In a dynamic world, only very few companies make it through their infancy. Liberty Pension is one such company and is celebrating its 20^th anniversary in September 2025. To find out more about its pension journey and success, we interviewed the company's founder and Managing Director, Oliver Bienek. 

Oliver Bienek, founder and Managing Director of Liberty Pension Ltd.: «I first came up with the idea for Liberty during my summer holidays in France, near Bordeau, in 2005. I wanted to create more transparency in the vested benefits market. Because at the time, anyone who opened a vested benefits account and wanted to invest it in securities only had access to investment products from the respective provider, with costs hidden in the relatively high TER. If the customer was dissatisfied, they had to close the account and open a new one somewhere else. My idea was to disrupt this supplier dependency by introducing a platform-based concept and an independent marketplace.» Then in the fall of 2005, he and the trustees Gilbert Weber (former board member of the Canton of Zurich supervisory authority for BVG) and Martin Hubatka (lawyer and pension fund expert) visited a notary in Arth-Goldau. They took care of all the formalities regarding the establishment of the Liberty Foundation for vested pension benefits and it became a reality when it was entered in the commercial register on 14 September 2005. 

One key factor behind this success was a small employer-sponsored pension fund in the City of Zurich. The pension fund had to be dissolved so the founder and asset manager transferred the clients and their vested benefits (approx. 10 million) to the Liberty Foundation for vested pension benefits. This milestone was the starting signal for its success and for the distribution network. Liberty then experienced steady, consistent growth, thanks in part to Gilbert Weber and Martin Hubatka, the two trustees with an excellent reputation in the Swiss pension market. «My wife Barbara also made a major contribution. She joined Liberty in 2007 and her experience and expertise made her instrumental in Liberty's success. She played a key role in its development,» noted Oliver Bienek. As with any new start-up, the first few years at Liberty were tough and stretched Oliver Bienek to the limit. 10- to 12-hour days and weekend work were not uncommon, as were little pay, no holidays, and minimal free time. Commenting on the hard times, Oliver Bienek said: «It was enriching and exciting, because success never comes easily. Liberty gave me an enormous amount of creative freedom and was able to make my vision of an «open pension platform» a reality. Working together with Barbara, Oliver Bienek shaped his vision of what he wanted Liberty to become and succeeded in offering the end-to-end value creation in the 2^nd and 3^rd pillars. The Liberty pension platform entered the group business in 2010 with the establishment of the 1e and BVG Collective Foundation.

«These are values that we work on every day and will continue to work on in the future,» said Oliver Bienek when commenting on the corporate culture. Liberty's strong concierge mentality helps it get closer to its clients and partners. We will continue to dismantle the silo mentality and promote personal interaction. The idea of building Switzerland's first independent and open pension platform has now become a reality. For Liberty's clients, this means that they can obtain all services from a single source. We placed the company's focus on innovation, quality and the preservation of its own independence from the very start. To this day, Liberty's corporate culture is characterized by innovative strength, commitment, reliability and a strong customer focus.