Best broker for non-profit associations (IBKR doesn't work)

Investing / Brokers
1

I manage a tax-exempt non-profit association, based in Vaud. We’ve built about 40k CHF of reserves, which I’d like to invest in an ETF instead of leaving it in our bank account.

I tried opening an account with IBKR, but their account opening process for “institutional clients” is 10x more complex than for private clients, and they ask for documents that are extremely difficult to produce. For example: “Notarized extract: document from the local governments company/trade register that verifies the Company is registered, active and who the Authorised persons to act on the account are (Must be less than 6 months old).”
→ As an association, it is very difficult to obtain such a document. We have an IDE number and registered for taxes, etc., but we’re not yet registered in the Commercial Register.

IBKR also asks for many, many other documents which would be hard to produce. Degiro doesn’t accept businesses.

Do you know of any broker that would be friendlier to smaller businesses or non-profits?

2

Presumably at the bank that already knows you as a non-profit? Yes, it is more expensive than IBKR. But as soon as things get complicated, a locally based broker is always easier.

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3

Tried with Swissquote?

I’m assuming a CH-based broker would be more welcoming to CH-based (small) institutions than a US one.

4

I manage the finance of a non-profit association via post finance. While I don’t invest with the money of the association, but I think I can directly put the money in e-finance and buy ETF shares there.

5

We have an account with PostFinance already, so for sure it would be an option to invest through them, but their trading fees are extremely high so I was looking for what would be the cheapest options that would accept a non-profit.

We will definitely consider the Swiss-based traders (despite their higher fees), though some of them also have strict criteria for accepting companies, and it’s hard to know ahead of time without first going through the application process