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.
Since foreign banks in Switzerland must comply with the same FINMA rules as Swiss banks, and since they don’t require employee account consolidation but accept a disclosure together with pre-clearance and trade information, it is possible that that the consolidation rules of Swiss banks might be excessive.
If you are a Swiss bank employee and you think that the required account consolidation with your employer forces you to pay higher fees or prevents you from switching to a cheaper alternative, use this form of the Swiss Price Surveillance Authority to place an anonymous complaint.
When you do so, please don’t copy/paste this post but describe the situation in your own words.
So just to be clear , the expectation is that let’s say UBS should allow their employees to use IBKR? But the same employees are selling UBS brokerages and banking services to other customers.
If I think from employer perspective, the expectation to use services offered by the company is not a bad expectation
I often feel that it’s not good to cherry pick things. A job comes with a full package -: remuneration, pension plans, perks, bonuses, and some expectations
If everything else is great (assuming the offer was accepted by employee) then shouldn’t expectations be also fulfilled?
As a contractual condition but for free or even compensated on top? Maybe. Else it is illegal and void.
There are other things that the employer would like, e.g. unlimited non-competes. Void. Or maybe outright buying your lifetime working output (aka. a slave). Illegal.
The relationship between employer and employee is not equal in many cases. That’s why there are laws to ensure societal goals are met. But this isn’t a politics board.
Legally, you’re certainly not required to bank and trade at your employer.* The Zivilgesetzbuch (ZGB) (Swiss Civil Code) would have to spell this out – it doesn’t.
However, your contract with your employer may include additional terms, as apparently UBS does for the matter regarding the topic title. Those apply to you once you sign the contract.
Migros could just as easily add iffy terms to their standard work contract: as a Migros employee, you can only shop at Migros … except that everyone, including Migros, would conclude that this is perhaps a little excessive.
UBS gets away with this because only a few people complain. And if it became a more public topic, say via the Preisüberwacher, the public reaction/opinion would probably be along the lines of “oh, look at these poor bankers complaining about fees … tsk tsk”.
Anyhow …
If I were (to become) a UBS employee,
I would first check whether I am married (or in a legally almost equivalent partnership), whether my spouse (or equivalent) doesn’t work for UBS, and have the custody account in the name (or shared) with my spouse.
Certainly, my employement contract with UBS does not have clauses for where my spouse does their banking and trading.
If above does not work, I would try to get an exception included in the contract, or, if already employed, would circle with the bank’s compliance department and ask for an exemption to be granted. State upfront that you are willing to provide the information necessary for regulatory compliance to be fulfilled.
Even compliance people can be reasonable. You might have to sign additional terms & conditions (just click through, as always … ;-)) and provide them with yearly trading statements from your better other broker, but keep in mind it’s not an unreasonable thing to ask for an exception.
Remember, the bank only wants to (a) Cover Their Ass and (b) optimize (costs) for ensuring compliance imposed onto them by regulators. The simplest way is to demand that employees trade only at the bank.** Now the bank can automate things, much cheaper than asking 112’842 employees to send in their trading journal and have that evaluated by a bunch of humans that you have to pay.
If just a bunch of employees ask for an exception, they may allow for it, as they probably already have a few edge cases where things need to be checked manually.
Only after being denied an exception, you could try to go to court against your employer, as you were being reasonable, willing to provide them with the data necessary for them to carry out their compliance duties, and they didn’t play along, being unreasonable … but I admit, hauling your employer into court may be a tall order.
Maybe, if they don’t grant you an exception, re-apply and ask whether there’s anyone else with an exception and whether the employer’s course of action is cleared with the Bankingombudsman … you’re an employee, but as a forced customer of UBS you’re also a customer, and you can ask the banking ombudsman questions. They might even have better (and tested) answers than the ones provided here.
You could of course always … oh, wait, @Helix stated in the OP to not go to the Dark Side, so I’ll refrain from discussing other options …
* Not a lawyer yadda yadda ya.
** Ok, it’s a nice side benefit for the bank that this boss move generates additional fees, minted of the bank’s own employees, but I would stipulate that’s not their main goal.
While I agree that it sucks that UBS is forcing you to use their own accounts/products with much higher fees, look at the bright side. Their pension fund is giving you 6-9%/year interest currently. I think that’s outweighing the downsides of investing with UBS.
6-9% interest in pension fund?
Wow.
If I work there I should just do voluntary buy ins and forget about everything else. Although I think this seems very high.
Maybe the employees can also submit a complain that it’s not same as market average and should be reduced to 1% - 2% because obviously this extra return is driven by higher cost product offering to rest of the world.
Just kidding
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