Six lessons from Swiss voters’ rejection of occupational pension reform

To convince voters of a change to the pension system, it must be made very clear to them how their wallets will be hit. This is one of six takeaways from Sunday’s clear “no” to the proposed makeover of the second pillar. 1 The proposal was not transparent Anyone who wanted to know exactly how the proposed reform of the occupational pension scheme would affect their retirement income looked in vain. Google was unable to provide a good answer to the trending search term “occupational pension reform calculator”; even Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider advised voters to “ask [their] pension fund”. What was more or less clear was that the change would not affect current pensioners, and that little would change for Swiss living abroad – except if they still had a Swiss employment contract, vested benefits in an account, or plans to return to Switzerland. This multitude of scenarios just for the Swiss Abroad showed how many ways the reform could lead. The fact that the proposal ...