How to read your Swiss pension statement (Vorsorgeausweis)

Once a year your pension fund sends you a Vorsorgeausweis. Most people glance at one number, decide it looks fine or it doesn't, and file it. That is a shame, because it is the single most informative document you own about your retirement, and it takes about two minutes once you know which lines matter.

Why the document feels impenetrable

It isn't written for you. It is written to satisfy a legal information duty, so it lists everything at once with no hierarchy: contributions, insured salary, disability benefits, survivors' benefits, projections at three different ages, and your savings balance, all in the same typeface.

Nothing on it is hidden. It is just unsorted. So here is the sorting.

The five numbers that matter

1. Altersguthaben, your balance so far

What you have accumulated in the fund to date. This is the number everyone looks for, and usually the only one they remember afterwards.

It is worth knowing that this balance has two parts underneath: the mandatory portion required by law, and anything above that minimum, the Überobligatorium. Your statement may or may not split them out. That split matters later, in point 3.

2. Voraussichtliche Altersrente, your projected pension

The pension you would receive if you retired at the reference age.

This is the number that misleads people, and not because it is wrong. It is a projection built on assumptions, and the assumptions are usually printed in small type beside it: that you keep working, at roughly today's salary, until the reference age, with today's rules unchanged.

Change job, go part time, take a break to raise children, stop early, and that figure moves. It is not a forecast of your life. It is a forecast of one particular life you may not end up living.

3. Umwandlungssatz, the conversion rate

The rate that turns your balance into a yearly pension for the rest of your life.

The arithmetic is simple. Take your balance at retirement, multiply by the rate, and that is your annual pension.

Two things people rarely realise. The legal minimum rate applies only to the mandatory part of your savings. Many funds are enveloping funds, which cover both parts together and apply a single lower rate to the whole balance, which is permitted as long as the mandatory portion still receives at least its legal minimum benefit.

One correction to a thing you will often read. The legal minimum of 6.8 percent has not fallen; the 2024 reform that would have lowered it was rejected at referendum. What has fallen is the blended rate many funds apply across the whole balance, driven by the extra-mandatory part, because people live longer and return assumptions have come down. So if your overall rate looks lower than 6.8 percent, that is usually not an error and not a mistake on your statement.

4. Einkaufspotenzial, what you may pay in voluntarily

The maximum you are allowed to pay into the fund on top of your ordinary contributions, to fill the gap between what you have saved and what someone with your salary and an uninterrupted career would have.

Whether a buy-in makes sense for you is a genuinely separate question, and it depends on your marginal tax rate, your commune, your horizon and your liquidity. But you cannot even ask the question if you do not know the number is sitting there.

One rule catches people out. After a voluntary buy-in, the benefits arising from it generally may not be taken as capital for three years. If you are planning a lump sum near retirement, the order of operations matters.

5. Versicherter Lohn, your insured salary

Your pension is not built on your whole salary. It is built on your salary minus a coordination deduction, which exists because the first pillar, the AHV, is already covering part of your income.

This is why part-time work and multiple small employments hit occupational pensions disproportionately. The deduction is subtracted regardless, so a smaller salary leaves a much smaller insured salary underneath it. If you work part time, this line is the one to look at first.

What the statement never tells you

This is the real limitation, and no pension fund is hiding it. They simply cannot know:

• Your AHV. A different institution entirely. Your statement says nothing about your first pillar, and nothing about whether you have contribution gaps in it.
• Your Pillar 3a. Sitting at a bank or an insurer, on its own statement.
• Tax. Neither the tax on a pension as income, nor the separate tax on a lump sum.
• Your partner. Two careers, two funds, two timelines, and a household that spends as one.

So the statement answers "what does this one fund owe me", which is a smaller question than the one you actually have.

Common questions

Do I get one automatically?

Normally yes, once a year. If yours has not arrived, ask the fund, and check whether they publish it in an online portal instead of by post.

My projected pension dropped since last year. Did I lose money?

Not necessarily. A lower conversion rate, a salary change, or a change in the fund's regulations can all move that projection while your balance keeps growing normally. Compare the balance line year on year, not the projection line.

Should I do a buy-in?

That is a personal question and this article cannot answer it. What the statement gives you is the ceiling. The decision needs your tax situation and your plans, and it is a reasonable thing to take to a pension specialist or a financial planner.

See it in your whole picture

A pension statement describes one pillar at one moment. The question people actually have, will I be alright, spans three pillars, your taxes, your property and your partner, across every year of your life.

That is what SORVA does. You enter your real situation once and it works the Swiss rules across your whole life, year by year, using the actual federal and cantonal rules rather than a rule of thumb. Create your plan at sorva.ch, free during the public beta.

Educational information, not financial advice. Figures are for 2026 and may change.