Hopfried Stutz: What is special about a three-component system

class=”sc-29f61514-0 fQbOYE”>

Some time ago I had the pleasure of explaining the three-tier system of Switzerland in a German trade publication. Was it really fun? It was definitely a challenge even though I had 10,000 characters at my disposal. For comparison: there are about 2700 of them in the “Hopfried Stutz” column.

If you diligently deal with the pension system for more than 20 years, there is a risk of losing sight of the main and, above all, the special.

Therefore, it was useful to have the opportunity to have a preliminary discussion, the so-called briefing, with the responsible editors – as editors are called in a neighboring country. The German colleagues noticed two Swiss peculiarities that we would like to draw special attention to.

On the one hand, there is funding for AHV, the first pillar. The peculiarity is that payroll deductions are calculated based on the entire AHV payroll. For us Swiss, this can be taken for granted. But it is unique and atypical for social insurance.

The contribution rate is 10.6 percent; half is paid by the employer and half by the employee. If a person earns one million francs a year, the AHV receives a total of more than 100,000 francs. Later, people with large earnings will receive far from such high pensions as they paid. Can’t repeat it enough. We can really be proud of this feature.

The second feature is called democracy. I said at the briefing that our social security system would be better, simpler, more transparent if the people did not always have the last word. To which the editor said: “I did not know how subject the Swiss system is to grassroots democratic restrictions.”

The first example I mentioned was the 2004 AHV vote. If people didn’t have the final say here, we’d have a retirement age of 65 for women for almost 20 years, and a survivor’s pension just like today. Should we be proud of this too?

I also mentioned the Pension 2020 vote that failed in the September 2017 vote. The AHV has since been age-adjusted, but at a high price. Meanwhile, the BVG revision is still not fixed.

Yes, our welfare system is the result of “grassroots democratic restrictions,” as the editor put it. Are we supposed to like it too? a matter of opinion.

Source: Blick