What happens to my pension fund when I change jobs?

Where the pension money goes when you change jobs

The vested benefit stays tied up in every case — it follows you, it is not paid out. Cash payment is the exception and FZG art. 5 lists those exhaustively. As of 7 September 2026.

The transfer inside Switzerland is a duty, not an option

Article 3 paragraph 1 of the Vested Benefits Act is one sentence: if insured persons join a new pension institution, the former institution must transfer the termination benefit to the new one. There is no election to keep the capital where it is, no vesting schedule to complete and no employer discretion in it. The benefit falls due on the day you leave the institution, and from that day it earns interest at the minimum rate set for retirement assets under Article 15 paragraph 2 of the LOB.

The institution also gets a deadline. Under Article 2 paragraph 4, if it has not transferred the benefit within thirty days of receiving the necessary details, it owes default interest from the end of that period. Note where the clock starts: at the receipt of the information, not at your last working day. Naming the destination late moves the deadline back yourself.

One thing does not transfer with the capital: the choice of institution. Article 11 paragraph 1 of the LOB requires an employer with employees subject to compulsory insurance to set up a registered pension institution or join one. Where the employer does not already have one, paragraph 2 has it choose in agreement with the staff or the employee representation, and paragraph 3 requires the same agreement to switch institutions later. Either way the choice is not the individual employee’s: you do not pick your fund the way you pick a bank, you inherit it with the job — which is why the conditions in the regulations are worth reading before you sign.

When you can ask for the money in cash — three grounds, and only three

Article 5 paragraph 1 of the Vested Benefits Act lists them exhaustively. Insured persons may demand cash payment of the termination benefit if they are leaving Switzerland definitively, subject to Article 25f; if they take up self-employment and are no longer subject to compulsory occupational benefit provision; or if the termination benefit is less than their own annual contribution.

Paragraph 2 adds a condition that surprises people whose home country has nothing like it. For a person who is married or in a registered partnership, cash payment is only permissible with the written consent of the spouse or registered partner. If consent cannot be obtained, or is refused without valid reason, the insured person may apply to the civil court. The pension capital is treated as something the couple built, not as an individual account.

Article 79b paragraph 3 of the LOB adds a timing rule that catches people who plan a move badly: where voluntary purchases of benefits have been made, the resulting benefits may not be withdrawn from the scheme in the form of capital within the following three years. Buying in shortly before emigrating therefore postpones the cash payment rather than increasing it.

Leaving for the EU or EFTA: the mandatory part stays behind

This is the rule most people arriving from abroad have never heard, and it decides whether the money leaves the country with you. Article 25f of the Vested Benefits Act blocks the cash payment of the retirement assets acquired under Article 15 of the LOB — the mandatory portion — for insured persons who continue to be compulsorily insured against the risks of old age, death and disability under the legislation of an EU member state, or under Icelandic or Norwegian legislation, or who reside in Liechtenstein.

Two things follow, and both are commonly misread. First, the restriction attaches to your insurance status abroad, not to your nationality or to the fact of moving as such: it bites where you remain compulsorily insured in one of those countries. Second, it covers the mandatory portion only. What your fund insured above the statutory minimum — the extra-mandatory part — is not caught by Article 25f, so a departure to a neighbouring country is usually a partial cash payment rather than none at all.

The blocked mandatory part is not lost. It stays in Switzerland in a vested benefits account or policy under Article 4 of the Vested Benefits Act, and it is paid out later under the rules of the scheme. The practical consequence is one of timing and access, not of forfeiture.

Who checks it, and what the numbers look like

Since mid-2002 the LOB Guarantee Fund has acted as the Liaison Office to EU and EFTA member states for occupational benefit matters, and the restrictive provisions on cash payments came into force on 1 June 2007. People leaving Switzerland for the EU or EFTA area submit a request form to the Liaison Office, which forwards the enquiry to the appropriate foreign agency; that agency establishes whether the applicant is subject to compulsory social insurance there. For France, the Fund states in its own annual report that applicants must personally obtain the confirmation from the competent authorities.

The 2025 annual report puts numbers on the outcome, and they are the reason this page shows a chart rather than an anecdote. Of the cases for which the Liaison Office received a determination from a foreign authority that year, seventy per cent concerned people who were not compulsorily insured abroad and could therefore also withdraw the mandatory part of their vested benefits in cash. For the remaining thirty per cent, the mandatory share stayed blocked in Switzerland. A small number of requests needed no determination at all, because the person had moved to a third country or was old enough to draw the capital as a retirement benefit.

The same report notes that requests to the Liaison Office rose again in 2025 and that a number of them were still pending at year end because not all the required documentation had been submitted. If you are planning a departure, the paperwork, not the law, is what usually decides how long it takes.

If you stay in Switzerland but not in a job

Article 4 paragraph 1 of the Vested Benefits Act puts the next step on you rather than on your employer: insured persons who do not join a new pension institution must tell their institution in which permitted form they wish to maintain their cover. The two permitted forms are set out in Article 10 of the Vested Benefits Ordinance — a vested benefits policy with a supervised insurance institution, or a vested benefits account with a foundation. Article 12 of the same ordinance caps the split at two vested benefits institutions and lets you change institution or form at any time.

One month of cover runs on regardless. Under Article 10 paragraph 3 of the LOB, an employee remains insured for the risks of death and disability with the previous institution for one month after the pension relationship ends, and if a new relationship begins before that, the new institution takes over. A gap of more than a month between two jobs is therefore a gap in death and disability cover — the retirement capital itself is unaffected.

A short first contract may not create cover at all. Article 1j paragraph 1 letter b of Ordinance 2 exempts employees on a fixed-term contract of no more than three months from compulsory insurance, and Article 1k sets out when an extension or a chain of assignments with the same employer brings the insurance into force after all. Below an annual salary of CHF 22’680 with one employer there is no compulsory insurance either, under Articles 2 and 7 of the LOB.

How to find an account you have lost track of

People who have changed employers several times in Switzerland, and especially people who have left and come back, frequently do not know where an old balance sits. The Central 2nd Pillar Office at the LOB Guarantee Fund exists for exactly that. Pension institutions and vested benefits institutions must report every account holder to it each January under Article 24a of the Vested Benefits Act, so the register is nationwide rather than per canton.

The enquiry is made in writing, on a form the Office publishes in six languages — German, French, Italian, English, Portuguese and Spanish. It compares your personal data with what the institutions have reported and writes to you with the result; it explicitly gives no information about balances by telephone. It does not hold the money and does not decide entitlement: you then claim directly from the institution named to you.

One language note worth having. The Vested Benefits Act and the LOB are published on Fedlex in German, French and Italian — the LOB also in Romansh — but not in English, while the Code of Obligations is. If you want to read the provision behind an answer you have been given, the German, French or Italian text is the one that exists, and it is the authoritative one in any case.

What this page does not decide

Everything above describes federal rules. What your own fund insures beyond the statutory minimum, how it calculates a buy-in and what conversion rate it applies is in its regulations, and only there. The binding figure for a departure is the statement your institution must issue under Article 8 of the Vested Benefits Act.

For public-sector employees of a canton or a commune, the employment relationship follows cantonal staff law rather than the Code of Obligations, and cantonal practice differs. The vested benefits rules described here still apply, because the Vested Benefits Act covers institutions under private and public law alike.

For a decision about your own case — whether to take cash, whether to buy in, how a departure interacts with taxation in the country you are moving to — the addresses are your pension institution, a tax adviser, and for employment disputes a legal advice service, a trade union or the cantonal conciliation authority.