Many swiss banks have started to require that all employees use the company’s banking services exclusively. There seem to be some people interested in discussing the legality and consequences thereof.
Reminder: Please do not discuss illegal practices. They are not welcome in this forum.
The employers often point to FINMA regulations. But to my knowledge FINMA only requires that banks take steps to prevent insider trading. The implemented compliance solution is their own.
One example among others is Art. 323b Abs. 3 OR also known as “Truckverbot” (ban on truck systems) which voids agreements that use salaries to the benefit of the employer.
The author examines the balancing of interests and comes to the conclusion that the employees interests could prevail in certain cases. For example if you are forced to use investment services due to the size of your wealth.
Since it’s already 2023 there could be court cases. But I’m no lawyer, so I’m not familiar with searching for such information.
Also the possibility of your employer wanting to get rid of “difficult” employees is another thing to consider.
The employer can force the employees to close any other broker account and only use the one provided by the bank, that probably has some additional constraints on the orders to avoid insider trading
The point is, the Bank requests that all trading has to be done via their platform, they can monitor inside trading and act accordningly.
If one does this via a 3rd party they can no longer monitor it and you are to be blamed.
This is basically just done so that they are not at fault here, since the moment you use another brooker you re at fault anyway.
However, if they allow their employees to use 3rd party broker, you’ll have to announce it to your employer’s compliance team.
Each compliance departement will have a control in place (annual review, random check etc) and will most likely ask you to provide them with a list of your transactions.
All these questions can be raised/discussed with HR during the recruiting process.
If you mean changing the job to a less restrictive employer…I am considering…especially if one wants to create trading and/or investment positions, which shouldnt be sucked up by fees…
if your future employer is using this tool, good for you. That’ll work.
I doubt (by experience in the banking industry) that many Swiss financial institutions are using IB compliance tool, neither API to track employees transactions.
As written above, to be discussed during interviews.
At the end, your future employer will impose its policy, not the opposite
My bank has a policy of exclusive use of its own investment platform, for all staff disregarding if they work in sensitive area or not. At the same time, they allow for exceptions for people who already come with portfolio with a broker registered in their country of citizenship (that is not CH). But they do not allow employees with foreign citizenship to open such accounts during their employment.
To me that looks like discriminative practice. If foreign citizens can keep and actively trade their portfolios with other brokers, for the purpose of surveillance or control it does not matter whether they opened it prior or during their employment with the bank. One can even go further and ask, why foreigners can have their portfolios with foreign brokers, but local employees cannot?
For sure banks have a right to shape their policies, but I have serious doubts if that one is legal and can hold in the court of law.
Maybe your bank platform cannot offer the same service (special instruments or small caps outside of Switzerland?) of this foreign broker.
Unfortunately, there is not much you can do with it. Is there any union you can contact or someone in the compliance department you could go and ask why they cannot change it ?
As it seems to be a enforcement in your industry, your only viable option maybe to change job and industry.
What’s even the point of going to court since you will likely be terminated? Legal or not, you can suck it up, take the door (or raise it to HR, but I mean joke on you). That’s just the reality of it.
Assuming they were transparent, which the fine prints always are, you cannot blame them for accepting something you knew beforehand. Also, this is not discrimination (circumstances are not the same), and there’s no actual violation of any right or damage to repair.
As others said, higher fees should be compensated by higher pay working for a bank.
You are not required to use the company’s bank account, you are only required to receive your salary on it.
I personally keep 0 CHF balance on my company’s bank account. As soon as I receive my salary on it, I transfer it out to another bank. I’m not interested in using any financial products from the company I work for.
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