Pensions with Descartes

1. What is Descartes?

The independent asset manager Descartes Finance was founded in 2017 and, together with its subsidiary Descartes Vorsorge, is a provider of digital equity investments and digital pensions. The digital pension plans include pillar 3a and vested benefits accounts.

Descartes Vorsorge does not use its own funds or products provided by the custodian bank, but invests the pension assets of its customers completely independently. When making investments, the independent asset manager focuses on sustainability. Descartes invests exclusively in ESG-compliant products. In so doing, investment decisions are influenced by environmental, social and governance factors. In pillar 3a, Descartes offers five investment strategies to choose from with stock allocations of between 20% and 100%. All of the portfolios are created in accordance with the minimum variance strategy (website not available in English). This means that stocks with larger price fluctuations are given a lower weighting. Customer assets are therefore less exposed to fluctuations on the stock market.

2. What’s unique about Descartes?

• Independent: product providers, asset managers, investment foundations and custodians are four different types of partners operating independently of Descartes. This means that there are no internal conflicts of interest or dependencies. Providers can be changed at any time in order to serve the best interests of customers.

• Sustainable: Descartes invests in ESG-compliant products. This means that Descartes takes ethical, environmental and social criteria into account when making investments.

• Personal: should a situation arise in which they need to, customers can make use of free, personal advice.

• Transparent pricing: for pillar 3a, the total cost depends on the chosen strategy and ranges from 0.64% to 0.80% per annum on the pension assets invested. Customers pay no more than the price specified.

• 100% stock allocation possible: Descartes offers customers the opportunity to invest 100% of their assets in stocks.

3. The Descartes app

Thanks to two-factor authentication, the Descartes Vorsorge web app can be accessed securely via an internet browser (not available in English). Sign up for the Descartes pension solution.