Open Pension: the path to a digital pension overview

With Open Finance, the Federal Department of Finance (FDF) wants to make it easier to use personal financial data. The aim is to promote new services, boost innovation and increase the competitiveness of the Swiss financial centre. The FDF provides for the introduction of common standards that are broadly supported nationally and – where appropriate – internationally compatible. Interfaces should be designed to be easily accessible, secure and data protection-compliant for customers and trusted third-party providers. 

Open Pension is part of Open Finance and is intended to enable secure, standardised and interoperable digital access to pension data from the first, second and third pillars in the future. Insured persons should be able to access their data electronically, process it further and – with their consent – make it available to trustworthy third parties. The Ettlin motion (24.4597) reinforces this objective by underlining the political support for uniform and secure data access. 

The digitalisation of occupational pensions is well advanced, particularly at large institutions. Powerful platforms such as BVG Exchange and EASX now enable secure data exchange between pension funds. The Swissdec software also ensures that payroll data is transmitted directly by employers to insurance companies, pension funds and authorities.  

 According to the latest study by the Swisscanto pension fund, around three-quarters of insured persons can already access their data via a pension portal, with another quarter in the planning stage. 

Digital solutions such as pension certificates and 360° dashboards with QR codes facilitate secure data exchange and offer a comprehensive overview. Missing data from Pillars 1 and 3 are complemented by intelligent estimates and user-friendly input options.

The insurance industry is pushing ahead with the introduction of Open Pension in order to improve the quality of advice in the long term and make it more objective. Implementation is based on a multi-level system architecture: from trust and identity (e.g. e-ID, consent management) to technical standards (definition of the data points to be exchanged, such as the digital pension certificate) to technical mechanisms (QR code, APIs, eBVG platform) and user-oriented applications. 

The industry is striving to reach agreement on minimum data points for a harmonised electronic pension certificate – for example in the form of a QR code. A technical standard for machine readability is also being created. It will also examine how to implement an interoperable open pension standard for the second pillar, based on the eBVG platform. 

Other objectives include a technical concept for defining pension gaps as a basis for advice and a long-term goal, such as expanding the eBVG platform or introducing a wallet solution. The associations ASIP and inter-pension will be closely involved in order to create an industry-wide memorandum of understanding in spring 2026.