Postfinance Funds vs e-Trading

Investing / Brokers
43

Thanks @rolandinho for confirming which ETFs are available.

Like yourself, I have some € in my PF account, thus I am tempted by VUSA / VWRL
Not sure how to calculate the dividend tax break-even point between FX costs € to $ and buying an US vs Irish ETF in €, I’ not even required to file a tax return yet, hoping that will change next year.

What’s the tax rate that I can offset the dividend tax against ? Is it the Social deductions part of my payslip and the Withholding tax % ? or just the Withholding tax % ?
Thanks

44

As I said I’m in the process of deciding which broker I want to use and one criteria for me was spreads for currency conversion. I got this reply from Swissquote, a few weeks ago:
“Bei einem Währungswechsel entsteht ein Auf-/Abschlag von 1% -1.5% auf dem Mittelkurs. Dieser ist in dem Kurs, welcher bei der Kursanfrage angezeigt wird bereits enthalten. Diese Information ist nirgends publiziert.”

And there is a study from Moneyland from 2018:

“Forex rates, which are used for many remote transactions, have significantly lower average spreads than banknote rates. The average spreads of the forex rates used by Swiss banks are 2.92% for euros, 3.1% for U.S. dollars, 3.15% for British pounds, 3.52% for Swedish kronor and 5.08% for Thai baht.”

As soon as I found out 1 year ago I was moving the Transferwise. Maybe still about 0.3 - 0.5%, but much more attractive. Not with IB yet.

45

Just happened upon this in Sq’s newest fees brochure. Isn’t this the spread/fx fee that we are speaking of, that they told you is not published?

Screenshot_20200507-231618~2
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46

sorry didn’t get that. is that cynical? cuz I’m honestly interested in your opinion as I’m considering swallowing the PF costs for 4-8 trades (VWRL at SIX in CHF) a year for the benefit of simplicity. instead of going to IB, where I need to wire money to, do cash management, withdraw money back etc. of course not benefiting from low IB trading costs, high liquidity at ARCA,LSE and higher TER. All summing up for 20 years.
So, you think PF is a viable option formy case?

47

Nope, I was asking this the help desk 2 weeks ago as this was one of my decision criteria for choosing a broker.
DA-1 shouldnt be an issue though. you will only receive 70% of dividend. 30% will be hold back at the source directly. but compared to QI you need to get back the 15% youself.

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48

I believe at the end the best way is to buy at IB and send all to PF every year. I still didn’t understand how much will it cost, I’m pretty sure less than buying them at PF. I will sooner or later send IB an email .

49

No. Will be much more expensive.

All of that is easy. Instead of contemplating on this forum for a week whether it makes sense to use a super expensive swiss broker, you could have already done all of that in a few afternoons

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50

Thanks for the clear words @kilyn. for me it’s not just cost for the transactions to consider. for me it became quite evident in this forum, that getting familiar with IB also takes quite some time = costs. And I saw a lot of questions, why is it that in IB … But will stop here asking more about PF.

51

Never doubt in the quality of customer support! :smiley:

So If I read this right, for main currencies PF/SQ will charge:

  • 475 CHF for the 1st 50’000 CHF
  • 250 CHF for the 2nd 50’000 CHF
  • 190 CHF for the 3rd 50’000 CHF (and 4th and 5th)

These fees are off at least by a factor of 10 from what I would see as fair. Do they really have such high costs to justify this?

52

If you have separate account numbers for CHF, EUR, USD, you can reduce this cost by using Revolut oder TransferWise. Just transfer your CHF to Revolut or TW, then transfer them back to your account in the desired currency.

53

I don’t know if I trust Revolut enough to send them 100k CHF. And don’t you need Metal to exchange these kind of amounts? But yeah, for smaller amounts that would be a solution. I’m just put off by any kind of workarounds & hacks. I envy Americans that they have such high abundance of high quality and low cost fintech services.

54

PF is so expensive that I could be your IB manager if you want, @gsheert. You can pay me 30chf per session and you will still save money.

Weird, isn’t it?

55

I trust your statement. But consider this: assets < 100k. I want to buy 4 times a year < 5000 CHF. If I do on PF it would be 25 CHF each, without taking fees for exchange and stamp duty into account. Another 20 bucks. Depending on the exchange rate CHF/USD it might be break even with IB. However, appreciate your clear statement and your application to be my IB manager :slight_smile:

56

Yes. It’s a hassle. Amounts this big might be a challenge.
Pro should be enough in case of Revolut.

Companies will often try and charge what I call a “convenience tax”. Especially banks.

I don’t like workarounds either, but in the end it is a question of whether the savings are worth it.

My suggestion is more food for thought. If you’re really dedicated, you’ll go with IB anyway because it’s cheapest.

57

Considering this, I don’t think your time is worth nowhere as much as you think it is. Investing a bit of it into learning how to use IB should be worth it for you. You’ve probably already wasted more time on discussions here than it’d take you to just go ahead and learn it.

If you go with PF nonetheless, consider the chance that in a while you’ll come to your senses and crawl back to IB anyway and will pay the cost (both money and time) to switch to it from PF, like some others (search for those threads too)

Sample bias. It’s the most popular broker here.

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58

It’s really not that much, IMO - especially if you plan to keep it simple with just buy & hold ETFs.
Personally I believe it takes more time to setup the account (i.e. fill in the data and know what to put where) than:

  1. Login to mobile app or web portal
  2. Exchange the CHF to USD (yes there is one more step before where you need to prepare the funds transaction, to send CHF from your bank)
  3. Buy x shares of ETF (e.g. VT) in USD
59

Hello everyone, I’m not sure if this is the good topic to ask my question, but nevermind, I didn’t want to open a new thread for that.

Here is my interogation: I was wondering how PF E-Trading fee work? When I read their prospectus, I understand that once you wire some money on the E-Trading account, you have a fee/credit of 90 CHF that you have to use during one year. What about other wire of money? Did they charges you 30 CHF every single time? And can you use this 30 CHF as credit?

For example: let assume that I wire 25’000 CHF and use it to purchase the VWRL on the SIX Swiss Exchange for 95 CHF (without stamp duty) on February 2021. I will use the credit of 90 CHF and then pay 5 CHF from myself. Then, if I want to purchase for 5’000 CHF of VWRL again by wiring this amount on the next month, will I get 30 CHF of credit?

Thank you in advance for your answers :slight_smile:

60

What do you mean by wire money? I can pay in/out of my postfinance account to E-Trading as often as I want: no fees.

Credits: you pay 90.-/year and those will be used towards trading costs. You get discounts after 10 trades. No new credits applied as far as I understand it.

61

This what I wanted to know. So you can pay in/out whatever amoung you want from your PF Account to the E-Trading account without any fees. And the 90 CHF credit is set only one time per year and you are free to use it or not, but you won’t have any other credit.

Because by reading their factsheet, I first understand that any subsequent transfer between your PF Account to the E-Trading Account cost something, like 30 CHF, that’s it. But it is only true if you open another custody account. Reading the factsheet in English was better understandable than reading it in French…

Thank you for your answer :slight_smile:

62

If you sell something you can only withdraw it out of the E-Trading after two days, otherwise you pay some interest (I only figured this out a couple of days ago)…

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