Forgotten 2nd pillar assets: how to find them

How do 2nd pillar assets get lost?

When you leave an employer, its pension fund calculates your termination benefit: the savings built up in your 2nd pillar. It must pay this to your new employer’s pension fund or, if you do not have one, into a vested benefits account or policy of your choice.

If it receives no instructions, it pays the money to the Substitute Occupational Benefit Institution, no earlier than six months and no later than two years after you leave (Art. 4 para. 2 FZG). You are not always told, especially if you have moved house in the meantime.

The most common situations:

• a change of job, with no reply to the letter from the former pension fund;
• a period of unemployment, leave or a break between two jobs;
• moving abroad, then coming back to Switzerland;
• moving house: the letter goes to an old address;
• several short-term, temporary or part-time jobs.

How much money is waiting?

A lot. At the end of 2025, the Substitute Occupational Benefit Institution managed CHF 21 billion in vested benefit assets, spread across 1.6 million accounts (2025 annual report, in French). Some of these accounts no longer have any contact with their holders: at the end of 2022, accounts with no valid address represented CHF 5.6 billion (Le Temps, in French).

These assets earn little: at the end of 2025, the Substitute Institution was paying only 0.1% interest on them. A forgotten account therefore loses value to inflation, year after year.

How to find out whether you have forgotten assets

Every January, pension funds and vested benefits institutions report everyone whose assets they hold to the Central Office 2nd Pillar, which is run by the LOB Guarantee Fund (Art. 24a FZG). On request, the Central Office compares your identity, including your AHV number, with these reports.

You probably have assets somewhere if:

• you have worked in Switzerland on a salary high enough to be insured with a pension fund (more than CHF 22,680 a year with the same employer, the current threshold);
• you left a job without transferring your termination benefit, or you no longer remember whether you did;
• a long time ago, you received a letter from a pension fund or a vested benefits foundation that you never followed up;
• the savings from a former job do not appear on your current pension certificate.

Finding your assets, step by step

1. Gather your information: your AHV number (it is on your health insurance card), any previous surnames and, if possible, a list of your former employers.
2. Ask the Central Office 2nd Pillar to carry out a search. The form is available on the LOB Guarantee Fund website. The search is free and the reply arrives by post.
3. Assert your rights with each institution reported to you: it is the institution that examines your request and decides on payment or transfer.
4. Choose where to put the money: in your current pension fund if you are working, otherwise in a vested benefits account.

Once your assets have been found

If you work in Switzerland and are a member of a pension fund, the law requires your vested benefits to be transferred to it (Art. 4 para. 2bis FZG). Your savings are then all in one place, which can improve your benefits in the event of disability or death.

Otherwise, you place them in a vested benefits account or policy. The law allows no more than two vested benefits institutions (Art. 12 FZV): this is often a good opportunity to consolidate scattered accounts, so that you have a clear overview and avoid paying fees twice.

A cash withdrawal is only possible in specific cases: leaving Switzerland for good, becoming self-employed, a very small amount, buying a home to live in, or from five years before the AHV reference age. If you are leaving Switzerland, read our guide Leaving Switzerland: what happens to your 2nd pillar?