CS, UBS vs the rest

You have valid points here. I can’t argue. I might cancel my SQ as well, if they don’t improve their fee schedules. I don’t have IB yet, that’s why SQ is my only option at the moment. However, I want to have cash in USD and EUR ready at some places which I don’t want to do with my house bank. As you said, IB charges CHF for negative interest. My main source of income is also in CHF, so I need to park that here for free. When I need to invest in USD, I would just transfer the cash to IB and convert to USD to avoid negative interest. Basically, I use SQ as a bank account for cash without fees.

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Interesting to be named like this :upside_down_face:

How is that even possible !?!

And pay 2 CHF for every wire-transfer ?

You should just get rid of SQ if you want to be with IB. Direct transfer from your bank account are free. Currency conversion are better and the cost is about 2$ whatever amount you put.

A good solution could be : neon, CSX and Yuh for a FinTech Bank account.

Otherwise: Raiffeisen are really interesting (I’m with them).

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Yes, but only starting from 50k CHF.
Why do you want to have this much cash at your broker, but not at your house bank? The cantonal banks give you a guarantee for 100k CHF as far as I remember.

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Haha, you probably don’t speak German I guess. It’s how German-speaking people call the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Romandy better :smiley:

Yea, I know. I feel so stupid right now. 25ish per month plus fees for gold credit card. It’s about right.

I know, but I always want to hold a lot of cash besides investing. I can’t put CHF at IB as they charge you with negative interest rate. SQ doesn’t charge anything, so I can put it there for free.

2 CHF is OK as I wire-transfer big chunk of cash each time. I won’t do this very often. I’ll take a look at Raiffeisen.

Only for amounts above 50k, up to 50k you pay nothing.

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UBS: What do you do with the Keyclub points? We use it to pay the package costs and end up having it for free.

Multi-currency accounts: Maybe Wise is what you’re looking for?

I usually park more cash. SQ allows you to do 500k with no interest. Swissquote is also a bank, so they are insured similarly as FDIC insured up to 100k. SQ is unlike IB. I believe IB doesn’t have the FDIC insurance with their UK unit. (Don’t quote me on that, not sure).

The reason why I have the cash at broker is because I wanna be ready to invest when the timing is right or I see some good opportunities to jump right in. I can’t wait for it to be transferred after 2 days.

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I do have keyclub points. But there is a caveat. For each 1000 CHF you spend you get 4 points. For 200 keyclub pts, I need to spend 50k on credit card a year. Holy smoke! That’s a lot of dough! They want you to spend like crazy, it goes against Mustachians philosophy!

Moreover, there are plenty of branches in whole Switzerland. Happens some time, that I want to deposit cash (I live nearly cashless). If I am client of BCV and living in Zurich, this would be tricky.

I am using CSX as well. But my main bank account is with ZKB. CHF 1 per month for the bank account and the credit cards are via Swisscard. So no debit card with ZKB.

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Then one option would be to convert CHF in excess of 50k to USD/EUR/GBP or whatever your investments are in.

When I transfer money from my house bank (cantonal bank) to IB it is there on the same day. I have a standing order to transfer cash each month to IB and on the day of the standing order, the cash is at IB before the market opens.
Even if it would take two days you could buy on margin until your cash arrives.

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Per interest rate parity, it should be roughly equivalent to negative interest rate long term.

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I can confirm the following. Although I didn’t set up a standing order, I make sure every end of the month to make an order to the 1st of the next month. The cash is ready in the morning before the market open in Europe, and way before it open in New York :wink:

For Raiffeisen, if you take some part of the bank, you have no negative interest up to 2 millions with a tremendous interest rate up to 0.0250%, then 0.01% if you park more than 2 millions.

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Again, Raiffeisen banks are operating independently and their conditions vary.

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Rigth! Mine offered these conditions (for now).

Sounds good :+1:
I can only recommending to keep a second/backup account with another bank (e.g. ebanking/app is not working).

I handle the same thing with Interactive Brokers: my backup would be Swissquote, in this case.
Maybe I am just paranoid, but I sleep better with this combo :smiley:

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Wanted to highlight this point - if you have a family and take 5-6 day trips a year to places on the Raiffeisen Member Plus list, which are mostly free or discounted, the savings can add up quite nicely.

One random example being Lenzburg Castle, 35 CHF for a family pass - but free with a Raiffeisen card…
https://shop.museumaargau.ch/de/tickets/9

… Of course maybe you don’t go to the same places every year :smiley:

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And yet, I find myself considering moving away from UBS: We pay the banking package with Keyclub points but because of some stupid bug I can’t log into the Keyclub store. I’ve contacted support but they haven’t been able to help me. Same with my local subsidiary. It’s almost a month now and UBS seems to be ignoring me.

Time to part ways, maybe.

CSX sure looks interesting.

Does anybody happen to know which exchange rates apply there for non-CHF transactions? I.e. is CSX a viable alternative to Neon / Revolut / Wise?

„allerdings werden die üblichen Wechselkurse der Credit Suisse verrechnet“

CSX: Credit Suisse im Vergleich - moneyland.ch (where they also point that out that that makes it more expensive in comparison to Neon, Wise and Revolut)

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UBS conversion rates are also crap. I talked to them last week (regarding business), and I was shocked about how crappy those rates are.

Yesterday morning: EURCHF forex rate at 1.0431
UBS EURCHF bid 1.025, ask 1.0609 (for amounts up to 25k)

Instead of opening an another EUR account with UBS, I chose to use Wise Business instead. The conversion rates from traditional banks are just insane. I get that they have to pay for salaries, buildings etc. But still - 1.8% uplift? Come on UBS…

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