I checked my own pillar 3a account last week and saw a performance figure of more than 40%.
And, to my honest surprise, I could not tell you what it actually means. It is a straightforward third-pillar account, nothing premium, so my expectations were modest. But the longer I looked, the more questions appeared.
There are neat buttons for the last three months, six months, and year-to-date, and each click redraws the chart beautifully. Yet the headline figure never moves — the same 40% stays put, whatever period I select.
Is it time-weighted or money-weighted, and since when? I searched carefully and could not find out. I do this for a living, and I was left guessing as well.
That is when it struck me. The problem is not the number — it is the missing context around it. A return without a period and a method is not information; it is decoration.
Good performance reporting should close that gap, not create it. And it raised something slightly uncomfortable: smaller accounts often receive a thinner version of the truth, rarely from bad intent and usually because of scale.
The three things clients should see
Clear performance reporting becomes useful only when the client can see:
- the period it covers — year to date, since inception, or since the last contribution
- the method, because time-weighted and money-weighted returns answer different questions
- a simple reference point, whether a benchmark or the client’s own contributions
None of this needs a private-banking budget. It needs the decision that every client deserves to understand their own money — and that good performance reporting is part of how we show respect.
So perhaps someone here can help me decode my own statement — I am genuinely curious. But the bigger question stays with me: should a third-pillar client really receive less clarity than a private-banking client?
I would value your view.
