I don’t quite understand How they will be able to scam people. If I understand it correctly, then the money will be with interactive brokers in the name of the owner.
Although I wouldn’t bet my money on it, that there isn’t a way.
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How come there have been FREE ETF Sparplans in Germany for years and nobody blinks an eye there? How do those brokers make money?
Revolut, Robinhood, BUX, eToro, Firstrade, Freetrade, Gratisbroker, Justtrade, Scalable Capital, Smartbroker, Trade Republic, etc – all providing some kind of services for free.
All internet scam? If you know something, don’t hide, cause I have an account with one of them.
So we just decided not to trust them because we think they’re lying about how they make money?
I will start sending them automatically 1000 chf per month and see what happens.
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I have had an account with Investart for a couple of years now. Very happy with it, considering my strategy is passive buy-and-hold. They actually charged fees up until end of last year, it was an all-in 0.45% p.a. (which was anyway the lowest in Switzerland). Not sure how they make money now, but in one of the early mailings they wrote that their trading costs are extremely low because they use block orders, i.e. place a trade and then split it among clients, so the cost of a trade per client is a fraction of a cent.
I liked the speed of account opening, at the time I had to sign only one paper agreement, but looks like now it’s all done online. Support has been great, at least for a company that size. There have been a couple of technical glitches in the meantime, notably one recently related to IB trading API, but they are usually quickly resolved (did not affect me anyway). It’s a little secret gem, and honestly I am happy they are not mainstream yet, because else I guess they would have to introduce fees again and not sure if the level of support would stay the same.
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I am a little bit surprised by the number of negative comments here. I have an account with Investart for half a year or so, and I am very happy with it, the interface in particular. There are some technical problems from time to time, given this is a young company, it is not shocking, even UBS e-banking has downtimes. There are lots of free services nowadays, Revolut, eToro being only a few examples. There is a stage for startups when making money simply is not a priority, they raise money from investors then focus more on client acquisition and growth, and only then sometimes go on introducing some kind of premium service for a fee. This is just the way it works, and this does not automatically imply that free service is a sign of some kind of murky scheme.
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Why are there suddenly so many positive comments from first time posters?
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Two first-time posters posting good reviews. 
Smells 
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Well, I was forwarded this post yesterday, after I shared my investing experience with a small group of friends. And funny enough, my first thought when seeing so many negative comments was that it was quite fishy :).
I genuinely like them, they have very nice interface and first-class customer service, why not signing up to leave a positive comment? Leaving negative comments is easy, most people with positive experience never bother.
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coincidence? I don’t think so 
Also, I forgot to mention, they have a very professional, yet very easy to read blog, I remember it was one of the very first things that attracted my attention.
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If anyone has a contact at Investart it would be helpful if one of their team responded directly to the doubts raised in this thread.
Similar doubts were raised about VIAC. VIAC team responded directly and now we all love VIAC 
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Are you accusing me of lying?
I didn’t know you are only supposed to criticize here. Sorry for trying to be objective, very fishy behaviour on my side, xorfish. Of course much easier to call everything a scam and try to earn reputation on the cheap hype if some of these actually turn out to be scam.
A friend sent me an sms yesterday with a link to this forum, knowing I have an account there and asking to share experiences. I guess I was not the only one who got this message. Investart is regulated, has an asset manager license, keeps my money on a segregated account at IB, that’s good enough for me.
When I opened an account I received this welcome email the next day (I replaced my name):
Dear name and surname
Congratulations, you have successfully opened an investment account! It will be maintained by our partner Interactive Brokers.
To start investing, please make a money transfer from an existing bank account to your new account at Investart. The account details are below:
IBAN: CH20 8909 5000 0105 6967 4
(Recipient bank: Citibank N.A. London, SWIFT/BIC code: CITIGB2LXXX)
IMPORTANT. Transfer instruction: “For further benefit to: Accountnumber / surname"
Bank Account Holder: Interactive Brokers LLC.
Bank Account Holder Address: Two Pickwick Plaza, Greenwich, CT 06830 USA
As soon as the transfer arrives on the account, it will be automatically invested within 24 hours during a working day, according to your Investart portfolio goal and strategy.
If you have questions or want to give us feedback, please send us an email to support@investart.ch.
Thank you for your interest in Investart.
Your Investart Team
What I found fascinating about this conversation is that I see lots of people trying to win the debate, versus just listening the preferences expressed by some forum members.
- It’s perfectly fine to say that theoretically Investart is safe and has an amazing product on some aspects
- And it’s also perfectly fine to say the business model is not as easy to understand than some other actors. Or express you like to know the team behind and speak to real people vs unknown employees.
Personally with the knowledge I have now, I can’t say it’s good or bad. I will just love them to do more communication on certain aspects to fully convince me it’s a great place to invest based on my personal criteria.
Indeed it will be great to have their team sharing more.
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Investart doesn’t have an affiliate scheme so they’re most likely legit…
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Coming from a corrupted country to live and work in Switzerland which ranks top 5 in the world in corruption index I find this conversation disheartening…
I did not mean it personally sorry if it came across that way. When a new business model appears it makes sense we all question it. For VIAC it was “how come 100% equities” , “why is hedging not required”, “why don’t the funds have TER” ?
Here it is probably “how much startup finding do you have and how long until that is used up on IB fees, how much premium service revenue do you need to earn or how many premium customers, what happens if you go bust how will I be able to manage my investments at IB on my own” etc
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It’s not an obvious scam. And I’ve seen products that looked fishier on the forum.
That said, it’s not an established institution with long standing. And they certainly don’t claim to be. Neither is the VIAC team itself (though they are backed by a more established 3a foundation).
Brokers or platforms that offer “free stock trading” are also not unheard of (Schwab, Revolut, Robinhood, TradeRepublic) that may be or become competition. It’s still somewhat of a(n eyebrow-raising) novelty in Switzerland.
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It seems you missed the last survey https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index
N°3 of the less corrupted country in the world. The more points the better in the survey. But we are off topic here.
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