"More encouragement must be given to personal pension provision"

The excessive demand is a consequence of a large part of the population knowing little about retirement provision, investments and finances. Many people lack understanding of economic correlations. The financial world hasn't become any more volatile or complex. The processes underlying the financial market remain unchanged. Only the flood of information has increased considerably compared to the past. Stories get written about every little thing – we are bombarded with financial news across various channels. Much of this can be discarded.

My aim is to push people toward personal pension provision to help them be less reliant on the state. If you want to do it right, you need a basic knowledge of finance and retirement provision. I am convinced that the facts of the financial and economic world can be explained in a simple and understandable way. The question is always how to reach people. In particular, I want to get young people interested in the topic, as they still have a long investment horizon and financial knowledge and savings tips are particularly important. I have always relished the challenge of breaking down complex things in such a way that they can be understood by everyone. On our free online platform – at www.fintool.ch – we present short explanatory videos, which we assemble into libraries in the premium area. This results in entire series and seasons – a kind of "Netflix for investors."

I advise everyone to save using equities: invest in equity funds or even in individual securities, but do this with a long-term time horizon of at least ten years. The formula is simple: broadly diversify across low-cost products and sit back. Probably the greatest challenge is to mentally withstand the volatility on the markets and not to lose your nerve and fall for speculation.

Broad diversification means investing in shares, bonds – by means of index funds or ETFs (editor's note: Exchange Traded Funds) – and real estate. When doing so, the distribution is based on the investment horizon and the ability to withstand short-term psychological fluctuations. When someone mentions gold, I often joke that: "gold belongs on my wife's neck, but not in my portfolio." But seriously, there's a lot of hype around gold. For me personally, gold is more of a thing of speculation in the long term. As with other assets, anything that does not produce any current income rather belongs to the realm of speculation.

I focus strongly on the Swiss market, because I – unlike many of my colleagues – believe that the currency risk is too great to go "too international." Especially in our case, the Swiss franc is constantly appreciating, and hedging this risk is expensive. However, I have made one exception: I invest in a broadly diversified emerging market fund. I believe that the emerging markets have great potential.

I'm a huge fan of this, but even here it's clear: the higher the equity component, the better the long-term return. In Switzerland, the 3rd pillar should be promoted more strongly by allowing higher contributions and relaxing the restrictions on 3a products. (Editor's note: The investment of funds in pillar 3a is subject to legal restrictions.) These restrictions are based on a fundamentally incorrect risk concept. The start-up VIAC is showing the way: it allows you to invest almost 100 percent of your contributions in equities. Banks are increasingly catching up with their pillar 3a offers.

In principle, I think Swiss pension funds are in good condition. Buying into the pension fund is certainly also an interesting option for income and tax considerations. However, it depends on the financial health of the pension fund and how it deals with buy-ins in the event of death, for example. Buy-ins are also attractive if the investment strategy is determined by the investor themselves and the highest possible proportion of equities can be chosen.

My portfolio includes stocks, real estate and cash. I see no reason to make adjustments. Negative interest rates are no problem for me personally at the moment. However, if the exemption limits were to be lowered, I would distribute my cash across different banks. And if this should not suffice, I would eventually even keep the money in a safe.

When I turned 60, I created a ten-year budget. Now I know exactly how much I need per year. I extrapolated this amount to ten years and put cash aside for this. I invested the remaining financial resources in equities. I worked in large companies for years. If I was still doing this, I would probably have retired by now. But as a passionate entrepreneur, I can't imagine stopping working for a long time – I'll keep going as long as I enjoy it.