The best financial services for your money!

Download this e-book and optimize your finances and save money by using the best financial services available in Switzerland!

Download The FREE e-book

Frankly 3a Review 2024: Pros & Cons

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

Frankly is a third pillar account offered by Zurcher Kantonal Bank (ZKB). It is an interesting third pillar because it allows you to invest heavily in stocks. And on top of that, the fees are pretty low.

It is good to see that there are more and more alternatives for good third pillars in Switzerland.

So, we should see what Frankly 3a is and how good it is!

I look at Frankly’s investment strategies, fees, and security in this review. And I also compare it against other good third pillars.

About Frankly 3a
Total Fee 0.45% per year
Maximum portfolios 5
Stock allocation Up to 95%
Maximum foreign exposure 30%
Maximum investment in cash 5%
Investment Strategy Index funds
Fund providers Swisscanto
Languages English, French, and German
Sustainable option Yes
Mobile Application Yes
Web Application No
Custodian Bank Zurcher Kantonal Bank
Established 2020
Foundation’s domicile Zurich

Frankly 3a from ZKB

Frankly is a third pillar account offered by the Zurcher Kantonal Bank (ZKB).

ZKB is a large bank that was established a long time ago. They started Frankly as a mobile-only service to appeal to the younger generations. And they are also focusing on people investing in their pillars. As we will see, you can invest a large portion of your funds in stocks with this third pillar account.

Frankly is a very new service. ZKB officially launched Frankly in March 2020. But they already reached 100 million CHF of assets under management. One good thing about this service is that they promised that the fees would go down as more and more people use it. ZKB already reduced Frankly fees by 0.01% once they reached 100 million CHF. So hopefully, the fees will go down even lower in the future.

Frankly Screen
Frankly Screen

Investment Strategies

3.5/5

Frankly is highly focused on investing in the stock market. You can choose between nine different strategies in your Frankly account:

  1. Light 10 Active
    • 75% bonds
    • 15% real estate
    • 10% stocks
  2. Gentle 25 Active
    • 59% bonds
    • 26% equities
    • 15% real estate
  3. Gentle 20 Index
    • 67.5% bonds
    • 20% stocks
    • 5% real estate
    • 4.5% commodities
    • 3% precious metals
  4. Moderate 45 Active
    • 45% stocks
    • 40% bonds
    • 15% real estate
  5. Moderate 45 Index
    • 45% stocks
    • 42.5% bonds
    • 5% real estate
    • 4.5% commodities
    • 3% precious metals
  6. Strong 75 Active
    • 75% stocks
    • 20% bonds
    • 5% real estate
  7. Strong 75 Index
    • 75% stocks
    • 12.5% bonds
    • 5% real estate
    • 4.50% commodities
    • 3% precious metals
  8. Extreme 95 Active
    • 95% stocks
    • 5% bonds
  9. Extreme 95 Index
    • 95% stocks
    • 2.5% real estate
    • 2.5% precious metals

The number in each of these strategies is the allocation to stocks. So, the Extreme 95 Index strategy allocates 95% to stocks, while the Light 10 Active strategy only allocates 10% to stocks. The rest is invested in bonds, precious metals, commodities, and real estate.

Active denotes active investing, while Index denotes passive investing. I am a firm believer in index investing. If I were to use Frankly, I would use one of the Index strategies. I would recommend against using the active versions.

It is excellent that you can invest up to 95% in stocks. And you can get 100% invested since the rest will be invested in real estate and precious metals.

Each strategy invests in a single fund from Swisscanto (a subsidiary of ZKB). So, if you want details, go to the Swisscanto website and look at the fact sheet of the funds. I wish that all this information was available transparently on the Frankly website. There is a considerable lack of information on the Frankly website.

The Extreme 95 Index strategy seems good. It uses Passive investing through indexes. However, they do not share which indexes are being used. It is another transparency issue with Frankly.

We can take a look at the detailed allocation of the Extreme 95 Index strategy. This strategy uses the Swisscanto (CH) IPF III Vorsorge Fonds
95 Passiv NT CHF fund. Here are the essential characteristics of this fund:

  • The TER is 0%.
  • There is a 0.10% issuance fee.
  • There is a 0.09% redemption fee.
  • 30% is invested in Swiss Stocks.
  • 65% is invested in foreign stocks.
  • 2.5% is invested in Swiss Real Estate.
  • 2.5% is invested in precious metals.
  • At least 70% is held in CHF.

This last information is essential but is often overlooked by investors. There are only 30% of Swiss shares in this fund. So, investments in foreign shares are being hedged against CHF. Currency Hedging means you get insurance against variations of the currency pair that would cost you money.

Currency Hedging is a good tool but not a long-term tool. It is excellent to hedge your investments if you are investing in the short term. But if you are investing for the long-term, currency hedging is too expensive.

The fact that a large percentage of foreign currencies are being hedged is a significant disadvantage for Frankly in the long term.

Overall, the investment strategies of Frankly are good but could be better. It is terrific that they have passive investing options. And they let you invest a significant portion in stocks. On the other hand, transparency could be much better, and the hedging will cost too much in the long term.

Sustainable Investing with Frankly 3a

4/5
Choose to invest sustainably with Frankly 3a
Choose to invest sustainably with Frankly 3a

You can also choose to invest sustainably with Frankly 3a. They will use Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors to decide which companies they invest in. With these factors, many companies are blacklisted from investment, such as weapon companies.

As with everything they do, they are not very transparent about the details behind their offer. They only offer active funds for sustainable investments and use the Swisscanto blacklist for selecting companies. However, they do not share many details about the companies that are selected or not.

Their strategy is very similar to what most 3a do, using simple factors such as the ESG. Nevertheless, it is still good that they offer such an option. Sadly, they do not share the details of their funds as any good third pillar should.

Frankly 3a Fees

4.5/5

In the long term, fees are extremely important. Therefore, we need to look in detail at the fees of Frankly.

Regardless of your investment strategy, you will pay 0.45% in fees to Frankly. You will lose 0.45% of your invested money every year. Even if this fee seems high, it is pretty low for third pillars in Switzerland.

On top of that, you will have to pay some fees based on your chosen funds. These are mostly issuance and redemption fees. The issuance fee is due when you buy new shares. And the redemption fee is due when you sell shares. For instance, with the Extreme 95 Index strategy, you will pay a 0.10% fee when you invest and a 0.09% fee when you sell.

Issuance and redemption are not as bad as management fees because they apply once (unless you change strategy often). But you need to keep them in mind. If you are investing in the short term (if you are close to retirement, for instance), these fees may affect your profits.

There is a critical thing with these fees. The 0.45% all-in fees apply to each of the investing strategies. It means that even if you only invest 10% in stocks, you will pay 0.45%. So, you will pay a high fee for very little investment. It makes Frankly a bad third pillar for investing little in stocks. If you do not want to invest a lot of money in stocks, Frankly is not for you!

On top of that, there are the costs of hedging. It is difficult to put them in absolute since this will depend on the future. But on average, we can say that this will be at least a 0.20% extra fee per year. And it could be more.

Overall, the base fees of Frankly are good. However, the hedging costs will weigh you down.

If their importance does not convince you, read about why investing fees are essential.

Open a Frankly 3a account

5/5

You can directly open an account from the mobile application.

You can download the application from your favorite app store and follow all the basic steps of creating an account. During the process, it will ask you for your ID, so make sure you have it ready. It is a straightforward process that is well done.

I will not go over all the steps. Anybody can follow these steps without any help! The entire process is straightforward.

Once you are done creating your account, you can directly fund. Frankly will give you the necessary forms if you already have another third pillar account you want to transfer. You can fill out the form and post the documents. They will then take care of everything.

ZKB did a good thing in creating a seamless onboarding process. It is well done and simple. The application itself is simple and practical.

Something good is that you can create up to five accounts for yourself. It is an excellent feature since it will allow you to save money on taxes. For more information on that, I invite you to read my article on the third pillar.

Overall, there is nothing wrong with the onboarding and the usage of Frankly.

Frankly Onboarding
Frankly Onboarding

Security

4.5/5

To invest money in financial services, you must ensure good security.

From a technical point of view, Frankly 3a has good security. The app is linked to your phone. Having your password will not be enough for anyone to access your account. It is the default way of securing mobile applications these days.

Your invested assets will be held in your name as shares of the various Swisscanto funds. If ZKB fails, the shares will still be yours. It may take some time to recover, but it is safe. And the cash will be held by ZKB.

Overall, there is nothing wrong with the security of Frankly 3a. They are not doing anything special but provide the same security level as other similar apps.

Alternatives

It is imperative to compare with existing alternatives.

There are many available third pillars in Switzerland. But most of them are quite poor. Frankly is among the good independent providers. But there are some very interesting alternatives to Frankly.

Frankly 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*!

*(if you deposit 1000 CHF in the first 12 months)

Pros:
  • Invest 99% in stocks
Grow your 3a with FEYKV5 code Read my review

I use and recommend Finpension 3a as the best third pillar in Switzerland. So, we should see how Frankly compares with Finpension 3a.

First, if we look at the fees, Frankly is slightly more expensive than Finpension. Indeed, it has a TER of 0.47%, while Finpension’s fee is 0.39%. This difference is significant and could make a difference over the long term.

With Finpension 3a, you can invest up to 99% in stocks but only 95% with Frankly. 4% more invested in stocks could make a significant difference in the long term.

From a usability point of view, Fnpension 3a has a slight advantage since they also offer a web application, not just a mobile app. It is good for people like me who are not fond of mobile phones.

One place where both services differ is in the information they share. With Finpension 3a, you can get the details of the indexes they are invested in. And you can get good information directly from the website and the app. On the other hand, Frankly is not transparent. They always refer you to PDFs of Swisscanto and do not share in which indexes they invest, only in which fund they invest. So Finpesion 3a is much more transparent than Frankly.

The most significant difference between these two third pillar accounts is in currency hedging. Finpension 3a does not force you to hedge many of your foreign assets. With Frankly 3a, you will have a minimum of 70% of your portfolio in CHF with currency hedging.

It will be costly in the long term since you will miss out on returns. If you are close to retirement, this may be an advantage. But for most people, this will be a significant disadvantage. And this difference will make Frankly more expensive than Finpension 3a.

On top of that, Finpension 3a is much more flexible in that you can have 99% in foreign currencies. For aggressive investors, this could make a very significant difference.

So, given the lack of transparency and mandatory currency hedging, Finpension 3a is significantly better than Frankly and remains the best third pillar.

If you want more information, I have an entire Review of Finpension 3a. In the future, I may make a complete comparison of both services. But for now, Finpension 3a is still the best third pillar.

In the future, I may make a complete comparison of both services. Let me know if you would be interested.

Frankly 3a vs VIAC

VIAC is a very popular third pillar in Switzerland. We can make a quick comparison of VIAC and Frankly 3a.

First, if we look at the fees, Frankly 3a is slightly more expensive than VIAC. Indeed, it has a TER of 0.45%, while VIAC’s fee is 0.44%. This difference is not significant. These numbers are so close that we can say that both third pillars have the same prices.

With VIAC, you can invest up to 99% in stocks, but only 95% with Frankly. This more significant allocation to stocks is already an advantage for VIAC.

Regarding hedging, VIAC will force you to invest 40% in CHF, while Frankly 3a will force you to invest 70% in CHF with hedging. This difference is another advantage for VIAC.

For me, the most significant advantage of VIAC over Frankly is its transparency. Indeed, VIAC is very transparent, sharing everything about its portfolios. On the other hand, Frankly 3a is very opaque.

Given the higher allocation to stocks, the better fees, and the much better transparency, VIAC is a better third pillar than Frankly.

For more information, you can read my review of VIAC.

FAQ

How many Frankly 3a accounts can I open?

You can have up to 5 accounts with Frankly 3a.

What is the minimum you can invest with Frankly 3a?

You can start investing in Frankly 3a with 1 CHF.

Are you forced into currency hedging with Frankly 3a?

Yes, the foreign exposure is limited to 30%. The rest must be either in CHF or hedged in CHF.

Can you keep your Frankly 3a account in cash?

No, your entire portfolio must be fully invested.

What does Frankly 3a invest in?

Frankly 3a invests in stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities and precious metals.

What is Frankly 3a good for?

Frankly 3a is good if you want a reasonably priced third pillar that forces you into hedging.

What is Frankly 3a not good for?

Franky is not good if you want to avoid currency hedging. It is also not the third pillar that allows you to invest the most in stocks. Finally, it is not the cheapest third pillar account.

Frankly 3a Summary

3.5/5
Frankly 3a

Frankly 3a is a third pillar account by the Zurcher Kantonal Bank (ZKB). It has acceptable fees and allows to invest up to 95% in stocks.

Product Brand: Frankly

Editor's Rating:
3.5

Frankly 3a Pros

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

  • The TER is very low, at 0.47% per year.
  • You can invest up to 95% in stocks.
  • The mobile app is fairly easy to use.
  • You can create up to five accounts.

Frankly 3a Cons

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

  • A large part of the foreign currency is hedged to CHF. It will lead to lower returns in the long term.
  • There is a strong lack of transparency on the website.
  • You cannot customize your portfolio yourself.
  • You can only use it on your phone.

Conclusion

Frankly is an acceptable third pillar account. It is significantly better than most third pillar accounts out there. The fees are pretty low, and it offers a significant investment in stocks. The fact that it’s mobile-only could also appeal to many people.

However, it is not the best third pillar. Currently, Finpension 3a remains the best third pillar available in Switzerland. Finpension has several advantages over Frankly:

  • Finpension 3a does not force you into hedging
  • Finpension 3a lets you invest more in stocks
  • Finpension 3a enables you to use a customized portfolio
  • Finpension 3a is much more transparent
  • Finpension 3a is cheaper

If Frankly offered non-hedged alternatives, it would become much more interesting! In the meantime, it is a good third pillar account, but Finpension 3a is still the best option.

If you want more information on the best third pillar, I would recommend reading my review of Finpension 3a.

If you want more information on Frankly, you can read my article on Frankly Vested Benefits.

If you are using Frankly, I would love your feedback on this service.

The best financial services for your money!

Download this e-book and optimize your finances and save money by using the best financial services available in Switzerland!

Download The FREE e-book
Photo of Baptiste Wicht

Baptiste Wicht started thepoorswiss.com in 2017. He realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut his expenses and increase his income. This blog is relating his story and findings. In 2019, he is saving more than 50% of his income. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence. You can send Mr. The Poor Swiss a message here.

Recommended reading

27 thoughts on “Frankly 3a Review 2024: Pros & Cons”

  1. Hello,

    Firstly I would like to say I am a huge fan of your blog and your easy to follow reviews!

    I am also thinking to switch my 3a pillar as my current plan is too expensive and the returns are low. I am comparing finpension, VIAC and frankly.

    For frankly I understand the main issue is the currency hedging costs but has the advantage of ZKB backing it. For VIAC my concern is WIR bank which I am not sure if it is considered a safe place while for finpension I checked it has only 5k+ app downloads in the Android market which seems to me too low (for instance frankly has 100k downloads which makes me wonder a bit as it seems much more popular).

    Do you think that fp and VIAC are safe options? Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

    Kind regards

    1. Hi Pan,

      Frankly is a bit more popular indeed because they have much more aggressive marketing (which shows they have budget and this budget comes from the fees).
      I would not worry too much about WIR, Swiss banks are well regulated and the protection of each bank is similar.

      I have all my portfolios at Finpension, I consider it safe for my assets.

  2. Good evening

    Thanks for useful information. I have a question about “extra” fees that are not part of “all in fees” for Frankly.

    In your blog you have mentioned that there is a 0.1 and 0.09 % fees for issuance and redemption. Where exactly this information can be found?

    At the link below, I only see 0.02% TER but reading your blog it seems there are three fees in Frankly
    1. All in Fees
    2. TER of the Swisscanto fund (maybe this is part of All in Fees)
    3. Issuance and redemption fee… where can I find into on what are these fees for various options like Index 45, Index 95 etc. ?

    https://products.swisscanto.com/products/product/CH0512157782?&searchQuery=Swisscanto%20(CH)%20Vorsorge%20Fonds%2095%20Passiv&lang=en

    1. Hi Abhiney,

      You were on the proper page, but you need to download the factsheet in PDF to see the two fees.
      * Issue Fees in Favour of the Fund 0.10%
      * Redempt. Fees in Fav. of the Fund 0.09%

  3. Hi,

    As always, great review. As a foreigner living in Switzerland, I use a lot your blog to understand how things work in this country.

    I would like to share my thoughts about this post as a user of this product (passive with 95% equity).

    1) I think you did a fair review and I agree the product is better for someone with high number equity. Otherwise it becomes quite expensive.

    2) In the frankly website, when you choose the product you are interested in, you click on product overview, and you can get a PDF with the indexes the fund is tracking. Here is the link to the 95% equity.

    https://products.swisscanto.com/products/product/CH0512157782?lang=en

    It took me a while to find it, but it is there (I hope the link works here).

    3) Currency hedging adds costs, for sure. However, it prevents you from selling the assets at a moment in which, for instance, the CHF is very strong against USD. Since this is something for the pension, it doesn’t bother me that much as it “guarantees” purchasing power in Switzerland.

    For my taxable account, I do have my long-term investments unhedged.

    4) The product with 95% equity has roughly a 30% home bias (market cap weight of CH is less than 3%). To me, because this is something for the pension, it makes sense that you don’t deviate so so much from the Swiss market so don’t loose purchasing power in Switzerland.

    5) I was pleased to see that Frankly includes global small caps funds in their products. Again, there is also a home bias in small caps.

    6) I am not a fan of having 2.5% in gold to be honest.

    In general, I am quite happy with this product. It is well diversified in large and small caps and the fees are low for this kind of product. It is true that there are things that could be improved, but I think I will reach my financial goals with this product.

    I hope this is helpful to someone.

    1. Hi Jose,

      2) Is the information in one fo the overly long PDFs in German? I have to admit that I did not go through them since I don’t read German. The English available ones don’t seem to have this information and I don’t see any Product OVerview.

      3) That’s correct that’s it’s protection, it’s only interesting in the long term not in the short term. And most people using digital 3a have a long term horizon.

      Thanks a lot for your feedback :)

  4. Hi there

    Im new in CH and have 0 in pillar 3 so far. Do you think Frankly (now 0.46% fee) makes sense for me if I can get 50 chf voucher (the first year is free of charge and a bit more)? I mean comparing it with Finpension.

    FYI, I will only invest the max tax free amount per year (around 6883) and i still have almost 30 years before retirement. I dont really care about transparency tbh.

    1. Hi M,

      Why Frankly over Finpension? Is that just for the 50 CHF voucher? I think Finpension is superior enough to Frankly that 50 CHF would not matter. 50 CHF over 30 years is absolutely insignificant.
      Now, Frankly is not bad, but it’s inferior to both VIAC and finpension in my opinion.
      So, I would still recommend Finpension.

      1. Thanks for the reply. Well my initial idea is to get the immediate rewards first since I can open multiple accounts. But after reading some more, I think I will choose Finpension instead. Again thanks so much for your analysis and Ill use your referral code.

  5. Thanks for another great Review.
    The all-in-fee sounds very good! Seems to me, the catch here (for people who want a high stock allocation) is the currency hedging you mentioned (talking about the 95-Fund). So the fund itself is held in CHF, but holds other shares that are CHF-Hedged? According to the link below, the cost of hedging is usually included in the TER. If this fund has zero TER, does that mean you’re not paying for hedging (can hardly imagine that :) )? Or will the fund have a slightly lower performance because some of the contained shares have extra hedge costs?
    I find this somewhat confusing.. Would love a blog post of yours discussing hedged funds in detail!

    Link I mentioned earlier:
    https://www.justetf.com/ch/news/etf/why-currency-hedged-etfs-are-rising-in-popularity.html

    1. Hi EarnestPear,

      Yes, the hedging is the catch here. Note that some people may prefer hedging, but that’s another story.
      The fund itself will hold normal shares, maybe in USD. But on top of that, they will pay for hedging, generally with forward contracts so that the fund itself will trade in CHF. In a lot of cases, the cost of hedging is in the performance of the fund. Sometimes, it’s included in TER, but it depends because there are several costs to hedging.

      There are also some advantages to hedging, it’s not all bad. For the very long-term (and for most investors) I do not think it makes much sense.

      There will be an entire article on hedging coming this month to the blog, stay tuned :)

      Thanks for stopping by!

  6. Thank you for this great article, which provides interesting insights (especially the hedging aspect)!
    When comparing frankly to viac in the last section you didn’t mention the issuance and redemption fees. To my knowledge viac does not have these fees, which is another significant difference between the two 3a solutions.
    Keep up the good work!

    1. HI daigaff,

      Thanks for your kind words :)

      Actually, there are also issuance and redemption fees with VIAC. Most of the funds they are using have these fees. It is difficult to compare them since it depends on, so I consider them to be equivalent. But I should make this more clear in the article :)

      Thanks for stopping by!

  7. Hi,

    Thanks for the comparison, this is very valuable! As usual: amazing job!

    I am wondering whether Frankly really subtracts additional fees for the currency hedging. Their management fee is an all-in-fee, so as a customer I would think that currency hedging costs are included. Am I wrong or is this another transparency issue of Frankly?

    Best, Fero

    1. Hi Fero,

      Thanks for your kind words :) I’m glad it’s useful.

      No, they will not show in the all-in-fee since it will depend on the performance of the CHF and of the foreign currencies. You cannot really estimate. But over the long-term, the costs are quite significant (can be up to 0.5% on top of other fees).
      You will lose returns compared to the non-hedged returns. However, you will have less volatility in your portfolio, which is good.

      I still think this is a transparency issue, but they cannot show this as a percentage since it depends on the future.

      Thanks for stopping by!

  8. Interesting. Whilst on the subject of 3te Säule accounts, there is another option when you take third pillar together with the same bank as you take a mortgage. Namely, that you can pay part of your amortisation into their third pillar instead of paying back the capital on your loan. The amount in the 3te Säule must be pledged to the bank in case of default. This means you gain the advantage of investment over the long term in the 3te Säule and you avoid using cash to pay down your mortgage.

    1. Hi Captain Telf,

      Yes, this is entirely correct. I cover this on my guide on mortgages.
      You can either use a third pillar to amortize indirectly or you can pledge your assets instead of using them for your downpayment. But keep in mind in that case that the amount of your mortgage will increase and so will your interest payments and your amortization as well.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      1. Hi Mr.
        Well, technically you’re right, but having pledged the third pillar (or any other account in that matter) means that any payments in that account is part of the amortization amount you have to pay in. As many people already pay the max. amount in the third pillar, there are no “new costs” in that sense, when having a mortgage.

      2. Hi Michael,

        I am not sure I follow you:
        * You still have to pay more interest since the debt is higher, right?
        * And you will amortize a higher amount since the debt is higher, no?

        Unless I am missing something which is quite possible since I have never pledged anything to a bank.

        Thanks for stopping by!

    2. I done exactly this and moved from Viac to Frankly because a made a good 15years 1% mortgage with ZKB and I had to use Frankly to be able to pledge the 3a. So far this seems be the best setup if you are having house mortgage as well.

      Or else i would also go with Viac.

  9. I wish I could invest in active funds or trusts or individual stocks. The returns on the passive trusts are pretty poor as you end up owning a whole lot of large poorly performing companies and sectors you just don’t want to be in. My uk pension is invested 100% in the equities I have chosen. Pity CH doesn’t allow the same as it’s going to make Swiss pensioners poorer.

    At least it’s better than the 2nd pillar. I’m quite pissed off I can’t manage my own assets – it’s my money!

    1. Hi HickvonFrick,

      I would not wish to invest in active funds personally. I would rather bet on the entire stock market than try to be smarter than it or rely on people thinking that they are smarter and paying them large fees for failing at that.
      But being able to invest more aggressively in the second and third pillar would be great indeed. The Swiss system is definitely not the best in terms of control of the assets.

      Thanks for stopping by!

Leave a Reply

Your comment may not appear instantly since it has to go through moderation. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *