It all started with pension fraud
Did you know that pension fraud was happening as early as the 1990s? As improbable as it seems in the current low interest rate environment, inflation was a staggering 6% to 7% in 1991-92. Short-term money market investments in Swiss Francs, believe it or not, earned 8% interest. In spite of that, pension assets only earned the BVG minimum interest rate of 4%. In other words, the funds lost value in real terms during that time. To put it more bluntly: the insured members were defrauded of millions.
It was during this time that I completed my on-the-job training as a pension expert. The loss in real value never was an issue, not by my lecturers, nor politicians or media. That’s when I realised how deficient, or even unjust – and opaque the BVG system really was. This realisation stayed with me. And my desire to offer more freedom and greater individual responsibility to people in investing their retirement assets just kept growing.
It was in 2000 that I acted on it: I founded PensExpert AG with like-minded partners. Freedom and individual responsibility have since defined the DNA of PensExpert and all is foundations.
Jörg Odermatt, founding partner
