Some relevant reading here What If My Broker Goes Bust? The Truth About Protection Schemes.
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So what would be the maximum amount in CHF that you would feel comfortable putting into your single IBKR(Interactive Brokers) account? Does anyone know if IBKR goes bust, are the stocks we own safe? (my shares in META, GOOGLE etc)
Shares should belong to you, not the broker.
Thus safe.
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That is what is stated always. However, I do not want to imagine how complicated it would be to get your shares if IBKR goes burst. I’m feeling ok now with having more or less half of my portfolio at IBKR and half at PF.
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Either you trust your depositor or you don’t. The amount should no matter in my opinion. Stocks at your broker or depositor (Like Credit Suisse) are in the segregated assets category and can thus not be used to repay creditors. (Segregated Assets Explained - moneyland.ch)
Edit: If all the protection schemes fail I would boldly predict that we have much greater problems going on to care about.
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Is there any example where a broker got burst and the clients got their shares afterwards? We see now with the SVB that clients get their insured money back but even that takes time. So I do not want to imagine how complex it is to get all shares to the right person if a big broker go under. Scary thought
Are you sure, about taking time?
SVB was shut down by regulators on Friday, and the Biden administration announced Sunday night that all depositors at the failed Silicon Valley Bank would have access to all their money on Monday morning.
That didn’t seem to take a lot of time, but of course can’t confirm from personal experience.
…in principle, yes.
That said, since the GameStop saga has made it well-known how naked short selling allows for the creation of what are basically fake shares, I’d remain cautious. Especially since they’re engaging in share-lending practices - at least on margin accounts?
A third of my liquid assets.
Rather than giving a fixed number, I’d look at it relative to your wealth.
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Yes, you should disable securities lending and not use any margin if safe custody is your top priority.
My IBKR account currently holds about 40% of my assets. I like not having everything at one broker but I’m also not worried if the IBKR part increases a bit.
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Yes, that’s sufficient.
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That’s my feeling as well. I have an IBKR account (with less than 500k$), a Degiro account, and a third one with a broker in the Eurozone.
I’m happy with the three of them, but the third one offers only euro-denominated accounts. While it’s cheap (no custody fees, gives two orders free of charge per month above a certain amount of assets) I won’t top it up, because of this currency limitation.
So the question is, we all agree that IBKR and Degiro are good, but is there a third one?
Swissquote and Cornèrtrader come with higher fees 
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you could use Postfinance if you only use it for storage. As far as I know, only 90 CHF deposit fees (which are also trading credits). Buy on IB, and then transfer to postfinance.
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Personally I use Swissquote as a third broker and just suck it up with the costs. It’s a Swiss company with Swiss salaries, and so on, so even I don’t like the high costs it is somehow justified. Extra security or less risk comes at a cost.
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Swissquote is known for low salaries and a large proportion of cross-border workers.
If I need to suck it up, I’d rather go for a reputable, quality-oriented institution like VZ.
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So what you’re saying is: It’s an efficiently run broker whose support is not only local but (being foreign and coming from a cross-border background themselves) can also emphatise with the many foreigners that frequent this forum?
What’s not to like about that?
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O had a different experience. I called PF yesterday. They acknowlwdged PF= SwissQuote, but they said they are not a QI, and they cannot do W8BEN.
Does anyone have PF? Were you able to get the whole 30% witholding tax back? Were you abld to fill the w8-ben?
I actually filed a W-8-BEN with PF just a week ago for the first time ever (account since 10years) but I do not have any US stocks there. Maybe worth trying out if you could claim back the withhold tax. However, I always thought that this can only be claimed with a foreign broker???
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One thing I learned in my career is that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys 
Employing incompetent people and/or accepting a high turnover is not an efficient way to do business. Competent foreigners/newcomers can accept a low salary for a short time only – then they leave to greener pastures.
If I must pay a certain amount to enjoy access to a Swiss bank, I’d rather give that money to an institution that provides me with the Swiss quality – rather than something that is Swiss in name only. Thankfully we have a free market and we are all free to put our money where we see fit 
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About Swiss quality, I opted for IB after trying a Swiss ‘quality’ bank that due to many stupid ‘errors’ cost me some thousands CHF (errors in declaring taxis, ‘errors’ in calculating fees - those I got back but after spending days checking % and no one paid me for that and BTW errors always casually favouring them…). With IB since 2019 and so happy about it!
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Where could you file the W8BEN?