch. This step is planned for October 1, 2024. Liberty has been developing and operating compare-invest since 2013, which is used by over a hundred fund providers and has attracted over CHF 1 billion in new money to date. Over the past thirteen years, Vorsorgeexperten.ch has developed into one of the leading Swiss information platforms, publishing several thousand reports and attracting around 100,000 visitors a year.
Stephan Hegner was a member of the Board of Directors of Liberty Pension Ltd. from 2008 to 2013 and then moved to the Board of Trustees of the Liberty foundations, where he was Chairman of both collective institutions (BVG/1e). He will step down from all his offices for personal reasons on June 30, 2024. Stephan Hegner has made an extraordinary contribution to the Liberty Group's success story with his many years of experience and great commitment. We would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his outstanding work over the past 15 years and wish him all the very best for the future. Donald Desax and Stefano Beros will take over the vacancies as his successors. Donald Desax will take over the chairmanships of the Liberty BVG Collective Foundation and the Liberty 1e Flex Investment Foundation, while Stefano Beros will move from the Board of Directors of Liberty Pension Ltd. to the Board of Trustees of the Liberty Vested Benefits Foundation, the Liberty 3a Pension Foundation, the Lealta Vested Benefits Foundation, and the Liberty Investment Foundation.
The Liberty Group once again impressed with its seven pension foundations in the 2023 financial year. The number of insured persons increased from 39,306 to 50,215, which corresponds to growth of 27.75%. As a result, pension assets also grew from CHF 3.9 billion to CHF 4.5 billion, which corresponds to an increase of 14.15%. Of the approximately 600 million Swiss francs, three quarters or 445 million Swiss francs were recorded as net new money.
acrevis Bank's pension business in the area of vested benefits and pillar 3a was migrated from Rendita to Liberty on January 8, 2024. As a result, around 200 million Swiss francs in new money will be added to the 4.5 billion Swiss francs.
64 new employers also joined the BVG and 1e plans, representing an increase of 6.6%.
LibertyGreen 3a, the youngest member of the Liberty Group, also attracted several new clients last year who are convinced by the sustainable investment approach, the low costs of max. 0.38% (all-in, with all costs) and the performance (+ 15.56% with an equity component of 95%).
With Coop, we have gained another well-known partner in the "Pension-as-a-Service" business, which launched its "Coop Finance+" app last fall. The initial developments are extremely satisfactory. The expansion of the offering with further interesting products and features is planned for 2024.
By contrast, the headcount was reduced from 87 FTEs to 80 FTEs as at 31.12.2023 (-8%), which indicates a significant increase in the automation and digitalization of processes.
"The major investments made in IT and infrastructure in recent years and the optimization of processes are now paying off," says CEO Oliver Bienek. "Scalability is becoming increasingly important and necessary in an industry that is constantly subject to more regulation, which in turn causes additional costs, and which is now only defined by price on the market. It is our job to create offers and solutions for the Swiss market that allow efficient, secure, and competent processing and support as well as continued investment in new product ideas," continues Bienek.
Despite everything, the 2024 financial year remains a major challenge.
The financial markets are currently dominated by the question of when the central banks will cut interest rates. In contrast, we believe that too little attention is being paid to risks such as persistent inflation, warlike events, recessionary trends, etc.
As a company, we will primarily focus on the issues that we can influence directly. Our priorities are customer service, IT strategy and IT architecture, which we will adapt even more closely to the needs of our customers and partners. This means that we will introduce a customer-friendly app for the mass business (vested benefits and pillar 3a) and a state-of-the-art IT solution for the collective business. In both cases, the aim is to further digitalize the offerings and make them more customer friendly. However, as Liberty pursues a hybrid customer model, we attach great importance to competent and friendly customer service. As we grow, we will selectively expand and strengthen this.
We are also investing in the direct customer channel with the "Prefex" pension exchange and hope to be able to acquire a large proportion of new customers through this channel in future, which will also please Business Partners. Customers with an affinity for investments will appreciate having much more autonomy and being able to realize their ideas and wishes online.
The financial targets include growth in net new assets of 550 million Swiss francs. As a result, the number of pension fund members should increase by 7,500 and the number of new members in the BVG and 1e plans by 272. We do not expect any major changes in the number of employees.
"The investments made so far open up great prospects for the Liberty Group," says Chairman of the Board of Directors Josef Andres. "Now we need to set the right priorities in sales in order to actually achieve the planned growth targets in the strategic business areas. I am proud to be part of such a dynamic company and to have played a key role in shaping its progress as Chairman.
Contact person
Oliver Bienek, CEO
Mail: oliver.bienek@liberty.ch
Tel: 058 733 03 03