Anyone using https://www.degiro.ch/en here? Their fees seems low enough for ETF based investing.
They are not Switzerland based so any risks? Feedback on your usage experience?
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I don’t use it. My only experience is with their support which is reactive and precise.
This platform is attractive with really low transaction fees.
However, this platform has only two years and I have read some bad reviews (hidden fees, not a strong financial institution)
They seem to offer custodian type account. Is this potentially safer if they go belly up? or normal account is safe as well?
I’ve just recently created a custody account at DEGIRO. I’m only interested in having 1-3 different ETFs, so my experience only relates to ETFs. Also this is my first online broker account, as I didn’t like the fee structure of swissquote etc.
As I understand it, with a custody account all assets still belong to me and are clearly separated from the companys assets (see also https://www.degiro.ch/helpcenter/faq/sicherheit/1026). For my purposes the big difference to non-custody accounts are the fees on dividends (1 Euro + 3% as opposed to free). However I don’t plan on having high-dividend funds so overall it should still be very cheap for Switzerland.
They have a range of free ETFs (USD/EUR only) for which you pay only the ETF TER, most notably the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF that I’ve had my eyes on for a while. So I’m very happy about that! Even the other ETFs cost € 2,00 + 0,02
% per transaction, which for me ends up being much less than what I pay at Postfinance.
You have to pay 2.5 Euros per year per stock exchange you want to trade on - not sure if that is true for ETFs also? Automatic currency exchange is 0.1%. As far as I can tell there are no other fees (no account fees, no trading fees…) but I’ll conduct some experiments.
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Thanks for your detailed info about DEGIRO, Alps. I tend to also go with them.
- How do you know about the “Automatic currency exchange is 0.1%” ? I can’t find that anywhere?
- I also checked out their interface. Is it correct that they don’t offer almost any information about the ETFs? I mean I’d like to know about the TER and history etc.
Thanks a lot!
Another Degiro new customer here. I started buying one ETF last month after being also tired of paying fees with Postfinance.
The 0.1% for automatic currency exchange is in their pricing PDF (https://www.degiro.ch/data/pdf/ch-en/CH-EN_Feeschedule_CUSTODY.pdf) under the section “FOREIGN CURRENCY”
Yes they do not offer any information about ETFs but most of them can be retrieved online with sites like www.justetf.com so it’s not a big deal for me.
The 2.5 EUR is per stock exchange where you invest independently on what you buy ETFs, stocks etc… so that means if you buy an ETF in the Swiss stock exchange you do not pay the 2.5 EUR instead if you buy the same ETF for example in the German Exchange you pay the additional 2.5 EUR (per year per stock exchange)
I’m late! But yes that is where I found the currency exchange information as well.
I did open my account (finally)
I do use Corner Bank “normally” but I came to notice the low fees for stocks buying/selling so I opened a DE GIRO account.
In general, I’m ok, I’m using it as a buy/hold account and so far I have just invested 10k into it.
Fees are really low compared to Corner Bank.
Regarding the user interface I have to say it;s very, very poor!
Not enough information about your transactions, nor about the status of your holdings, you really need to nail it down to find what you’re looking for and creating reports it’s almost impossible.
I’m quite disappointed, to tell the truth, but the low cost has a consequence I guess…
Anyone with a better expericne?
Cheers!
Hi guys,
Seeing as MP just posted an article about De Giro, there might be some interest. What is your feedback after these three/four months?
Anyone can compare it to IB?
Philippe
Out of interest, why are you using it over IB?
Another user of Degiro (custody account so no lending of stocks) here.
I have been using it for about 6 months without problems.
In my case, I use it over IB because of the much simpler interface and the easier to understand fees.
Price-wise it’s very comparable, in the same league, maybe a tad more expensive for most things, but cheaper for some others. But it definitely has that ryanair-esque smell to it when they charge you for little things like dividend payments… Avoid the default, non-custody account type - it exposes you to unnecessary counterparty risks with shares lending - savings on dividend fees is not an adequate compensation IMHO. With IB at least you get paid a little money if you choose to do it. Only 20k deposit protection, no SIPC protection. FX conversion costs quite a bit more than at IB, but still very favorable compared to banks, transferwise etc
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I checked the fees and looked much better than IB.
Degiro fees explanation was easier and opening the account was super simple!
Anyway, I just keep little money there, 'cause they’re quite new so…
To be honest I didn’t dig deeper into insurances and protections but from what I read shouldn’t be so different than IB.
The UI is “minimalist” to say the least. I think they should improve that, sometimes the info is not visible at first hand.
anyway, I use it rarely since the positions I’m holding there are long-term and I have no trading activity, although with that commissions would be interesting to play a bit.
cheers
Thanks for the write up.
I just opened an account there, it’s quite easy but it’s the same forms than IB, there are just small breaks there rather than one after the other.
It is indeed quite minimalistic but for my purposes of just buying & holding VT or VTI+VEA (yet to be decided, @hedgehog you do the latter, correct?) it’s extremely straight forward and I don’t see anything missing.
It wasn’t too complicated when bought VT shares on IB, especially not on the Mobile interface, but there is no room for error using DG’s interface.
I’ll keep IB until next summer when I turn 25, after that I’ll see if my stash is enough to justify 10 CHF a month (which would be the yearly cost of DG)
Btw, in his article @_MP wrote:
commissions on currency exchange: Interactive Brokers charges 0.01% of the transaction amount
On IB website it says 0.20 basis point, where basis point = 0.0001. So IB fee is actually 0.002%, right? That means you pay 2 USD for each 100’000 USD exchanged, and up to 100’000 USD, you pay exactly 2 USD, the minimum.
Side note: I think it sucks that there are different accounts to comment under the blog posts and on the forum.
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Thanks @Bojack for spotting this mistake. I must have been very tired when I took the numbers in IB website 
I will fix this asap on the article.
I know it’s not optimal but didn’t (and won’t in the near future) have time to integrate a single sign-on process on the forum.
Hopefully it doesn’t prevent you from commenting on the blog and participating here on the forum.
Cheers,
MP
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at @ma0’s request from another thread, I am sharing a link about Degiro’s discutable practices with how they help(ed?) their hedged fund to make money when handling customer orders/transactions rather than lower cost for their customers.
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Just finished my 1st year with degiro and so far was good. Just until this morning when i discovered that they are not offering anymore the possibility to have ETFs exchanged on NASDAQ or NYSE Arca.
Completely new and without any information sent or shared with me.
This is so unprofessional and this morning I called their support and simply they told me that i can take my stuff and go somewhere else if i’m not happy and guess what…that’s what I’ll do.
I’m now selling all my positions and when done, close up the account and bye bye degiro.
But i’ll also provide as many negative feedback as I can. Stay far from this bunch of unprofy guys,
P.
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That’s complete crap. I’m quite shocked.
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@Bojack: if interested, it seems there’s more behind this Degiro behavior. More details in this thread Finding ETFs on Degiro
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