Swiss Life Select will not help your finances
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I have already talked about the Swiss Life Select (SLS) company in the past. I paid for their services. And I consider it is one of my biggest budgeting mistakes. There are many reasons for that. Not only was paying for their services a mistake. But so was accepting some of the products they recommended. And I just thought a new thing that I find out about them. They screwed me over with bad insurance.
So I want to talk more about that. I do not want other people to make the same mistake as me. While this post is focused on SLS, it applies to most of all the financial advisors and insurance advisors you will be in contact with. They almost all have the same issues.
As a note, this only reflects my experience with Swiss Life Select. Maybe some other people had a better experience with them. And since you have a private advisor in the company, it is also possible that my bad experience is related to that.
So, we will see what is wrong with what SLS offers you in this article! I hope that this does not come as too much of a rant. I made some bad choices by trusting these people, and I want people to avoid making the same mistake as me!
My experience with Swiss Life Select
First, it is essential to get some context. Two years ago, I had a much smaller knowledge of investing. And I was much less aware of what you can do for free. It is important. Now, I would simply laugh if I heard some of the things they recommended to me then.
In 2016, I was contacted on the phone by Swiss Life Select to have an appointment and review my insurance, investments, retirement, and tax plans. Usually, they only contact you because somebody gives them your phone number. I am pretty sure I was contacted from a random phone list. But I cannot know for sure.
So, we settled on the appointment date. It lasted two or three hours, and we discussed my insurance, retirement, and investments. Mostly, it was an interesting discussion. But there were a lot of things I already knew. And they insisted on going slowly over everything. It was too long, honestly. But for people who do not know enough about these subjects, it may have been good.
After this, we settled on another appointment to review their offer. SLS proposed me several things:
- Change my car insurance for a cheaper one.
- Subscribe to legal insurance.
- Stop my TCS subscription because it duplicates some of my car insurance policies.
- Invest in Swiss Life partner investment funds.
- Subscribe a second-third pillar life insurance
From the top of my head, that is all they proposed I do. I went on with the first three points. For the fourth point, they said they would contact me again later for this.
And the fifth point was just dumb! Even at that time, I knew this was not a good idea. I should have realized then that it was not a good deal altogether. A life insurance 3a is a very bad investment.
Now, we can get over why you do not need Swiss Life Select at all. And some of the reasons why you should avoid it!
You can get everything for free!
There is absolutely nothing that Swiss Life Select will offer you that you cannot get for free. Of course, it may take you a little time on your own. And you may have to do some research. But everything is out there. If you are serious about your insurance and your finances, you should do it yourself. In the long-term, you will be much better off if you do it by yourself rather than using the offer of people like Swiss Life Select.
SLS is supposedly helping you find cheap insurance. However, all the others are out there. You can easily compare different insurance policies and find the one that is the most affordable for the coverage you need.
Currently, the best free and independent website for comparing insurance policies is comparis.ch. Their website can compare many types of insurance and has many options. It works well. It is even faster than asking someone to check your insurance coverage. It is the best option for getting the best insurance. If you want, you can, of course, also do it yourself by asking an offer from each insurance provider you are interested in. But in that case, it will likely take a lot of time.
If you want to compare different retirement strategies and third-pillar investments, you also have many resources online. For instance, in this blog, I have discussed several third pillar alternatives. But there are also online resources that can help you find what you need. All of this is for free. If you do your research well, you can find the best option.
SLS tries to sell you sub-par products
Not only can you find everything they do for free, but you can also find better options than what they offer. You should not forget that they are paid by the number of insurances they sell you. I think that different insurance providers offer different commissions. Therefore, they may not offer products from insurance that do not offer big commissions.
In my case, they recommended I change my car insurance for a cheaper one. I was happy with the recommendation, and I went with it. However, I found out afterward that this was not the most affordable option for my car. They also recommended I get legal insurance. I think this was a good idea. However, the insurance they recommended is significantly more expensive than other options. It took me a while to learn about that because I trusted their choice.
Another thing they recommended is to invest in funds offered by their partner private bank, Pictet. I did not invest in them. But that is highly fortunate since they only have costly funds. They have mostly active funds with at least 0.7% of fees. Their funds are, by far, not the best investment funds.
SLS offers you bad contracts
When I met with them, they convinced me to take legal insurance cover. I thought it would be a good idea. I still think it is a good idea. However, I made the mistake of trusting SLS in their choices, and I did not do my research.
It turns out that there are three issues with the legal insurance they made me take. First, it is way too much coverage for me. They made me take one million coverage insurance. I could have taken the minimum coverage, which is 250’000 CHF, and I would have been fine. Secondly, the insurance they offered me is not the cheapest there was. I found out later that they sold me medium price insurance. Finally, the contract they made me sign is bad. I cannot get out of this contract for many years. This contract is insane.
One could argue that I should never have signed. And I agree with that. It is mostly my fault. But these people are merely exploiting people who trust them. They should not be trusted! You should realize that they just want to sell you insurance to get referral fees! They are not acting for your sake.
They do not keep their promises
Another thing that I did not like about my interactions with Swiss Life Select is that they told me they would contact me again for more things that we did not have time to cover in our meeting. And they never did.
They were supposed to offer me investment opportunities with their partner, the private bank Pictet. They were also supposed to contact me again to evaluate opportunities for my taxes. For both of these, they never contacted me back. I guessed that since they already had my money, they did not care so much anymore.
To be honest, I do not care about that anymore. The investment funds they would have advised would have been strictly worse than passive index funds. However, I am a believer in doing the things one says. But I may be a bit old school on that.
Conclusion
Overall, I think that Swiss Life Select (SLS) does not offer anything that you cannot get for free. Moreover, what they offer is not optimal. You can generally find better options by doing the research yourself.
Most of the reasons highlighted in this article apply to most financial advisors. It is essential to remember that those people work for commissions money. Even if you do not need it, they will want to sell you new insurance and new products. And these products may even be worse than alternatives you could have found yourself had you needed them.
Now, I may be a bit biased since these people have had me. Most of the fault is mine. So I hope this post does not become too much of a rant. But it does feel good to write this! And I hope that other people will not make the same mistake as me!
What do you think? Do you have any experience with bad financial advisors?
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I was with SLS and later moved on to Finpension to compare the returns. Unfortunately, SLS’s solutions were much better and higher returns. Even after deducting all the fees, I would still have a higher return with SLS. My advisor was also very fast in response and very responsible. I think it really depends on the level of passion of the advisor in terms of service. But for the investment returns, I definitely have a better result with SLS.
Over how long are you comparing? Generally, returns are meaningless in short-to-medium term.
I would honestly be surprised if SLS (what product by the way) would perform better after fees than Finpension or any other good passive 3a.
Everything you said matches my experience with Swiss Life. I’ve never been so disappointed. Their advice always led to frustration. The service was terrible, and unprofessional, and they ignored me. They also lied to me. I was trying to buy an apartment, and they promised to transfer the money the next day. It’s been almost two weeks, and there’s no money, and they don’t answer my emails or messages.