In my case IB gives me a UK (Citibank) CHF IBAN account (starts with CH20) and there are 0 transfer fees. Does not work with you?
Also cant you just use the standard IBAN that all the posters here have? I suspect it’s the same and it will get routed to your account as long as the account ID is included.
Sorry, I admit to not reading the whole thread but I assumed so (and was speaking more generally).
Residence with a broker isn’t a choice that you just “put” somehow. It should reflect your actual place of residence, unless you want to risk opening a can of worms.
It might be worth a try. The question however is if the account works across “all” IBKR entities - something that I’d have at least some doubts about.
Legally IBKR isn’t always the same IBKR but instead multiple entities. As I understand, Kvothe’s IBKR account has - based on his residence - been (re)assigned to one of their EU entities - which might not work with the same Citibank CHF IBAN.
Think about it: The moment you’re transferring funds to IBKR’s account, they are “responsible”. Not only contractually buy probably also required by applicable law. So it makes sense that account can’t accept funds for multiple entities.
As an example, IBCE (Hungary) don’t seem to accept CHF deposits at all.
Which IBKR entity are you with?
I would not risk transfering to any IBAN not directly provided to me by IBKR, moreover I suspect it would not make it there for the reasons explained by San Francisco.
Also I agree that residency for a broker should reflect your official residency (as defined by tax laws). If I had known the trouble though I would have set things up before moving or used my Swiss address for a few more days so that I could have invested most of my savings.
As for which IBKR entity, is there an easy way to see it? I put my residency to be in France and I believe I therefore use the only entity I am allowed to use from there. But I don’t know whether it is French or another European one. (The site is still www.interactivebrokers.co.uk)
Bank account title: Interactive Brokers Central Europe Zrt
And it does allow CHF transfer in my case, but to a German bank.
Have a look at the official tax reports from IB, the legal entity should be clearly stated on those.
e.g on my 1042-S form:
I think the account statements (such as activity statement) do contain it, don’t they?
Hungary.
One question for swiss resident, does IBKR provide you a CHF IBAN ?
Because, they provide me an IBAN from Credit Suisse and not from Citibank, so I was assuming that they changed their deposit bank for swiss investor… But maybe this is only for new customers ?
I just created a new recurring transfer at IBKR, though I did chose saved sending institution details (Neon). For me the instruction received is still the Citibank London IBAN for Interactive Brokers LLC, Greenwich CT (USA).
Let’s see if I can increase my monthly inpayment by 50 CHF without going broke.
Side note: When entering recipient details, Neon don’t allow choosing the U.S. - though they do offer Serbia, Pakistan and the Syrian Arab Republic, among others.
Ok, it seems to be their new custodian (?) bank for their news customers.
For the moment it works perfectly and I don’t why but I feel more confident sending my money to a swiss bank (sometimes my brain is a bit irrational).
Yes, they do for me.
The funny part: a few years ago IB was not providing a CHXXXXX IBAN. Some colleague at work figured out they were nonetheless clearing on SIC (so swiss banks could clear directly and consider it as domestic) and reverse engineered the IBAN.
This became a known “trick” (tho you do need a leap of faith sending large amount of money to the non advertised IBAN 
).
A few months later I think people contacted IB support, they were confused for a while and then said this was a new account and they’ll use that IBAN going forward (it’s still unclear to me if it was really new or if they realized they should advertise this IBAN).
That was an amazing hacking/reverse engineering demonstration. (That person might be/have been on this forum, if they recognize themself, kudos again!)
Another “funny” part:
Isn’t there one Swiss bank (Migros Bank?) that nonetheless insists (and not wrongly, technically) it’s a cross-border transfer and charge accordingly?
Does the german bank BIC show up on Inquiry IID | SIX?
If so then the same trick likely works and the IBAN could be converted to CHXXX
I think it might have been the mythical hedgehog here:
That was a really impressive hack indeed
What do people think of going through (a 100% reliable) 3rd person (swiss resident). Would the chain UBS account in my name —free–> CH IBAN Revolut in 3rd persons name —free?–> LT Revolut in my name —free–> IB work? Or would it cause only more trouble? (For example would it affect taxes and or would it get blocked somewhere because it looks like suspicious money laundering or would there still be hidden fees somewhere?)
I’m really confused how I should send CHF to the German CHF account from my Liechtenstein CHF account.
Does SEPA work? I thought that only worked for EUR, but my bank allows me to pick CHF as a currency… Or will it somehow convert it internally (at some scammy high conversion rate?) ?
Or should I try the more expensive “Auslandsüberweisung” and let the receiving bank pay the fees? But the part with the BIC seems really archaic and a bit scary…
Yes, EUR only.
Side note: Contrary to Switzerland (and now the UK), Liechtenstein is a EEA member state. SEPA cross-border transfers to/from other EEA member states are therefore price-capped to the same fees as domestic SEPA transfers (that doesn’t mean though that your Liechtenstein bank has to offer them for free).
Probably not easily to be answered without knowing - or asking - your bank.
Most normal thing in the world. Even used to be one for SEPA transfers until just a couple of years ago. Bank transfers without any bank/sort/routing code are the exception. Especially if they’re cross-border (then again, SEPA has just largely incorporated these bank routing information into their IBAN format).
In practice it would likely fly under the radar for certain amounts.
In principle, the trusted 3rd person would be merely forwarding funds for you, thus not acting on his own account - which in case of any investigation is not going to be appreciated by compliance people.
In the end, I believe there’s likely no squeaky-clean way to send CHF “for free” to your IBCE account - unless you can use CHF details that get cleared through the Swiss interbank system (domestic IBAN, basically).
You’ll likely have to swallow it - or try what you can get away with.
As a Geneva frontalier I also encountered this recently when trying to open an IB account. I naively thought tax residents of France would be allocated an account with the Luxembourg (or at worst the Irish) entity post-Brexit, but apparently Hungary (IBCE) is the only option. I also noted that you cannot choose CHF as your base currency when opening the account (only options are EUR, USD and Hungarian, Czech and Polish currency). Several contacts with IB Support confirmed that there are no other options: IBCE account location and one of those 5 currencies as a base…take it or leave it.
As all our income is coming in in CHF, I really wanted a CHF base currency to avoid several FX hops, but even more importantly, I have reservations about our life savings being based in Hungary…so it’s caused me to stop the IB account opening altogether and question the right way forward for now…
The other concerns might be valid, but the base currency shouldn’t matter, what matters is being able to hold/trade FX.
(I have CHF as base currency but mostly interact with USD on IB)
So I’m curious now, can someone share the IBCE IBAN used for CHF?
Btw I noticed that captrader was listing a credit suisse IBAN, do you know if captrader customer are on IBCE or one of the other location?