Findependent 3a Review 2026 – Pros & Cons

Findependent 3a

Findependent 3a

4.5

Findependent 3a is a third pillar account with great fees and a focus on sustainable investing.

Get your first 2000 CHF invested without fees in your 3a, with code poorSwiss3a.

Pros:

• Very low fees

Invest with code poorSwiss3a

By using our code, your first 2000 CHF of 3a assets will be fee-free.

Findependent is a Swiss robo-advisor that started in 2021. They have been growing strongly since their inception.

In 2026, they launched their third pillar offer, findependent 3a. They have created their own third pillar foundation, findependent 3a Pension Foundation. The foundation is entirely separated from the main company. This makes it safer for 3a investments and clearer in case of bankruptcy.

While they are not yet a huge company, they are already managing more than 500 million CHF in their robo-advisor service.

Currently, findependent is only available as a mobile application. It is possible to open a third pillar with as little as 1 CHF.

In this article, we will review their new third pillar offering, findependent 3a.

Investment strategies

Currently, findependent 3a offers three classes of strategies:

• Standard. With a mix of Swiss stocks (40%) and international stocks.
• Switzerland. With a strong focus on Swiss stocks (90%).
• Global: With a strong focus on global stocks (90%).

These are quite standard strategies. It is good to give people the choice for their home bias.

For each of these strategies, we can choose between five levels of stock allocations:

• 20% stocks
• 40% stocks
• 60% stocks
• 80% stocks
• 99% stocks

Going all the way up to 99% in stock is excellent. This is the gold standard currently.

These strategies are created from eleven different index funds. All these index funds are from Swisscanto. There are some great advantages to using index funds compared to ETFs for the third pillar, so it is nice that they chose this option.

We can look at the Global 99% strategy in detail:

• 7.4% in Swisscanto (CH) Index Equity Fund Large Caps Switzerland
• 2.5% in Swisscanto (CH) Index Equity Fund Small & Mid Caps Switzerland
• 59.6% in Swisscanto (CH) IPF I Index Equity Fund USA Responsible
• 13.7% in Swisscanto (CH) Index Equity Fund Europe (ex CH) Responsible
• 4.7% in Swisscanto (CH) IPF I Index Equity Fund Japan Responsible
• 11.1% Swisscanto (CH) Index Equity Fund Emerging Markets Responsible

Overall, this portfolio makes sense. I would wish it to have less than 10% in Swiss stocks given that Switzerland is less than 3% of the world stock market, but this is not a huge bias. The other thing we could observe is that they are using so-called Responsible index funds by default. This is something I do not agree with. Using a responsible factor in investing is a bias that should be left to the choice of the investors. They are actually doing the same with their robo-advisor service.

In Switzerland, we need to stagger our retirement withdrawals. For this, we need multiple third pillar accounts. Fortunately, findependent allows us to have five portfolios, which is the usual number for good services.

The foundation is domiciled in the canton of Aargau. If you are planning to withdraw your 3a while abroad, this is not a good tax domicile. It will be about twice as expensive as the best cantons for that.

The portfolios are automatically rebalanced on a weekly basis. It is good that rebalancing is automatic, but I think that weekly is too frequent. Since some of the funds have load and redemption fees, this can be detrimental to performance if done too often.

Findependent 3a Fees

Next, we should review the fees of findependent 3a. When investing, it is crucial to minimize investing fees.

The main fee of a third pillar is the management fee. This is the most important fee because it will be applied to assets every single year, regardless of market performance.

Findependent 3a has a very simple cost model: a 0.29% all-in fee. This is among the cheapest third pillars I have seen.

The index funds themselves have no TER. This may sound surprising, but this is generally the case with pension-class index funds. These index funds can only be used in pension cases (second and third pillars). However, they have some load and redemption fees. This means that when money enters or leaves the fund, a fee is charged. This is better than a TER since it only applies twice and not every year. Each of the funds has different load and redemption fees, but overall, they are mostly below 0.05%. One exception is the emerging markets responsible fund, which has a 0.17% issuance fee and a 0.23% redemption fee. These are expensive load and redemption fees.

Findependent 3a only uses index funds, so there is no Swiss stamp duty to pay. Additionally, they are only buying shares in CHF, so there are no currency conversion fees. There is no currency hedging either, so you are exposed to the foreign currency, but there are no currency hedging costs to consider.

Finally, since they are using pension-class index funds, we do not lose any money to dividend withholding. These funds are tax-efficient.

If you are using a custom portfolio, the fee remains the same. There is no extra fee for custom porfolios.

Overall, the fees of Findependent are excellent. They have an all-in fee of 0.29%. Some of the funds will have higher load and redemption fees, but they can be avoided with a custom portfolio. It is great that they have been able to optimize all the details all the way to using pension-class index funds for efficiency.

Security

The money in your third pillar will stay for a long time in the same place. Therefore, it is essential to consider the security of the service we use.

From a technical security standpoint, findependent is doing all the basics right. They have a second factor of authentication available on their app. And they are actually allowing true 2FA with TOTP rather than SMS (less secure). So, this is quite good. I have also not heard of any security issue with findependent.

All your shares are held by the Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB), the largest of the Swiss cantonal banks. The ZKB is a reputable bank. If ZKB were to go bankrupt (very unlikely for a cantonal bank), the 3a foundation would have to find a new place for these funds. But the funds would be safe. If findependent 3a itself were to go bankrupt, the foundation would have to find a new fund manager for the assets of the foundation. Finally, if Swisscanto (a subsidiary of ZKB) were to go bankrupt, the funds would be transferred to new funds by another provider like UBS.

Cash itself is protected by law for up to 100,000 CHF. But since there is very little cash in these strategies, this is not an issue.

Overall, the security of holding money with a findependent 3a is good.

The only downside is that the 3a foundation is brand new. However, the company itself has been managing money successfully for multiple years. Additionally, the company is not yet profitable, so it poses a small question of longevity.

Sustainability

Some investors are interested in sustainable investing. It means trying to invest in companies that will impact the world positively in the future.

By default, findependent 3a will sometimes use funds called “Responsible” for its investment. However, they only do that for the international portions of the portfolios. So, the Swiss portfolio will only have 20% of responsible funds. It means all Swiss companies are included. And this means mostly Roche, Novartis, Nestlé, ABB, and UBS.

We can also look inside one of the funds. The responsible fund for the United States has these companies at the top:

1. NVIDIA
2. Apple
3. Microsoft
4. Amazon
5. Alphabet

The top 10 is actually the same as the 10 largest companies in the United States: no filtering is done. Sustainability is quite subjective, so I will let you judge if you find these companies sustainable.

By doing a custom portfolio, you can avoid sustainable funds altogether.

Overall, I am not convinced about their strategies in this domain. For me, they are not good for sustainable investors since the Swiss investments will not be sustainable. And they are also not good for people who want to invest without bias, since they are forced to use a custom strategy.

I strongly believe that sustainable investing should be an option, not forced upon us. And it should either be fully set up or not set up at all.

Alternatives

It is crucial to compare a service against its competition.

Findependent 3a vs Finpension 3a

Best Third Pillar!

Finpension 3a

5.0

Very low fees

Finpension 3a is the best third pillar in Switzerland.

Use the FEYKV5 code to get a fee credit of 25 CHF!

Pros:

• Invest 99% in stocks

Grow your 3a with FEYKV5 code Read my review

If you use the FEYKV5 code, you will receive 25 CHF in fee credit. Only for Swiss residents.

Finpension 3a is the third pillar account I am using myself. We can start by comparing Finpension 3a and findependent 3a.

We can start with things that are similar:

• Both services allow you to invest up to 99% in stocks.
• Neither of the two services forces you into currency hedging.
• Both services use efficient institutional index funds.

On the investing side, Finpension 3a has several advantages:

• Finpension 3a does not force you into a responsible bias but lets you invest in a diversified way.
• By choice, with Finpension 3a, you can invest sustainably with all positions, not only half of them.
• Finpension 3a has much better custom portfolios with far fewer restrictions.

Finpension has also been around for longer than findependent, is profitable, and manages significantly more money.

But findependent 3a is cheaper than Finpension 3a, with a fee of 0.29%, compared to the 0.39% of Finpension 3a.

Overall, I prefer Finpension 3a and intend to keep all my accounts there. The default portfolios are better at Finpension 3a, and the custom portfolios are much more flexible as well.

Findependent 3a FAQ

Findependent 3a Summary

Read our detailed Findependent 3a review for 2026. Discover its ultra-low 0.29% fee, 99% stock allocation, pros and cons, and alternatives.

Product Brand: Findependent

Editor's Rating:
4.5

Findependent 3a Pros

Let's summarize the main advantages of Findependent 3a:

• Great fees
• You can invest up to 99% in stocks
• No currency hedging
• Can create up to five portfolios
• Good second-factor authentication
• Custom portfolios

Findependent 3a Cons

Let's summarize the main disadvantages of Findependent 3a:

• Responsible investing is forced on default portfolios
• Default portfolios are mixed
• No web application
• Suboptimal tax domicile when withdrawing from abroad
• Custom portfolios have restrictions

Conclusion

Findependent 3a

4.5

Findependent 3a is a third pillar account with great fees and a focus on sustainable investing.

Get your first 2000 CHF invested without fees in your 3a, with code poorSwiss3a.

Pros:

• Very low fees

Invest with code poorSwiss3a

By using our code, your first 2000 CHF of 3a assets will be fee-free.

Overall, findependent 3a is a great new service. They offer an optimized way of investing a third pillar in the stock market. And they do offer that with a very competitive price.

On the other hand, I am not convinced by the default investing strategies that they offer. All their strategies are biased towards responsible factors. Such a bias should be left to the investors to decide. Additionally, the Swiss stocks in their portfolios are not following any sustainable criteria, creating an imbalance in the default portfolios.

Fortunately, we can create custom portfolios to avoid this. But it means that people should know how to create a default portfolio to opt out of responsible bias, which is not something most people want to do.

If you want to read more on the subject, you might want to check out our article about the best third pillars in Switzerland.

What about you? What do you think about Findependent 3a?