They dropped below 5% by now, which is quite astonishing historically (though I guess they still earn a hefty 3% on those).
Also I had a quick look into BCVs report: They actually still earn 0.3% per year on retail deposits, which is quite good in today’s environment.
And to add on the topic regarding Raiffeisen: They also offer a free account card, with which you can use their ATMs for free (no need to pay for a debit card, but doesn’t work for payments or other ATMs).
@nabalzbhf wrote it right: if it is free, you are the product.
To be on topic: open a private account with Zürcher Kantonalbank (one of the fewer banks with an AAA rating) for CHF 1.- per month (savings account not needed). Use it as a main account. There is a real bank behind with ATMs and several branches.
Open a second account with CS (e.g. CSX) and use it as operational account. Another real bank behind with even more ATMs across Switzerland and branches (e.g. best, if you are not living in Zurich).
I personally use this combo, if one e-banking/app should not work once but I have to do urgent stuff.
The credit cards I use are from Swisscard AECS - I do not use debit cards since they make no sense in my eyes.
They have also CC with Cashback function. If you are covering your recurring expenses (e.g. mobile/internet membership, SBB, food/drinks at Migros/Coop/you name it, etc etc.) then you will even have a positive return (0.2-1% on your expenses, depending on which card you are using) and cover your CHF 24 with BCV or CHF 12 with ZKB easily.
Optimization is a good thing - that‘s why we are here with the same mindset. But sometimes there is no added value with overoptimization and it even gets more complex.
They lend my money, and charge - ok, numbers are probably inaccurate, but the concept stands - 1% to 8% to the people they are lending it to.
So yes, if I had the expertise, the money and the market space, I would definitely open a bank (or a krankenkasse, or an insurance company).
Well, it requires a small cognitive leap, but Patron explained it quite well, so I probably don’t need to say anything more.
But you are forced by the society to give me 100 CHF, I lend it to another person for a 3%(yr and in exchange I keep it safe four you, we could infer that I am already making money with your money.
Maybe I can’t formally say you’re paying me, but close enough, as far as I can consider
But if I’m otherwise wrong, please, enlighten me
This is missing the part about banking regulation, which ensures that deposits are not at risk. You can’t do that 1:1 between deposit and loans, for each loan you have to take into account the risk, which makes the margin much much slimmer. Don’t forget that a bank can’t just “store” cash, every night the sheet is balanced, whatever extra capital/deposit it has needs to go somewhere safe (which by default is short term sovereign or central bank deposit with negative rate).
So hospital visits should be free too if you don’t have a big operation?
Changing light bulbs or tires of your car should be free too because they make 95% of their money with repairs?
I’m not sure what you want, they already subsidize deposit quite a lot, do you want them to be forced by the government to subsidize it further? Like X% of other product revenue should be used to subsidize retail? Do you know any company that decides to keep losing money on a product because overall they’re still profitable? I wonder if instead we could use something like taxes to redistribute wealth 
There’s quite some competition and they’re all folding one after the other and lowering the threshold for negative interest because they can only have so much of a loss leading product.
(and there’s a feedback loop, as more bank do it, the remaining ones end up with more deposit, which cost more money so they’re forced to introduce fees, etc.)
I like what one columnist from cash.ch was saying: that banks pay themselves nice boni when things are going well, and when things are going bad, banks have to be saved with public administration money. So, where are your emergency funds?
I am curious, what do people think banks can invest money into at 5%?
Last I checked the market rate for a variable mortgage is about 0.6%
5% suggests equities or unsecured lending neither of which I would want my bank to be investing very much into, I am no expert on capital requirements but I am sure its not allowed
It also raises question whether people really understand what they’re investing into (I assume the 5% comes from the folk wisdom that it’s the long term expected return from the stock market that’s often quoted in this forum and elsewhere). I hope they really understand it doesn’t have the same risk profile than their bank deposits.
So they add some (more or less hidden) fees and make it profitable, and they don’t need to leave the market. That’s how the free market is supposed to work. People can leave if they’re unhappy (but it’s likely other banks will follow with increasing fees given the costs).
Don’t pay for it (I’m also happy about my free banking package), but also don’t expect it to stay that way forever (at least while the interest rate are in the deep negative). I’d guess there’s always going to be some free banking option, but the lower limit on negative interests is likely to continue to drop.
I don’t know where you work, but besides for their charity arm (which usually has some PR benefit), most company don’t keep losing money on a product just for fun (can be a loss leader to funnel into high margin product, or gain market share, but long term I don’t know any company that would keep losing money voluntarily).
I don’t get this attitude to banks. Without them nothing in the world would work. It’s as important as the internet.
I don’t hate banks… I have for them the healthy (at least I think) amount of mistrust that anyone should have with something they don’t really understand.
Anyways, the point was : why should I pay for something when I can have it for free? That was my whole point.
The whole discussion went out of hands, but my idea was for it to be really, really low-time consuming : “Hey, do you know a bank that can give me for free the same things my bank makes me pay?”
“Yes, it’s XYZ” or “No, unluckily all the banks suffer from low interest rates and they can’t afford to provide such services for free”
And that’s totally fair, I do the same 
. But earlier people were arguing that banks somehow have lots of margin and are just being greedy on consumer deposits
Exactly.
BCV, on the other hand, seem to be thinking they can or do provide some added value over their “free” competitors. And accordingly, they’ll be charging something for a certain service they provide (that we all costs money to provide).
Yet the customer has a choice. So no reason to call that “rude” or "rip-off, is there?
Don’t get me wrong, I do like and use “free” products 
Many restaurants or clubs around the world do charge a cover charge.
Sorry to somehow spark the debate again, I just can’t help it.
Which tells me that in the current circumstances, they aren’t really able to make money with money, hence why they don’t want too much cash to be parked on the accounts of their clients. It’s ok, the business model is changing, I get that. Simply, I do take notice and since some competition seems to be able to perform better than others on that front, the original question of “hey, I used to get things “for free” and now I’m asked to pay a fee, are there alternatives I can use” seems to fall fully within the kind of optimization we usually do around here, hence why I don’t understand why we have turned this discussion into “hey, banking fees are normal, do you want to work for free?” when it’s not about that, it’s about using competition to get better or the same service for cheaper. Or do you think the low TER on our passive funds doesn’t make things hard for fund managers and that, hence, paying higher TERs would be legitimate because “do you want to work for a low wage?”
On the payroll argument and because I can’t help being cheeky, I’m sure there are a lot of people paid by the insurance industry. I don’t see anybody here saying it’s fine to use expensive, suboptimal and opaque 3a mixed investing/insurance products. If chasing for lower fees and better performance on one side is ok, doing the same in regards to banks should too. Bonuses come with performance, they have to be earned.
We are talking about 2 CHF per month, not about a product that will cost you 100-200k in the end (3a insurance scam).
They definitely can, on the retail side they’re very happy to get you to invest in their 1% TER funds or some mortgage (that’s always where they made money, deposits is just one way to get a relationship started). The main difference is that deposits used to be at least not a loss business (the deposit interest used to be slightly lower than the risk free rate).
3a insurance scams are the only way besides real estate for stocks-shy average people to get more than bank interest rates returns on their savings. They need the insurance to provide them confidence and knowing the least amount that is promised to them in the end helps them to give in and get started. It’s absolutely not optimal but it’s way better than sitting on the sidelines spending everything or with cash sitting on a bank account. It does serve a purpose too and can pretend to some form of legitimacy.
I know I’m a contrarian in this view but I’ve just spent a crash course on self-employed finances with people who don’t look at their second pillar benefits and think having a salary means all of it should be spent, which is the mainstream view in Switzerland. For as much as I dislike most insurance 3a products, they do serve a purpose for those people.
Edit: in case it’s not clear, the part of 3a insurance schemes that you “loose” in the first years actually buys insurance coverage, which is not free either. That we don’t get to use it because the risk doesn’t materialize doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have to pay for the service. There again, the risk profile of these plans isn’t the same as a 100% stocks investment strategy.