How your heirs know about your bank/broker accounts

Coffee
1

In my origin EU country banks/brokers and every institution that works with money are force to inform to tax authorities about the balance and movements you have done over the year. But I believe in CH it does not work like this. They don’t inform anything and tax authorities are not aware at least you inform them year after year in your tax report.

If that is the case, if you pass away and your family is not aware of all your bank/broker accounts you have opened during your last year, they would not be able to access those assets.
I said “you have opened during your last year” because probably the CH tax authorities could inform your heirs about the accounts you had in your last tax report.

Does somebody know how this works actually?

2

There was a thread about making a will that goes along the lines of your post.

1 Like
3

correct, imo - i’ve also thought about this as i’ve made some heavy changes this year. my take: they (heirs) can still search for transfers out (of the existing/known accounts) in order to get to know new bank accounts. this could additionally be told to them by person or in a will / separate document.

4

I do not think they would have (legally) access to your bank transactions (it seems to me a bit private), that allow them find the big out transfers and find your new accounts.

5

I created a PowerPoint for my heir.
You can remind them about this ovation in your gmail inactivity notification.
An email will be sent automatically 3 months after your last connection

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6

I have a will and listed all my financial accounts there.

7

possibly - if so: separate document (‘new banks, not yet known by tax office’) in a cloud account they’d get access to and letting them know about it? easy to update, still sufficiently secure (as long as it’s as secure as the tax login).

8

so I see that my thoughts about the risk of such bank Swiss secrecy were right.

in one way or another we should keep informed our relative about new accounts, just in case

9

how much is the cost of a will in CH? how is it the process? where do u do it? I guess it should be a kind of lawyer.

10

A good will should not list your bank accounts with account numbers.
You should talk about wealth percentage for the repartition between heirs or their descendants if deceased.
So the attorney may miss a bank accounts if no one knows about it.
That’s why you could send the information to the person that will execute the repartition of your will.

11

Cost: a piece of paper. I trust you already have (access to) a pen. You simply write your will (entirely!) in handwriting. Hopefully respecting the legal minimums for next of kin.

That’s it. Everything else (e.g. notariaation) is a bonus and possibly good safety precaution.

12

It doesn‘t. There is just a list of all the financial institutions where I have my accounts. So nothing gets lost (like Coinbase for example).