The AVS fund, which has been administered for 26 years by UBS, will now be under the responsibility of an American bank, State Street, the “Tribune de Genève” revealed on Monday.
The compensation fund for AVS, Disability Insurance and APG (benefits for loss of earnings) is now the responsibility of State Street. These are the reserves of these social insurances; they represent a little more than 40 billion francs.
Until now, UBS was the custodian bank and which had control over the management of this money. But compenswiss, the autonomous public law establishment of the Confederation, which politically oversees these funds, has decided to submit this mandate to the competition. The American bank, headquartered in Boston, won the contract, to the detriment of UBS.
Specific skills and economic reasons
There were several reasons for compenswiss’ decision. On the one hand, there were technical reasons, because State Street is considered more competent in this very specific area, where it is considered a heavyweight.
And on the other hand, simply economic reasons: the American institution is cheaper than UBS for this mandate. But no figures have been revealed. Note that this change has nothing to do with the forced merger of UBS and Credit Suisse, since the call for tenders was launched in 2021.
Even though our pension money is now managed by a US bank, UBS has been designated a sub-custodian bank.
This means that these billions technically remain in the same place. And even in a disaster scenario, for example if the American bank went bankrupt, compenswiss would keep the fund’s assets, because a custodian bank is never the holder of them.
Jean-Philippe Rutz/ebz
