Thirteen years after it was founded, Liberty Group is still recording double digit growth, and continues to systematically invest in digital transformation and new offers. The further development of its popular digital pensions platform still has top priority.
According to the provisional figures,* the inflow of new pension assets in 2018 totalled CHF 761 million, compared with CHF 538 million the prior year. This corresponds to a 20% increase in assets on platform. Unfortunately, the stock market put a spoke the Liberty wheel in the last quarter of the year: due to the adverse market conditions, assets as at 31 December 2018 were 8% lower at CHF 2.38 billion.
The Group, always at the cutting edge of technology, once again demonstrated its excellent know-how in its core business. Digitised onboarding of 1e affiliations for individual members was successfully implemented and will be extended to vested benefits and 3a accounts in early April 2019. Liberty offers significant opportunities to increase efficiency, especially for large companies.
Moreover, in 2018, Liberty launched its online portal "Liberty Connect", enabling clients to access their own assets and transaction details.
All these innovations are part of Liberty's digitisation strategy, which aims to completely renew the IT platform in the medium term. And we should not forget "Compare-Invest", Liberty's comparative platform, which continues to enjoy great popularity.
A sound group well-armed for future challenges
In the future, Liberty Group will continue to position itself as an innovative and broad-based provider of state-of-the-art pension services and solutions. To live up to its reputation, Liberty is introducing further innovations this year again.
Since January 2019, holders of vested benefit and pillar 3a accounts have been able to opt for an equities content of up to 100%. Clients in these areas also benefit from the quarterly cap of CHF 1,875 on foundation fees for securities solutions.
Another innovation in the Liberty portfolio is a recently launched pensioners’ fund, an extremely interesting solution for occupational benefits institutions with pensioner-only membership. Liberty is also preparing an answer for the "Fintech" market and is about to launch a fully digitised offering geared to a more urban and price-sensitive audience with vested benefits and pillar-3a funds.
The Liberty Group will launch the first investment foundation with a modular product architecture as a cooperation model in the first half of 2019. The foundation will start with one mortgage sub-fund each for owner-occupied and commercial properties, designed for pension funds, investment foundations and 2nd or 3rd pillar collective investments. Other niche products are already under consideration and in the development pipeline.
In 2019, Liberty Pension plans to overhaul the liberty.ch website and surprise clients with a new design, high recognition value and an original "Client Journey".
A few key figures*
Last year, for a total turnover of CHF 1.15 billion, the Liberty Group and its Foundations realised net inflows of CHF 371 million. Liberty processed a total of 116 pension fund affiliations, 5,437 account openings and over 200,000 transactions. Liberty now serves 21,297 beneficiaries and 536 companies. The average balance per client is CHF 111,750, and the proportion of all assets invested in securities in vested benefits and 3a retirement savings accounts is a high 55%.
At the end of the year, Liberty employed 72 people in Switzerland, or 67 full-time equivalents (FTE). This is 13% more than in the previous year.
*updated figures will be published in June 2019.