Portrait
bvg-digital is an association of ten manufacturers of standard solutions for occupational pensions. Together with existing interest groups, the association aims to promote the development and implementation of standards in the area of data exchange in the second pillar.
bvg-digital currently focuses on the three areas of Lohnstandard-CH (ELM), data exchange between pension funds, and the exchange of pension data.
Lohnstandard-CH (ELM)
Over 120,000 companies currently use Lohnstandard-CH (ELM) to process reports in the areas of AHV (Old Age and Survivors' Insurance), health and accident insurance, taxes, and statistics (BfS) directly from certified payroll programs.
For a long time, however, the standard was not able to process reports in the area of occupational pensions.
This has now changed: With the latest version of the standard, reports relating to occupational pensions can also be processed: entry, exit, retirement/death, salary changes, changes in employment level, plan changes, interruption of employment, and change of address. Immediately after these reports are submitted, the pension fund system delivers the corresponding contributions.
The first insurers are piloting the process, and members of the bvg-digital association have committed to supporting the process in the future.
See: www.swissdec.ch/bvg
Data exchange between pension funds
Approximately 1,300 pension funds exchange data with each other thousands of times every day: Employees change jobs, leave pension funds, and rejoin new funds.
For more than ten years, the "Auffangeinrichtung BVG" (BVG Substitute Pension Fund) foundation has operated the "BVG Exchange" platform, which enables this data exchange to be digitized.
The members of bvg-digital are actively helping to expand this process.
See: https://aeis.ch/bvg-exchange
Exchange of pension data
Most pension funds now provide their insured members with so-called insured member portals. These allow them to access data and documents, conduct simulations, and often even process transactions such as purchases paperlessly.
On the other hand, so-called "pension dashboards" are offered on the market, which integrate all three pillars of retirement planning (including those of a life partner upon request) to analyze various scenarios such as old age, disability, or death, and to provide concrete suggestions for action. The goal of these solutions is to raise awareness and empower insured persons regarding personal pension planning.
A prerequisite for pension dashboards is the so-called "opening of pension data": Insured persons should be able to share their pension data upon request or even upload it to pension dashboards themselves. The SFTI "Open Pension" working group has put forward various proposals for this.
The simplest of these options is the digital pension certificate (digVA). This is a pension certificate with a QR code that contains the most important key data for a pension calculation and can be read directly (e.g., via a smartphone camera) into compatible pension dashboards. Most bvg-digital members will make this digital pension certificate available to their customers (pension institutions) as an option by the end of 2025.
In parallel, bvg-digital is pursuing the transfer of pension data via the e-ID wallet (swiyu) and a direct connection via API interfaces.
