Cost of transfers to CHF accounts outside Switzerland

Investing / Funding & Currency conversions
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I have a CHF account with a french bank in France to cover the cost of a mortgage on a french apartment. I make quarterly payments in CHF from UBS. Each time UBS charge me 20 CHF for an international transfer. This seems rather expensive to me?

Am I missing something? Is it possible to transfer money to CHF accounts outside Switzerland without fees?

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I’m not 100% sure, but you should probably open a EUR account on the same bank and transfer the money using SEPA on postfinance which is free. The exchange rate of your french Bank might be an issue though.

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I do have a EUR account with the same bank so could do a SEPA transfer of euros. Will have to look into currency charges at each end but I’ll be surprised it it works out cheaper with two sets of currency conversions.

Turns out the UBS options for international transfer cost options with UBS are “OUR”, “BEN” and “SHA”. You pay, the beneficiary pays or costs are shared. I had set this transfer up with OUR but that means that UBS charge a flat rate of 20CHF so for the next one I’ll use SHA and see how I get on unless someone comes up with a better idea.

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Also I think rule number 1 for mustachians is to avoid big banks :smile:

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Yes, it is.
But I would not be surprised that not only doe they charge you a fee for abroad transfers, but they also apply a very bad conversion rate between CHF and EUR. Have you looked into that?

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Both accounts are in CHF so no currency conversion involved. I’m sure UBS charge terrible currency conversion rates though.

I’m not sure if it’s still the case but when I got my mortgage CHF interest rates at french banks were almost 1% cheaper than EUR mortgages. Obviously a bit of a currency risk since if the EUR collapses my apartment could be worth less than the debt but since it’s not a huge mortgage and all my income is in CHF I thought it was worth the risk.

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If you can find your bank here - The Future of Finance Is Now | SIX - then probably yes, otherwise more likely no

Well, consider it a cost of ownership, and by far it’s not the biggest one. Hopefully you saved something up for it by not taking a EUR mortgage instead?

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