True Wealth 3a Review 2026: Pros & Cons
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(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)
True Wealth is a Swiss robo-advisor that allows high customization, aggressive investing, and low fees. In November 2022, True Wealth introduced support for third pillars.
Since they are an excellent robo-advisor, I want to check out their third pillar offer.
In this review, I will analyze the True Wealth 3a offer in detail. We will examine its fees, investment strategies, and pros and cons. By the end of this review, you will know whether you should use True Wealth 3a.
| Total Fee | 0.18% per year |
|---|---|
| Maximum portfolios | 5 |
| Stock allocation | Up to 99% |
| Maximum foreign exposure | 99% |
| Maximum investment in cash | 100% |
| Investment Strategy | Index funds and ETFs |
| Fund providers | N/A |
| Languages | English, French, German |
| Sustainable option | Yes |
| Mobile Application | Yes |
| Web Application | Yes |
| Custodian Bank | BLKB |
| Established | 2022 |
| Foundation’s domicile | Liestal, Basel-Land |
True Wealth 3a
TrueWealth is an excellent Swiss robo-advisor with very affordable prices, making it a great robo-advisor for serious investors.
Use code SWISS100 to receive up to 100 CHF in fee credits.
- Very customizable
True Wealth is a mature Swiss robo-advisor launched publicly in 2014. As of 2026, they are managing more than 2.5 billion in assets. True Wealth is a major player in the investing market in Switzerland.
Their robo-advisor service is excellent. They have low fees, allow very high investment in stocks, and let you customize your portfolio to the extreme. In short, True Wealth is one of the best robo-advisors in Switzerland.
In November 2022, True Wealth announced a new product: True Wealth 3a, their third pillar offer.
The 3a Digital Pension Foundation holds True Wealth 3a assets, which True Wealth manages under the foundation’s regulations.
Everything is managed holistically within your account. So, you can see both your 3a and your investments from within the same interface.
It is worth mentioning that the foundation is located in Liestal, in the canton of Basel-Land. When withdrawing your third pillar while abroad, you will pay withholding taxes based on the location of the 3a foundation. Basel-Land is relatively cheap for withdrawal amounts lower than 500,000 CHF. Higher than this, it becomes quite expensive. Also, for amounts up to 100,000 CHF, it is significantly more expensive than the cheapest tax domicile. But overall, it is a relatively good tax domicile.
You may want to consider this tax domicile if you plan to leave Switzerland. For people retiring in Switzerland, this makes no difference.
Investing Strategy
We should look at how money is invested with True Wealth 3a. True Wealth 3a will invest in index funds (from Credit Suisse) and ETFs. I do not know any other third pillar that uses both.
They focus on passive funds, which is excellent because these funds are low-cost and should replicate the market’s performance.
You can invest up to 99% in stocks in your 3a, which is excellent. The 1% needs to stay in cash for rebalancing and fees.
Interestingly, they have a 0.43% interest on cash (as of April 2026), which may be interesting if you need to temporarily keep your 3a in cash.
When they started, they were limited to a minimum of 35% Swiss francs. However, in June 2024, they have lifted this limitation. And you can now have 99% foreign currency exposure.
True Wealth 3a will propose a well-diversified portfolio (diversification is critical). As an example, here is the portfolio True Wealth 3a proposed for the maximum risk profile:
We can see that there are six instruments:
- 47% in US stocks as a pension fund
- 18% in European stocks as an ETF
- 12% in Asian stocks (developed only and no Japan) as an ETF
- 10% in emerging markets as an ETF
- 7% in real estate hedged to CHF, as a pension fund
- 6% in real estate unhedged, as a pension fund
Overall, it is a decent portfolio. The currency exposure is quite aggressive, with only 8% in CHF and the rest in various currencies (51% in USD). I find it weird there are no Swiss stocks and all the real estate is outside of Switzerland as well.
Even though they have already improved it a lot, I believe there is still too little US stocks. When I generated the portfolio, the US represented 62% of the world stock market and not 54% (47/86). But this is not a huge difference.
I think there is also too much real estate for an aggressive investor. But that may be more of a personal preference.
While not my favorite portfolio, it remains a good portfolio.
As a robo-advisor, True Wealth has excellent customization. However, this is not the case for the 3a account. Indeed, you can only have a single global portfolio shared by the untied assets and the 3a. There is no way to tune the 3a to your needs without changing the free assets portfolio. We should be able to customize both independently. I was expecting better from True Wealth.
In fact, when I configured a 3a for my personal True Wealth account, it made my untied assets worse. Before, I could invest 99% in US stocks, but since the addition of the 3a (empty), I am limited.
Investing Fees
If you want maximum returns over the years and use passive investing, it is important to reduce the fees. The fees are the best lever for passive investors.
Currently, there is no management fee on True Wealth 3a. This fact is amazing.
In addition, there are a few fees. First, you will pay the TER of the ETFs and index funds. This fee depends on your portfolio. The fees vary from 0.13% for global portfolios to 0.21% for sustainable portfolios. So, we can take 0.18% as a base fee.
Then, you also have to pay stamp duty taxes when shares are bought and sold. This tax is only for ETFs, not for index funds. It should not make a huge difference since it only applies to operations. This can be reduced by netting and pooling.
There is also a small markup of 0.10% for foreign currency exchanges. Again, this can also be reduced with pooling and netting, so it should not be too significant. Given the high amount of CHF in the portfolio, this fee should not pose an important issue.
You will pay an overall 0.18% fee on your True Wealth 3a asset. This fee is incredibly low, almost twice lower than the cheapest available third pillar.
So how does True Wealth make money? Usually, commission-free services make money in a way that is detrimental to users. However, I do not see this with True Wealth.
The reason they are making it free is two-fold:
- They offer a new service to their existing clients at a very low cost for True Wealth
- They hope to bring in new customers for their robo-advisor service, which is not free (but very affordable).
Since True Wealth uses pension funds for US stocks, it does not suffer from any tax inefficiency from US dividends. This is great because when it started, it used ETFs, which incurred a hidden fee of about 0.14% per year. Fortunately, this hidden fee has been removed.
For an aggressive investor, we get a total fee of 0.18% per year (on average). With the extra 0.225%, the total fee would only be 0.405% which is still a good fee.
So, overall, True Wealth 3a fees are excellent! If a management fee is introduced later, it will become fairly priced but not excellent anymore.
Investing with True Wealth 3a
If you already have an account with True Wealth, you can open your True Wealth 3a in a few minutes. Everything is included in the web application.
If you do not have True Wealth, you will need to open an investment account, and then you will be able to open a 3a. The minimum for the 3a is 1 CHF. If you want to also invest in their free assets, you will need a minimum of 8500 CHF.
True Wealth has an interesting feature for contributing to your True Wealth 3a account: auto top-up. With this feature, every time you contribute to your True Wealth account, the money will go to your 3a until the maximum is reached. And then, the rest of the money will go to your regular robo-advisor account.
Also, True Wealth will automatically create five third pillar accounts. True Wealth will fund one account each year until there are five accounts. Once there are five, the deposits will be spread over the five accounts. Having five retirement accounts is optimal since you can stagger the withdrawals over five years to reduce the taxes you will pay.
On the other hand, if you do a transfer from another foundation, this will go into an extra account. This means that you will have more than 5 accounts if you do any external transfer. This is a major disadvantage because it will make it much more difficult to balance the different accounts.
You can also transfer money directly from your free assets. True Wealth made it very easy to fund their 3a.
On the other hand, you have to be careful that adding a 3a to your account can change your free portfolio! When I added a 3a to my account for testing, True Wealth added some real estate to my free portfolio.
I strongly dislike this, and adding a 3a should not change my custom portfolio because I added a 3a. You can change it back, but you must notice it first! I may have missed the notice, but if there is a notice, it is not very visible.
So, be careful about your free portfolio changing without enough notice. And be careful that transfers from other third pillars will lead to unbalanced accounts.
Alternatives
We should quickly compare True Wealth 3a against two alternatives.
True Wealth 3a vs Finpension 3a
Finpension 3a is the best third pillar in Switzerland.
Use the FEYKV5 code to get a fee credit of 25 CHF!
- Invest 99% in stocks
I am currently using Finpension 3a for my third pillar accounts. Finpension 3a is currently the best third pillar in Switzerland. So, we should compare True Wealth 3a and Finpension 3a.
The investing strategies are relatively similar. However, Finpension 3a uses only index funds, while True Wealth 3a uses a mix of ETFs and index funds. Both services let you invest 99% in stocks and both have no limit for foreign currency exposure.
The customization is much better with Finpension 3a. True Wealth only lets you have a global portfolio shared between your free assets and your 3a. On the other hand, with Finpension 3a, you can have a different portfolio for each account, and everything is highly customizable.
True Wealth 3a has the unique feature of automatically creating five accounts and balancing them. I wish Finpension 3a could implement something like this.
Regarding fees, Finpension 3a costs about 0.39%, while True Wealth 3a costs about 0.18%. True Wealth will incur more stamp duty taxes, and its currency conversion fee is higher than Finpension’s. Overall, True Wealth 3a is cheaper than Finpension 3a.
On the other hand, the default portfolios by Finpension are better diversified than those by True Wealth 3a.
Both services let you hold five different accounts. However, Finpension has a major advantage in that external transfers will go the portfolio of your choice. As a result, you can do better balancing with Finpension 3a than with True Wealth 3a.
With the updates from 2024, True Wealth 3a is now cheaper than Finpension 3a. The advantages in customization of Finpension tips the scale in favor of Finpension 3a for me. However, the difference is slight, and it would be difficult to go wrong with any of them.
If you are interested, I can write an entire comparison between these two products.
True Wealth 3a vs VIAC
VIAC is another great third pillar provider. So, we can also quickly compare VIAC and True Wealth 3a.
VIAC uses only index funds, while True Wealth 3a uses a mix of ETFs and index funds.
VIAC fees are at 0.40%, while True Wealth 3a is at 0.18%. So, True Wealth 3a is much cheaper than VIAC. The stamp duty taxes may add a little to the fees of True Wealth 3a since they use some ETFs.
Both services let their users invest aggressively with a maximum foreign exposure limit.
True Wealth 3a is better than VIAC! The fees are lower, and you can invest more aggressively.
True Wealth 3a FAQ
What is True Wealth 3a auto top-up?
Auto top-up allows you to automatically send money to your True Wealth 3a account in priority and spread the balances over five different third pillar accounts.
Will True Wealth 3a remain free forever?
True Wealth 3a hopes to keep the prices low forever.
How much foreign currency can you have with True Wealth 3a?
The foreign exposure is limited to 99% with True Wealth 3a. This is the best that a 3a can achieve!
What is the minimum to invest in True Wealth 3a?
You can invest as little as 1 CHF in your True Wealth 3a.
Can you customize your True Wealth 3a portfolio?
Not really, True Wealth 3a is tied to a global portfolio in the account, shared between free assets and the 3a. Therefore, changing your portfolio results in changing it for both your untied and 3a assets.
Can you use a different portfolio for each 3a account?
No, each 3a is tied to the same global portfolio.
How many third pillars can you have with True Wealth?
You can have up to five (optimal!) third pillars with True Wealth 3a.
Who is True Wealth 3a good for?
True Wealth 3a is good for users of True Wealth that want a good 3a and do not want to use two different providers.
Who is True Wealth 3a not good for?
True Wealth 3a is not good if you do not want to invest with True Wealth.
True Wealth 3a Summary
True Wealth 3a is a robo-advisor third pillar, created by True Wealth. They allow aggressive investing at a very low price.
Product Brand: True Wealth
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True Wealth 3a Pros
Let's summarize the main advantages of True Wealth 3a:
- You can invest 99% in stocks
- You can invest 99% in foreign currencies
- No management fees
True Wealth 3a Cons
Let's summarize the main disadvantages of True Wealth 3a:
- Transfers from another 3a will lead to unbalanced portfolios
- Impossible to change the portfolio of the 3a independently
- Cannot have a different portfolio for each 3a
- Use some ETFs
- Adding a 3a can change your global portfolio
Conclusion
TrueWealth is an excellent Swiss robo-advisor with very affordable prices, making it a great robo-advisor for serious investors.
Use code SWISS100 to receive up to 100 CHF in fee credits.
- Very customizable
I am impressed by True Wealth 3a fees. I was not expecting them to cut down fees to zero. Generally, commission-free has a big catch, but that does not seem to be the case here. Since the latest changes in June 2024, the 3a is even better, with tax-efficient pension funds for US stocks and 99% foreign currency exposure.
My main issue with True Wealth 3a is that customization is limited since the portfolio is shared between the free and 3a assets. And you cannot have different allocations for different portfolios.
Nevertheless, if you already have a True Wealth account, having a 3a with them makes sense.
I still recommend Finpension 3a as the best third pillar available in Switzerland. True Wealth 3a is currently cheaper, but the extra customization of Finpension 3a is quite nice. Moreover, Finpension 3a is really leading the innovation (99% foreign currency exposure, for instance), while others are just following.
To learn more, read about the best third pillar in Switzerland.
What about you? What do you think about True Wealth 3a?
More reading
Interview of Daniel Peter, CEO of VIAC
Inside VIAC. Read our exclusive interview with Daniel Peter, CEO of VIAC, and learn why they disrupted the Swiss Third Pillar market.
Finpension 3a Review 2026: Pros & Cons
Finpension 3a is an excellent third pillar account for long-term investors, with low prices and high returns, find out more!
Frankly 3a Review 2026: Pros & Cons
Frankly Review. We analyze ZKB's 3a app, its fees, and investment strategies to see if it competes with VIAC and Finpension.
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Hi,
Excellent article! One question though – is there a decent 3a provider which allows you to pick your own individual stocks as well, not just ETFs?
Thanks
Currently, no 3a provider lets you choose stocks directly.
Inyova 3a invests in stocks directly and you can customize it, but you are then limited to only sustainable companies.
Hey Baptiste, as always kudos to your work!
I am looking for some real past performance stats for both TrueWealth, Viac, Finpension or Selma but didn’t find them easily on Google. They all show projections but not how some portfolio performs in the past. Since we can’t pick individual products with these providers but we rely on their strategies, I’d find it a key factor to see who performed better in a given time range.
Do you think we can find them somewhere or are you aware?
Thanks
Hi Eva
With Finpension, you can find them on their website: https://finpension.ch/en/3a/strategies/credit-suisse/
With True Wealth, you can also find them on their website: https://app.truewealth.ch/app/demo/allocation/simulated-return
As for Selma, I don’t think you can find it indeed.
As a side note, you can actually pick individual funds with Finpension and True Wealth.
There is a lot of buzz about new financial players such as Viac, Finpension, Truewealth, and Inyova. I have invested a small amount of money in Finpension, Truewealth, and Inyova for 2-3 years. Their benchmarks show a loss of 5-10% in my personal dashboards, while the MSCI World can perform at the same level or better. The dashboards in the tool promise huge wins in 20 years. At the same time, I see the fees running monthly/quarterly and ask myself if I am just paying fees to lose my savings. If I had parked my money in a bank account, I would not have lost 5-10% for sure. And there are always those promo codes. Honestly, it smells like a bubble.
Hi Paul,
The entire world stock market has not been performing well in the last 2-3 years. These providers are using index funds so cannot perform better than the market.
Sure, when the market goes badly, you could have stayed in cash. But if you had stayed in the cash in the last 20 years, you would have lost a ton of money compared to investing in stocks. Over 2-3 years, or even 5, performance is irrelevant.
Hi Baptiste,
Always great to have your reviews as a guide. Thanks for all the efforts and sharing your thoughts. You should think about a second career as a financial advisor.
Today I reorganized our Säule 3a investments away from the AKB. At the time, this gave us advantages for the mortgage, but now it’s better to benefit from lower fees. Despite your suggestion, I choose True Wealth over Finpension though, as to me, it seems much more customizable. As you say, the default investments in True Wealth are not optimal, but you have a lot of freedom to adjust the portfolio to fit your overall asset allocation and 0.0% fees is hard to beat. Their philosophy is just more based on making the best use of correlation between assets classes, compared to your focus on mirroring global markets and keeping it simple. Diversification is widely known as the only free lunch in finance, so why not make good use of it. Some of your own articles show nicely how a pinch of gold or real estate can stabilize and even enhance returns over the long run.
Hi Joerg,
Thanks for your kind words.
I agree that customization and diversification is very important. And TW is a very good option. But isn’t Finpension 3a as customizable as TW? You can create custom portfolios and choose pretty much anything you want. I am not saying that to change your mind, just curious how TW is more customizable?
Hi Baptiste,
I haven’t used Finpension, but only checked their website to decide. And seems you were right, I have just missed the offer to set up allocations yourself. They even have a precious metal fund with 0.0% TER, not sure how this is possible. Anyhow, I thought they only had those couple of options with different allocations to stocks and bonds.
By the way, True Wealth is planning a children account for this summer. Perhaps an idea for a future article.
Greetings from Zürich.
Joerg
Hi Joerg,
Several of the accounts from Finpension 3a are free because they can be used only for retirement funds so fees are lower.
Yes, looking forward to this child account. Other services are also planning one and Findependent just started one. These accounts are going to make it easier for people to invest for their children.
Hi Joerg
Thanks for sharing the info about children account from True Wealth. Just curious: where have you read about this? I was not able to find any information about this.
I am looking for such a thing for a long time already. Inyova says that they offer it – but in my eyes the do not really: you can only open an additional strategy / account, but it is in your name and not the name of the child… That means the money is not protected (parents could take the money out at any time), and when you want to hand it over to the child at a later point, you need to liquidate all shares. Findependent just started something which looks very similar as Inyova to me. I really hope True Wealth does a better job here than others. It shouldn’t be that hard – cash savings accounts are also possible in the name of the child with any bank.
Hi Baptiste,
I am new to the investment field and find your pages and articles super useful! Thanks a lot for that!
I recently opened my TrueWealth investment account and was planning to have my 3rd pillar there too. However, after reading your article about 3rd pillar, I saw tha FinPension 3a might be a more competitive option than TrueWealt. Does this apply only in case of 3rd pilar accounts or is also valid if I have my investment account with TrueWealth?
2) In addition, I was planning to transfer my old 3rd pillar accounts from UBS to either TrueWealth or FinPension; is this a good idea and which one to choose? Thanks a lot in advance, Marina
Hi marina,
1) If you already have your TW account, having your 3a with them gives you the advantage of having both at the same place. Finpension 3a is better but not by a huge margin, unless you remove currency hedging which requires a custom portfolio.
2) Moving from UBS to anything seems like a good idea. As for which one, I think it mostly depends on you. I would choose Finpension 3a, but TW 3a is not a bad idea.
Hi Baptiste,
Thank you very much for all the information you provide, it is so useful for people like me who are just starting in this finance/investing world!
I have a very basic question related to Marina’s above, could you kindly explain how I can move my 3a pillar money currently at UBS to Finpension 3a? As I understand, these are Restricted accounts, so how exactly do I transfer my money?
Also, do you recommend a maximum of CHF to have per each of the five 3a accounts allowed?
Many thanks in advance!
Katia
Hi Katia
You can create a Finpension account first. Then, once your 3a is ready, you can tell Finpension (from the app) that you want to transfer from another 3a. Finpension will then generate a letter that you can complete and send to UBS. The transfer is not done directly by you, but you can initiate it by letter.
I don’t recommend any maximum, the goal is to keep them more or less balanced. My strategy is to contribute each year to the 3a with the least amount of money. But you could split your contribution 5-way each year and contribute an equal amount to each account. Both strategies work well.
Hi Baptiste, thanks again for an excellent review. Do you know how much interest rate these solutions (finpension and true wealth) provide on cash chf?
Thanks,
Dimich
Hi Dimich,
Currently (these changes often), VIAC offers 0.20% interest on cash. Finpension 3a does not let you hold cash.
Thanks Baptiste. I was more referring to the TW 3a. For example, I know that you cannot get uninvested with Finpension. Does the same hold for TW? How much in cash does TW let you have? (for example in finpension is only 1%).
For example, in postfinance, you can put some amount in your 3rd pillar initially in cash. Afterwards, you can decide how much of this amount you want to invest in some of postfinance’s possibilities. Is this possible with TW?
Thank you and best regards,
Dimich
Hi Dimich,
You can have cash with TW, and you get 1% interest on your cash. You can then change your cash allocation, and it will get invested.
Kind of a shame… I have a feeling this launched too quickly. I think I’ll wait before opening a 3a there. Maybe they’ll add ways to diversify in the future (?) The whole allocation/biases seem odd especially considering how good their ‘normal’ solution is. Glad I waited for your review though!
I don’t think it’s too early, it’s still a good product. But there are great products out there so it’s difficult to compare. This 3a is still much better than most third pillar in Switzerland.
Dear Baptiste
Your reviews are really useful. They are deep dives into often complex subjects, diligently tested yet explained simply and precisely. You point out things, like the Basel withdrawal tax, which could prevent losing a lot in tax. Thank you!
I have an account and a 3A account with Selma Finance, a trial to see if a robo-investor could outperform the bank and the libre passage account with Liberty in Schwyz. What really counts is the investment performance, which is difficult to establish.
I am pretty ignorant about investing and am looking for unbiased advise. I value your articles, if you were ever to start an investor club to help beginner investors, I would be interested.
Keep doing what you do so well.
Hi Jane
Thanks a lot for your kind words! I am glad my articles are useful!
So far, I don’t have any plan for an investor club, but all my advice is on this blog, that should help more people than an investor club :)
Good luck with your investing!
Love your reply and values, Baptiste.
You also lose an estimated 0.15% on the allocation shown in the blog due to the lack of withholding tax exemption compared to VIAC and finpension 3a.
Which is mentioned my article, as the 0.14% “fee”.
Thanks for this interesting read! I have read about True Wealth 3a on Mustachian Post, and tried it right away. So far, I am very convinced.
Your note that you need to have a non-3a portfolio with them is not correct. I have opened a new account, and I am just using 3a. I have to pay 0 management fees to them according to the information displayed in the app.
Regarding the strategy: I have adjusted their proposal, to replicate more or less my previous Finpension Global 100 strategy without issues. Probably your risk level is too low to do these adjustments? I can see that there are some hedged instruments in my portfolio, but the TER with 0.12% is pretty low in my opinion. If I remember correctly, also the Finpension strategy had some hedged funds in it.
Hi,
The minimum and the need for an actual account have been confirmed to me by True Wealth themselves. I will ask them again because it’s weird if you did not have to fund your account.
My risk level is 10/10 :)
Finpension has some hedged funds by default, but you can change your portfolio to not have any hedging.