General pension asset reporting requirement

• All actively insured persons must be declared (those with several retirement plans in the same institution should be declared just once where possible).
• All insured persons with contribution exemption, for whom the pension decision is still pending, must also be reported.
• All persons whose vested benefits have not yet been paid out must be declared.
• This means that persons having already left the pension scheme before the beginning of December must also be declared, provided that their assets had not yet been transferred to a new institution at the start of December.
• Persons whose assets have been mistakenly transferred and are in the possession of an institution in December must also be declared to the 2nd Pillar Central Office.
• To be able to ensure the completeness of declarations, what is taken into account is not the situation at the end of the year, but that for the month of December as a whole. More specifically, what this means is that even owners of pension assets who have left an institution in the course of December or at the end of the year must be included in the declaration made by the previous institution to the Central Office, even if their assets were transferred to a new institution in December. The upshot of this is that in all cases, assets transferred in the course of December will be declared by two institutions. The lawmaker has knowingly accepted this double reporting in order to be able to guarantee the completeness of the reports.
• People drawing a pension are not subject to the reporting requirement. Institutions that only pay out pensions and therefore have no persons to declare may make a special note of this on the reporting form.

Under art 24c FZG-VBA and art. 19c, para. 3 FZV-VBO (new), the following information must be reported to the Central Office:

1. Surname and first name of the insured person.
2. Their AHV/AVS number.
3. Their date of birth.
4. The name of the institution.
5. The absence of contact details.

A credit balance is without contact details if the insured person's address is not known to the institution. An institution cannot in principle lack contact details for an active insurance account, as contact is guaranteed at least via the employer. The Central Office needs to be informed of lacking contact details so that it can narrow down the search for beneficiaries of forgotten assets (art. 24d FZG-VBA). Assets are deemed to be forgotten when the entitled person has reached the ordinary LOB age of retirement without claiming the pension. It must be ensured that address searches are not also conducted for persons above the normal retirement age who are actively insured with a pension institution. In the case of pension institutions that have so far not reported any credit balances without contact details to the Central Office, we assume, while not making a special note of it, that the contact details are available for all reported assets.

For the purposes of assigning assets in response to enquiries from persons seeking pension assets, it is useful for us to know the gender of the insured person. We would therefore be helped by being informed of the gender, as well as the old AHV/AVS number, and for this reason the possibility is offered for this information to be supplied voluntarily. Another field is provided in which additional information such as the vested benefits account or policy number may be supplied.

The reporting obligation does not specifically cover things like the amount of the balance and other insurance information such as data that is relevant in the event of a divorce.

A sample data set is provided on the portal. The reporting is possible only using the structure prescribed on the portal. That structure contains the gender, the old AHV/AVS number, contact details and other information, as well as optional fields. It is important for a field to be left empty in the absence of information in a particular area, so that the prescribed structure can be respected. The report must be done in accordance with the following structure:

A two-step identification procedure must be followed for login to the web portal. After signing in with the contract number, the pension institution number and password, a further code sent by SMS to the personal cell phone is required.