FlowBank, new Swiss Bank/Broker Solution?

Hello did anyone checked this? FlowBank

New Bank/Broker based in Geneva will start today!

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I’ve seen a lot of advertisement from them and check their price for custody and ETF trading:

  • Custody fees 0.10%, min 40 CHF (+ VAT) Debited quarterly ; so CHF 160.- per year and then there is no maximum, so if you have 500’000 CHF, you will pay 500 CHF. At Swissquote or TradeDirect the maximum fees are 200 CHF or 100 CHF (+ VAT).

  • ETF commission on SIX is 0.10% but 20 CHF minimum, so if you spent between 1 to 20’000 CHF you will pay 20 CHF, and then it goes up.

  • ETF commission on NASDAQ/NYSE/BATS is 0.15% but 25$ minimum, so if you spent between 1 to 16’660$ you will pay 25$, and then it goes up.

At Swissquote, you can trade whatever amount you want and only paid 9 CHF on a selected ETF. Not sure they are competitive for normal customer, maybe for professionnal ?

On the other hand, if you want to buy for example VT, it will be cheaper with FlowBank: for 20’000$ of VT you will pay 30$, it will cost 80$ with Swissquote. This can be interesting if you trade 1-3x per year with a good lump sum.

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To my knowledge, they use Saxobank. Also, they have no track record at this point.
I would be extremely careful with this new bank due to the disastrous track record of London Capital Group, Flowbank is kind of a spin-off from this entity. I recommend to look on Google more info.

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On the website it’s written

Min CHF 40 custody fees per year

I don’t think it’s 160 CHF per year but 40 CHF.

Wait
 They’ve changed it !

I’m sure to have read 40 CHF per quarter this morning
 Maybe they’ve edited it during the day ?

Because I’ve copied and pasted what it was written in their factsheet about price. So they’ve changed it during the day.

Yes, the wording is quite strange.
On the pdf:

Globally, nothing exceptional compares to the current swiss brokers.

Yes, proof from Google cache;

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9hfqtozJRxYJ:https://www.flowbank.com/pricing+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ch&client=safari

“Min CHF 40 custody fees per quarter”

What if they read this forum and adjusted it :scream:

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Acc. to this the Saxo-CH pre-cursor (sold to Saxo in 2007) was founded by the guy who has now founded Flow. But more as a new project & a competitor to Saxo on the market.
He says “trading in CH must get cheaper, we want compete by being cheaper than the competition”, well let’s see.

In principle, they could charge 0.1% a year with a CHF 40 minimum and still debit pro-rated quarterly.
Just saying


At least I must have seen similar wording and meaning to that effect elsewhere - though I regard such fee schedule and billing as pretty confusing to the great majority of non-professionals.

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That’s the very first example that occurred me.

Still
 why would you want to invest in a fractional share of Lindt & SprĂŒngli, if you’re ineligible for their chocolate gift box dividend? That’s kinda the point of keeping a single share of them, isn’t it? :wink:

Dividing their minimum fixed commission by their commission rate gives a order volume of 15k to 20k. There aren’t that many stocks in the world that cost more.

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Yes, it’s true.
But they wanted to launch the new bank fast, so they currently use Saxo as a backend (insider info :slight_smile: ) and will move to their own solution in the future. Regarding the pricing, they are not competitive at this point. At least, Swissquote offers really good phone support.

Not all of them


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Question is though: Are you going to hold it the same bank?
Flowbank was literally founded last year (and an outgoing transfer of positions costs 45 CHF).

I do agree however on that one shouldn’t worry too much about small one-time fees on long-term investments.

I have been a reader of this forum for a few weeks and I have benefited from insights and experiences shared by participants. This is my first message.
I have no previous experience in trading or buying stocks. But I wanted to use some money for buying specific (leading) Swiss stocks. I hve seen that FlowBank is offering until the end of this month 0% commission on select US stocks and Swiss stocks, including those I was interested in.
Although I felt initially hesitant, I decided to open a FlowBank account last week, in the late Saturday afternoon. The opening of the account was fast and smooth (compared to other ones): one hour and a few minutes later, my FlowBank account was active and I had my IBAN number.
I made an initial transfer of CHF 10,000 on Monday morning. I could use it immediately and without any problem. Indeed, there was 0% commission, just the tiny Federal tax on Swiss stocks.
But what was the most pleasant part of the experience for me was support. Being a novice in using such a platform, I had some basic questions. Three times I sent an email to support (in French); in all cases, I received a prompt, detailed and clear answer - a personal one addressing very specifically my questions and providing the requested explanation.
I have no idea about the future of FlowBank, I asked myself the same questions some participants to this forum had asked in previous posts. But in these days, I consider a helpful, friendly and efficient support as a key factor for any online service. According to my (fresh) experience, this is something that FlowBank obviously provides. My first experiences thus make me a happy customer.
(I would also suggest testing their two apps, FlowBank - the standard one - and FlowBank Pro, quite different.)
I hope that they will continue to develop their platform (there is still room for improvement) and offer additional services (for instance, at this point, it is not possible with FlowBank to register ‘actions nominatives’ - registered shares in English, if I am not wrong, but I asked them and they told me that this would become available soon). Let’s see how this will continue. But my first impression is a positive one.

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Info from mod: some user posted fake customer experience

I can only say LOL and ROFL

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Do you have any doubt that Chiccooooo opened an account with them?
Or that they told him about crypto and debit cards?

:woman_shrugging:t2:

Why not be both? :woman_shrugging:t2:

I mean, some people could tell a thing or two of being fed their own dog food. :wink:

What’s next? Elon Musk opens an account and tells us these Tesla cars are pretty good?

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Yeah, but in order to expose it, it’s better to leave it be than delete, so I didn’t react to people flagging the post, instead decided to call out the person.

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Why not using IB as operating account and transfer e.g. every 150k to SwissQuote? The max you are paying is CHF 200 p.a., since it is only a buy and hold portfolio.

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