This is our Investment Committee

Name: findependent
Brand: findependent
Rating: 5.0 (41 reviews)

The Investment Committee of findependent consists of:

Matthias Bryner – Founder of findependent
Tobias Hochstrasser – Investment Management at findependent
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hens – Deputy Head of the Institute for Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich

The three of them are united by their passion for long-term investing. Together they have more than 60 years of investment experience. More importantly, they bring different (professional) experiences, which guarantees different perspectives and opinions and leads to lively and differentiated discussions. You thus benefit from balanced and considered decisions.

Contact: tobias.hochstrasser@findependent.ch

More about the three

This is our Investment Committee

The Investment Committee of findependent consists of:

Matthias Bryner – Founder of findependent
Tobias Hochstrasser – Investment Management at findependent
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hens – Deputy Head of the Institute for Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich

Contact: tobias.hochstrasser@findependent.ch

More about the three

Responsibilities of the Investment Comittee

The Investment Committee formulates our investment principles. This means that you invest with findependent on a broad basis, passively and with a focus on the long term. We are guided neither by short-term market developments nor by which doomsday scenario is currently making the headlines in the daily papers. We are convinced that short-term action is not a promising strategy, but rather causes high costs.

The Investment Committee observes the investment universe and determines the investment solutions by means of selection and composition of the right ETFs . In doing so, it selects the investments carefully and according to strict selection criteria. In addition, the Investment Committee monitors that your selected investment solution is implemented correctly by means of Rebalancing, among other things.

The Investment Committee acts independently and is fully committed to the long-term success of your investment solution. It meets every six months, discusses and decides.

Timeline of Decisions

December 2022 – 1st Meeting

Founding
On December 14th, the committee met for the founding meeting in Aarau. The agenda was broad and included the investment year 2022, the current ETF list, as well as gold and Chinese bonds.

Decisions
The most important decision made was to «do nothing». The committee sees no reason to change the investment solutions. The losses in 2022 mean that the expected future returns increase. It is best to «ride out» the downturn.

In addition, the following additional ETFs are now available for customers who want to create their own ETF investment solution:

UBS ETF SLI (Swiss equities)
iShares Digitalisation UCITS ETF (equities with a thematic focus on digitalization)
iShares Core Euro Corp UCITS ETF (corporate bonds in euros)

All three ETFs strictly meet the strict selection criteriaand complement the existing offer.

Other
The committee also discussed the possible use of gold as an additional asset class. However, it decided against it. There are two reasons for this: First, gold has a high «insurance character», meaning it can hold its value in times of crisis. However, the Swiss franc also fulfills this function. The findependent investment solutions all have a high value of the Swiss franc. Second, income-generating investments, especially equities, are better suited for building long-term wealth due to their higher potential returns.

Convinced?

Do you want to make more out of your savings in the long term, invest them broadly and cost-effectively in ETFs? Without active trading or speculation, but still with the assurance that professionals will take care of important investment decisions for you? Then you’ve come to the right place with us.

Get findependent!

Our selection criteria for ETFs

Our Investment Committee selects the ETFs for the four ready-made findependent investment solutions as well as for putting together its own investment solution according to the following criteria.

Basic requirements

SIX-Listing: We only buy ETFs that are tradable on the Swiss Exchange (SIX). Transactions on foreign exchanges often mean additional costs for Swiss investors.

Offer for private clients in Switzerland: Our clients are classified as such in the registration process for regulatory reasons and are granted the corresponding rights before the legislator. Consequently, certain products are not accessible to them.

Established providers: We prefer UBS, BlackRock (iShares) and Vanguard. ETF management is a classic bulk business, i.e. the more capital a provider manages, the lower its average costs and the lower prices and better performance it can offer. That is why there are few providers.

Fund domicile:For ETFs with Swiss investments we assume the fund domicile of Switzerland, for international investments those of Ireland and Luxembourg. The jurisdiction in which an ETF holds its investments is particularly relevant for the tax treatment of distributions (dividend and coupon payments). Swiss investors pay tax on these as income and, depending on the country, all or part of the withholding tax, for example, cannot be reclaimed.

Type of replication: We only use ETFs that actually hold the investments whose performance they track. Preferably, these are ETFs that hold all the investments of the underlying index. This is called «physical» replication. The use of «optimised sampling» is also possible. However, we exclude the use of ETFs that replicate the underlying index using complex financial instruments («synthetic» replication). These carry financial risks if their providers go bankrupt.

Exotic features:We do not buy ETFs that have exotic features. These include currency hedging, short selling and leverage for short-term speculation. Such products often have high hidden costs. We also steer clear of ETFs that implement a non-transparent quantitative strategy, such as multi-factor products or minimum variance approaches. They are complex and often lack a robust track record.

Retrocessions: We do not select any ETFs where findependent receives compensation from the provider, but select the ETFs independently.

Important selection criteria

TER:We always use ETFs with product costs (TER) that do not exceed 0.5% per year. The lower the better, because lower product costs mean higher returns for investors. This is an important ratio.

Trade spread: We only select ETFs that have a proven lower average spread between the purchase («bid») and sale («ask») price than 0.5%. The narrower the spread, the better, because wide bid-ask spreads mean either too high purchase prices or too low sale prices, resulting in lower returns for investors.

Size: We prefer ETFs that manage more than CHF 100 million. A «small» ETF has similar costs to a «large» ETF, but generates less revenue and tends to have low trading volumes and high bid-ask spreads. This means higher costs for investors and the risk that the ETF may be closed in case of lack of economic success.

Age: We prefer ETFs with a track record of at least three years. A «young» ETF often has low assets initially and tends to have low trading volumes and high bid-ask spreads, which again carries the risk that the ETF may be closed in case of lack of economic success.

Tracking quality: We prefer ETFs whose performance consistently loses less than 0.5% per year to the underlying index. The lower the difference, the better, as underperformance means lower returns for investors. This is an important metric.