In this article, we show you how digital asset managers differ. We also look at why we believe robo-advisors have fallen short of expectations and what makes finpension better.
| Comparison of the best digital asset managers |
| Digital asset management: How do the offerings differ? |
| Security in digital asset management |
Comparison of the best digital asset managers
You can directly compare the three best asset managers currently available in the table:
| finpension | True Wealth | findependent | |
| Link | Link | Link | |
| Features | |||
| Minimum deposit | From 1 franc ✓ | From 8,500 francs | From 500 francs |
| Portfolio management | Up to ten portfolios ✓ | Everything managed via a portfolio ✓ | Unlimited, but minimum amount of CHF 500 per portfolio ✓ |
| Children’s portfolios | Yes, on behalf of the adult account holder ✓ | Yes, on behalf of the child ✓ | Yes, on behalf of the adult account holder ✓ |
| Deposit in foreign currencies | No | Yes ✓ | No |
| Savings plan | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ |
| Rebalancing | weekly | every two days | daily |
| Withdrawal plan | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ | No |
| Access to private market investments | Yes, at favourable conditions ✓ | No | No |
| Performance calculation | TWR and MWR ✓ | TWR and MWR ✓ | TWR and MWR ✓ |
| Web access and mobile app | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ | No |
| Biometric login | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ |
| Two-factor authentication | SMS or Auth. app ✓ | Auth. app | Auth. app |
| Possibility to add a contact person | No | Yes ✓ | No |
| Fees | |||
| Administration fee | 0.39 % ✓ | 0.25 – 0.50 % ✓ | 0.29 – 0.40 % ✓ |
| Average fund costs (TER) of the standard strategies | 0.08 – 0.10 % ✓ | 0.13 % | 0.12 – 0.25 % |
| Foreign currency fees | No ✓ | Yes, 0.10 % | Yes, 0.50 % |
| Tax-deductible fees | Deposit fee: yes ✓ | Flat-rate fee: usually no | Flat-rate fee: usually no |
| Netting of buy and sell orders | Yes ✓ | No | No |
| E-tax statement free of charge | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ |
| New type of reporting flat-rate tax credit (still has to be approved by the tax authorities, therefore no valuation) | Yes | No | No |
Best asset manager from the group of banks and investment firms
finpension is the first new provider of asset management with a higher licence as an account-holding investment firm.
The licence as an account-holding investment firm has the advantage that finpension can offer the investment solution independently without having to rely on a bank. Both account and custody account management as well as asset management are carried out by finpension itself.
This has the following advantages for finpension customers:
- finpension does not charge a premium on the exchange rate when money has to be converted into a foreign currency. This is otherwise common practice with banks, which is why clients of external asset managers who work with banks also have to pay the corresponding surcharge.
- finpension can perform netting. Netting is the consolidation of buy and sell orders on the rebalancing day across the entire customer base. Only the net volume is then actually traded on the stock exchange. Netting has the advantage that fewer stock exchange fees and spread costs are incurred. Spread refers to the trading margin between the buy and sell price. Asset managers cannot carry out netting in free assets because they have to transmit the orders to the bank individually for each client (in pillar 3a it is possible at best).
- finpension can split the management fee into a custody account fee and an asset management fee. In contrast to the flat fee charged by external asset managers, which includes both components, the custody account fee can be deducted in full from taxable income with finpension. As a rule, flat-rate fees from external asset managers are not tax-deductible because it is not possible to split deductible custody account fees and non-deductible asset management fees.
In contrast to banks, finpension can also play on the fact that the new investment solution does not jeopardise any existing business. Specifically, we mean the following: If an established bank launches a low-cost digital asset management solution, existing customer assets from expensive offerings can flow into the cheaper solution. This leads to a loss of turnover.
This cannot happen to finpension. finpension has no existing offering that could be cannibalised by the new investment solution. This allows finpension to concentrate even more on offering its customers real added value. finpension is clearly the most favourable provider of an integrated investment solution, as the following table clearly shows:
| Administration fee | Product costs of the funds (TER) | |
| Alpian | 0.75 % | not specified |
| Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank (Digifolio) | 0.75 % | 0.20 – 0.35 % |
| Bank CIC (Clevercircles) | 0.25 – 0.65 % | not specified |
| Bank CIC (Cleverinvest) | 0.50 % | not specified |
| Postfinance (e-asset management) | 0.60 -0.75 % | not specified |
| Radicant | 0.50 – 0.90 % | 0.40 – 0.47 % |
| Raiffeisen (Rio) | 0.65 % | 0.30 – 0.60 % |
| Swissquote (Invest Easy) | 0.60 % | 0.14 – 0.21 % |
| Vontobel (Volt) | 0.80 – 0.96 % | 0.17 – 0.79 % |
| Liechtensteinische Landesbank (wiLLBe) | 0.49 % | not specified |
| finpension | 0.39 % | 0.08 – 0.10 %* |
The best asset managers from the group of external asset managers
True Wealth is a non-bank asset manager. A bank-dependent asset manager receives a power of attorney from its clients to manage the accounts and custody accounts opened with a custodian bank. The True Wealth client can choose where accounts and custody accounts are to be opened. They can choose between Saxo Bank and Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank.
True Wealth is the digital asset manager that can certainly be described as a pioneer in the market for digital asset management (founded in 2013). The minimum deposit at True Wealth is CHF 8,500, which can represent a certain hurdle. True Wealth’s fees are transparent and low. They range from 0.25 to 0.50 percent, depending on the amount of assets deposited. Added to this are the product costs, which are also very low for the funds used (0.13 percent). As external asset managers can only take over asset management, but not account and custody account management, there are usually additional fees for foreign currency exchange.
True Wealth has developed an exciting tool, a kind of cockpit, with which the investment allocation can be controlled and monitored. This tool is likely to meet with a positive response from tech-savvy investors in particular.
True Wealth’s investment instruments are visible online, which is a positive aspect. Many other providers lack transparency when it comes to investments. We think that’s a shame because nobody wants to buy a pig in a poke. Which investment instruments are used is very important because the range is very wide, especially on the cost side (TER).
Where we see a certain question mark with True Wealth is in the allocation. Specifically, the allocation of investments to different countries and regions. True Wealth only writes that they follow a scientific approach. We don’t know which one. However, the scientific approach means that the allocation deviates significantly from the actual size of the equity markets, as the following table shows:
| End of 2022 (fp employee A) | End of 2023 (fp Employee B) | All Country World Index | |
| Great Britain | 11.5 % | 9.7 % | 3.6 % |
| Europe | 16.3 % | 16.8 % | approx. 10 % |
| Asia / Pacific | 6.8 % | 9.8 % | approx. 2 % |
| Japan | 10.4 % | 14.8 % | 5.3 % |
| Developing countries | 20.5 % | 18.5 % | approx. 10 % |
| USA | 34.5 % | 30.4 % | 63.8 % |
As an alternative, we therefore bring the second-best digital asset manager into play: findependent. The fee at findependent is 0.29 to 0.40 percent, with product costs of 0.12 to 0.25 percent. The allocation of findependent is easier to understand. findependent, however, relies on a rather high Swiss share of around 40 percent. A high share of the home market is also known as home bias. A home bias can lead to a poorer risk/return ratio.
The good news is that if you don’t like the default allocation, you can change it manually with both True Wealth and findependent.
Best asset manager with a focus on sustainability
If a sustainable investment is more important to you than a good performance, you may find your luck with Inyova. Unlike most robo-advisors, Inyova does not invest in ETFs, but directly in individual companies. 300 to 400 shares are included in Inyova’s investment universe.
Basically, the concept of Inyova is simple. Inyova asks you, the user, what your values are (which is where the name Inyova = In-Your-Valuescomes from). From this, Inyova generates a customised portfolio consisting of 30 to 40 securities. It is therefore nothing more than a filtering of securities based on certain criteria. The different terms used by Inyova for the filters take some getting used to:
- Handprint: Inyova defines the handprint as the ecological and social impact of the products and services that a company manufactures and offers on the market. It is about investing in topics that make the world a better place.
- Footprint: The footprint is about whether the company produces in an environmentally friendly way and treats employees fairly, as can be read on the Inyova website.
- Exclusion criteria: Finally, Inyova allows you to exclude companies that operate businesses that you do not want to support (for example, companies that manufacture weapons). However, we cannot say whether you invest in arms deals if you do not exclude them (the 300 to 400 companies in Inyova’s investment universe are not listed on its website).
Inyova is also actively involved in general meetings of companies in order to voice her concerns for a sustainable and socially just world. However, it is highly questionable whether Inyova has enough power to really make a difference. And if it is of no use, it still costs money. Inyova’s fees of 0.9 – 1.2 percent are therefore rather high for a digital asset manager.
In any case, the biggest question mark with Inyova is its economic sustainability. Although the concept is very simple, the implementation is labour-intensive. Inyova’s latest offering – Inyova Grow – is also a business model that is not easily scalable. Inyova raised seven million francs on the market in 2022. Now it is set to raise up to another six million [note: the funding limit has been reduced to 1.5 million]. In the meantime, assets under management have only increased from CHF 173 million to CHF 250 million.
In November 2024, Inyova rescued itself into the arms of a pension fund, as finews describes the investment by the Basel pension fund Abendrot.
Digital asset management: How do the offerings differ?
Robo-advisors can be divided into offers from external asset managers and those from banks.
Offers from external asset managers
Asset managers are referred to as “external” if the digital asset management is not carried out by the custodian bank itself, but by a more or less independent third-party company. In the banking world, the abbreviation “EVV” is also used for “external assetmanagers“.
External asset managers are:
- Descartes Finance
- Everon
- Findependent
- Finpact
- Inyova (as at 03/09/2024: not yet authorised as an asset manager).
- Investart (Rather not recommended. We used it ourselves as a test and had trouble getting the money back when we wanted to withdraw it).
- Kaspar& AG
- Selma Finance
- Simplewealth (Not found on the list of authorised asset managers / Certificate for encrypting data transmission had expired when we made this post).
- True Wealth (True Wealth holds a licence as a manager of collective assets. This enables it to offer asset management services to pension funds).
Asset managers require a licence from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA in order to operate their business. The application for authorisation had to be submitted to FINMA by the end of 2022 at the latest. By the beginning of 2024, FINMA had approved 70 percent of applications, which corresponds to more than 1,000 asset managers.
You may be surprised at the high number of asset managers and wonder why there are so many. Traditional asset management is a “people business”. Many very small asset managers only manage a few million, mostly from acquaintances. What’s more, the entry barrier to becoming an asset manager is comparatively low. It is therefore not surprising that the quality of services varies greatly.
Offers from banks (and investment firms)
In addition to external asset managers, banks have also introduced new investment solutions to the market that are more cost-effective than traditional asset management. As a customer of a bank, you have the advantage that both custody account management and asset management come from a single source. The easiest way to see this difference is at the end of the year, when you only receive one statement from a bank and not one from the bank and one from the asset manager.
Offers from established banks:
- Digifolio (Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank)
- Clevercircles (Bank CIC)
- Cleverinvest (Bank CIC)
- E-asset management (Postfinance)
- Invest Easy (Swissquote)
- Rio (Raiffeisen)
- SaxoSelect (Saxo Bank)
- Volt (Vontobel)
- wiLLBe (Liechtensteinische Landesbank)
Offers from newly established banks / investment firms:
- Alpian (by REYL Group)
- finpension (is the only bank-independent provider with a higher licence)
- Radicant (by Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank)
Neo-banks such as Neon (by Hypothekarbank Lenzburg), Yuh (by Postfinance and Swissquote) or Revolut have so far only offered trading solutions where you have to select the securities yourself. Neon recently expanded its offering to include a savings plan. Revolut even launched a robo-advisor, which is only available in Austria and Germany for the time being.
Security for digital asset management
Last but not least, we would like to highlight the issue of bankruptcy risk. We have so far left this topic aside because it is of secondary importance for an investment solution that is invested in securities.
As your money is usually invested with an asset manager in funds (without counterparty risk), it is not part of the bank’s balance sheet. In the event of bankruptcy, it is therefore not part of the bankruptcy estate. Only the portion held in cash is affected by the custodian bank’s bankruptcy risk. Up to CHF 100,000 of the deposits in cash are also protected by the depositor protection scheme. The portion held in cash is often significantly lower.
Important: In the case of investments with counterparty risk (e.g. tracker certificates or structured products), this statement is not correct. Your investment is at risk if the counterparty goes bankrupt.
As a securities firm, finpension functions like a bank in this respect. Balances held with finpension are protected by the depositor guarantee scheme. finpension also only uses investments that do not involve any counterparty risk.
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