Maybe this appeals to the tiktok generation where having a metal card to show off on social media is more important that, well, actual banking facilities.
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Folks. I understand that most people here like self serve investments (including me) and hence paying for wealth manager is not interesting. If someone wants to simply buy world index funds, they don’t need anyone - Roboadvisor, Savings plan or wealth manager.
But I think we should be viewing Alpian as a wealth management firm in comparison to traditional banks & i believe their offering is reasonable and perhaps a bit cheaper. They are offering portfolio and asset allocation services as far as i understand.
I see we are very harsh with any actively managed services but there is a market there and some people need them.
Seems like pre-determined robo-plans. And for that the fee is ridiculous.
If it was a full fledged wealth management service with a personal advisor. That would be a good offer. But does not look like it.
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I will ask my colleague. He is actually working (using their services) with them and seemed satisfied. I believe they have dynamic allocation but will check
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One question I’d ask is whether they take into account their client’s global financial situation, including pension, insurances, life situation (dependents), salary and potential evolutions of them with time and advise them on a specific allocation, including other assets like real estate.
If they do, and do it properly, I’d consider that they add meaningful added value. I’d be sceptical if they don’t.
Anyway, the service would warrant higher one time fees, as it gets the most benefits as a one time advice (with new iterations when life situation changes significantly), not an ongoing 0.75% management fee, which is more akin with active portfolio management for which I have no reason to believe that Alpian arbors trading geniuses able to consistently beat the market.
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I have been using Alpian for over a year but have not nor intend to use their investment services. I mainly use them for FX between US CHF EUR and GBP.
I used to pay Revolut for their unlimited (and favourable) FX sevices but downgraded and now use alpian only (given Alpian are almost as good on with FX rates)
I’ve always had prompt chat service with them when I needed some info.
After using it for a year, did you needed to pay once a using fee?
I’m considering changing from Revolut as well. Although I really like the Revolut app to be honest. I feel that it’s better than any Swiss bank/fintech that I ever seen so far.
I believe the fees are now zero, [I have not paid a fee ever].
I had one bad experience with Revolut (trying to resolve a merchant dispute/chargeback on a card transaction) so do not want to have the same experience again.
I have found Alipan to be very responsive.
Unfortunately I don‘t have the best experience with them. I think I‘m going to close my account.
Can you share some of your experience? I did not have a bad experience yet with Revolut but when I go on holiday it is often not plan in advance and hence I often are above the exchange limit and pay fee’s there. From this aspect Alpian could be interesting I’m just afraid that they will run out of money and it would be additional work to get that settled.
I contacted the the support through the chat, the chat itself was immediately responsive but the could solve the issues immediately but promised to come back to me and contact me. After 1 week I was still not contacted, followed up and then again radio silence and so on… Not the best customer experience ar least from my side.
Maybe I‘m just not a preferred customer (customer second class) given I dont have a mandate with them/using their investment platform.
@Dino_Alpian Big mistake on the italian version of the invite a friend page…
I wonder if it’s legally binding 
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Now that Alpian is offering 1% monthly on cash, this becomes interesting.
I also like the multicurrency account, it would allow me to get rid of my UBS ones which cost me an arm and a leg.
So I am considering opening an account. For those of you who have one, has it improved since the last comments?
I have actually withdrawn my cash from Alpian. I had around 150k there but part of the cash reserve was not needed anymore and went into VT and the remaining cash was below 100k. The 1% is only if you have >100k at Alpian which then again is exposed to some risk (at least the part above 100k).
Therefore I decided to sent 50k to wiLLBe and the rest at Yuh until the situation around my potential need for the cash is clarified.
Beside that I do not have a negative comment on Alpian. It could be interesting but I do not see any USP compared to other fine techs.
Putting more than 100k with a bank without a state guarantee is simply bad investing, you’re taking on uncompensated risk. Well, in this case it is a bit compensated, but not enough IMO.
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I think ALPIAN has following features which are relevant for me
- Best exchange rates
- Swiss IBAN
- Good interest rates (current 0.75% for <100K)
- Free multi currency account
- Guarantee for 100K
I think for normal banking needs like payments, cash withdrawals, TWINT, salary etc. I would still prefer someone traditional like ZKB (also free accounts). But for second account, Alpian is a good choice specially if lot of foreign exchange transactions are needed.
Disclaimer -: At this moment, I still use Revolut for second account because I do not have much foreign currency needs. But I might open an account in Alpian next year as I like their Forex policy and also because I would like to support local companies in general 
I took a Alpian qoqa offer 2 weeks ago. They are still processing my registration. Manual documents verification pending for 12 days. I suppose they have a lot to do right now:
“We’re currently welcoming an extraordinary number of people eager to join Alpian. This high demand means that verifying your documents might take a bit longer than usual. We’re expanding our capacity and working around the clock to ensure you can get on board as soon as possible.”
Not good for digital bank
I think Switzerland can deploy centralised KYC like it happens in some countries. For example in India, if you have central KYC done, account opening in other institutions is very fast because nothing much needs to be confirmed
The planned e-ID might help in the future.
https://www.bj.admin.ch/bj/de/home/staat/gesetzgebung/staatliche-e-id.html
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I misssed that one, it was out when I found out about the offer. I guess I’ll wait a bit before opening my account if they are still processing the requests from the Qoqa offer!
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