Alpian - New Private Banking Fintech in Switzerland

Investing / Brokers
62

The number of customers doubled to several thousand in the first four months of the year.

Yeah, no wonder, they are advertizing e.g. on blick.ch, 20min.ch, through television and they had couple of promos on preispirat.ch (e.g. CHF 120.- free + 12 months free bank account).

Would be interesting to know, how much money from the investors are alredy gone due this marketing gag - and why they chose for example the above mentioned channels.

63

My thoughts exactly. Assuming an optimistic return of 1% on client assets the current AUM of 100 mio would give Alpian only 1 mio return per year. After 2 years in operation! No wonder they need a lot of money to fund growth. I once came to the conclusion that 1 bn AUM is the bare minimum amount to run a small bank.

64

I don’t think their business model will work.
Currently, they have 70 employees, let’s assume each employees cost 120k (so a salary around 105k, which is already low for bank employees). The company is already burning 9 millions a year in salary.
Then there are software cost, office, marketing ect.
So to reach break even, they will need a lot of client and AUM.

Also when the clients will need to pay 15.- a month after the 6 months, most of them will leave the bank.

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65

I don’t think anyone needs 70 employees to run a 100MM portfolio. They must be doing other things as well.

Finpension manages 2.4 billion with 25 employees.

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66

Finpension is not a bank. The compliance and complexity between a bank and an asset manager is big.
It’s really two different world.

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67

Okay. I saw somewhere an assumption that they make 1% from AUM . That’s why I thought we are comparing asset management business.

Bank makes 1% return on the AUM?

68

We want to reward your trust.

Dear Oswand,

At Alpian, we deeply value your trust and are grateful to have you bank with us. As a token of our appreciation, we are excited to introduce a special opportunity for you to earn additional rewards in the coming days by sharing your positive experience with friends and family.

Here’s how it works

For you:

  1. Share your unique code: Find your unique referral code in the Alpian app and share it with your friends and family.
  2. Win a CHF 1000 voucher: For all successful referrals from May 20th to June 10th, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a CHF 1000 voucher of your choice.
  3. Double your rewards: The top 3 referrers will have their referral bonus doubled. The more you refer, the more you can earn!

For your friends:

  1. Simple steps to join: They need to make a minimum deposit of CHF 500 and 3 payments with their debit card by June 12th, 2024.
  2. Referral bonus: Once the conditions are met, they receive the standard CHF 100 referral bonus as a thank you for joining our community.

Winners will be announced shortly after the end of the program, and bonuses will be credited within 45 days of your friends meeting the conditions.

Find more details and a step-by-step guide on our dedicated page:

Sharing your confidence in Alpian with others is the highest compliment we can receive. We are committed to improving our service every day and rewarding your loyalty.

Warm regards,

The Alpian Team

If I win the voucher, can I convert it to a feature request like standing orders @Dino_Alpian? Asking for a friend.

69

Imagine a friend of yours would use your referral code to “join their community”, how long would they have to keep how much money in order to keep the CHF 100 offered?

Edit: nevermind, I’ve found it. The same conditions are offered to any new client, without a referral code, until 01.06.2024: The First Swiss Digital Private Bank - Banking & Investing

It’s 6 months of keeping the relationship open without apparent minimal cash balance required. New registrations come with 6 months free so there seems to be a way to get a free bonus.

They seem to be on the offense, marketing speaking, because they are giving better deals through other partners (got one for CHF 200, 12 months free, through the Groupe Mutuel insurers, though I guess they’re not wrong that GM clients have better than average likelihood not to be very price sensitive and to keep their services for the longer term).

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70

Through “Preispirat” you will find CHF 120 off + 12 months for free.
Funnily, I closed my account and everything and still got the same e-mail as @oswand .

So, thanking for my trust in them is not quite correct ^^

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71

I’m genuinely interested to know who uses Preispirat and is also prone to thinking “I want/need private banking”. Would the target be people with more than 50k sitting in a bank account (so no banking fees per my understanding) and then get them to invest by calling them with a “hey, we see you’re having a lot of money sitting and earning just 1%, do you know it could return more?”.

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72

Apparently, Alpian has been able to maintain their performance in a new study about the digital efforts of Swiss private banks, compared to the same study from a year ago. Whatever the hell “confirming their performance” means anyway. Also, I still don’t understand in what way Alpian is supposed to be a private bank.

Also mentioned – Swiss4:

Swiss4 is the first Swiss private bank whose website is exclusively available to its members—a novelty. «The feeling that one must be a member to learn more about the services of this private bank conveys a sense of prestige and exclusivity,» concludes the study.

I don’t know who are the bigger idiots: the people writing this study, the people who brought this business idea to life or the customers who fall for this.

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73

Both.

You can buy luxury (easily), you can’t buy elegance :sunglasses:

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74

I also have a private bank, just wire me 100k and I’ll tell you about the cool features. /s

What I find interesting about Swiss4 is that they do not offer USD in their multi-currency account. CHF, EUR, GBP, AED, SGD but no mention of USD anywhere. I don’t know, but USD seems to be a pretty imporant one or am I just wrong?

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75

Also, contrary to Alpian and as of today, Swiss4 itself isn’t covered by esisuisse’s insurance as its bank search tool returns blank with it: Bank search | esisuisse

They describe themselves as a “Swiss financial institution” offering “Swiss private financial services”. They can offer deposits pursuant to article 1b of the Swiss Federal Banking Act, with article 1a covering actual banks and 1b covering “Innovation funding”.

With Swiss4, even the “bank” part of private bank is under question.

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76

To be fair, they do not seem to call themselves a bank (which I believe would be illegal)…

77

The Geneva financial institution Swiss4 intends to take steps within two years with the Swiss financial regulator to obtain a banking license. The latter will allow the company to offer new services to its customers.

Swiss4 plans to apply for a banking license “as soon as we have reached certain thresholds, particularly in terms of deposits and volume of activities”, Zhina Asmaei, managing director and co-founder of Swiss4, said on Wednesday. The company first wants to achieve “sufficient size and stability before taking this important step”, she stressed.

The establishment, which already holds a fintech license from the Financial Market Supervisory Authority, will notably have to raise at least 10 million francs in equity before taking this additional step. Founded in 2020 in the City of Calvin, it will then be able to accept more customer deposits and expand its services. It recently launched a financial services app.

I also don’t understand what type of client is the target.

I’m also wondering who is providing the money to launch and finance this type of start-up.

They seems to have 30 employees (based on Linkedin).
Let’s assume 4 millions of cost each year, to be break even, they would need something around 2000-2500 clients.
This seems low, but we are speaking about 2000 clients who are ready to pay 1400.- a year.

78

Onlyfa… (cough), I mean Dubai expatriate… (cough), I mean, people with a distinguish appetite for high quality services and who loves to spread their wealthy success by selling themself (cough)… I mean selling their iconic model image :innocent:

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79

More news about Alpian: They now offer virtual debit cards.

80

Taking the opportunity to try their services as they offer free cash for it, I’ve opened an account at Alpian. So far, I’d qualify the experience as “weird”.

The Good:

  • Registering and opening an account is easy.
  • Helpful onboarding message, I have only been reasonably spammed so far.
  • Interests actually credited monthly, with apparently a pro-rated 1% that should allow for monthly compounding.
    Edit:
  • Support is reactive and helpful.

The Bad:

  • The card activation process isn’t streamlined. It requires first activating the card within the app, then paying once with the chip, which I hadn’t read anywhere and took me by surprise (could be on me, I may have missed it - still, I don’t understand going through a 2-steps process for that).
  • Edit: It was the 35% witholding tax on interests labelled as “Droits d’inscription” and “Tax”.
    I’ve been charged a CHF 0.09 activation fee, I would say for the debit card, that I can’t find on their litterature. The amount is inconsequential but I don’t like being billed fees that I don’t expect. I’ve contacted support about it and we’ll see what their answer is.
    Edit:
  • You don’t have access to at least the first message you send to support through the app. They’ve answered to me by email last time. The email didn’t mention nor quoted my original message either.

The Weird:

  • The debit card comes in a faux-chic cardboard box. I really don’t understand it: I’d say it fails at passing for a premium item so it just lets you in the weird zone of thinking "if they were going to go for the premium brand image, why not go the full mile and if they were willing to sacrifice “premiumness” for items they’d be delivering to all clients, even those who would go away after 2 days, then why still try and settle for a weird cheap appearance? Make it a nice letter paper with a researched design, I would have felt more “special” from it than from what I’ve received.

Not convinced so far. I still struggle to understand who their target clients are.

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81

Not you, obviously. The thing you haven’t tested, which is the main product of Alpian, are investments. That’s probably because their general banking solution is kinda weird, they just don’t care. For users like us it’s just not an ultra great offer, because we are not interested in their investment program/actual product.

I can’t say the same, or haven’t noticed it.

Yes, credited without any delays. Obviously -35% VST, but that’s the law.

On a side note, my current news from Alpian:

  • Now offering Amex Platinum [1], with the advantage over Swisscards being, that you get 75k points, instead of 45k [2]
  • Running TV ads during football to build awareness, smart.
  • Blog post about alternative investments, where they promote Splint Invest with their referral link [3], like what the fuck.
  • Collaboration with Performance Watcher [4] - though I don’t get how it would improve anything (?)
  • Still no contact information (phone number, email) listed on their website [5]

[1] American Express Platinum Card® for Alpian clients | Alpian
[2] American Express Platinum Card® | American Express Switzerland
[3] Alternative investments to diversify your portfolio: A guide | i-vest by Alpian
[4] Alpian partners with Performance Watcher to enhance portfolio performance transparency | Alpian
[5] Contact Alpian - Switzerland's First Digital Private Bank

1 Like