Radicant - a new neo-bank & wealth management app

damn not able to open an account if you are UK citizen, no issue with the other app banks

Radicant might take offense with Brexit :laughing:

But seriously, if you’ve got a CH-permit, I don’t see on what grounds they could refuse.

If a bank can refuse U.S. citizens, why shouldn’t they be able to refuse U.K. citizens?

Sure, not saying they couldn’t, but I guess they’d have to provide an objective reason, else it could be deemed discriminatory

Radicant follows wiLLBe’s reduction of the interest paid on cash deposits.

"Due to the recent interest rate cut by the Swiss National Bank (SNB), you will now get up to 1.25% interest on your everyday account.

1.25% for balance of up to CHF 250,000
1% for balance higher than CHF 250,000"

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Interesting article
https://insideparadeplatz.ch/2024/03/26/radicant-loch-frisst-ein-fuenftel-des-baselland-kb-gewinns/

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Here the most recent article: Radicant baut jede 5. Stelle ab – Inside Paradeplatz

Just got an e-mail that they dropped the fx fees for their debit card to 0%, they also compare the rates here: Comparative analysis of foreign exchange rates with Swiss debit cards | radicant bank ag

This makes it very interesting as a main banking app (was already using it for that, except when travelling where I used neon / Revolut). Just wondering if / how they will survive long term, only cash generating product seems to be their funds where they would probably need >1B AUM to break even, this seems very unrealistic to me.

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Well, they seem to also arbitrage between retail rates that they pay and central bank rates, as they deposit assets with SNB. No idea how much can it bring…

“We selected these banks for one of these two reasons: banks with high market share in Switzerland or banks claiming to have low foreign exchange fees.”

Would be interesting to see, how Alpian performed.

But how the heck are they generating income? I personally will not change from neon to radicant; the differences are too low and radicant is too new/neon to far with their offering.

Wondering, how long BLKB is financing them…

Edit: the reviews on Glassdoor are quite positive.

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The delta is 0.25%, not a lot of margin… (and that’s assuming they actually get 1.5% from the SNB, if you’re above some threshold you only get 1%, since they don’t want banks to simply park cash)

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I am curious how the rates compare to the international competitors like Revolut or Wise.

It’s quite impossible for a neo bank which so low fees to make money unless selling other products like insurance, funds.
Neon raises capital trough their customers, because they don’t make money.
Revolut started to make some money recently after years in the market and a big customer base.

They claim to use actual interbanking rate, so as good or better than revolut. Definitely better than wise (iirc wise has 0.2%?)

The link above has numbers with example transaction.

To be fair it’s very tempting.

I think Wise/Neon should have a better rate than Revolut, at least if you exchange money before spending it (very typical for people that spend EUR during the weekend). I’m not sure anymore. Shall we test the cards every single week? :confused:

Doesn’t wise always apply a (small) markup while revolut is ~market rate during the week?

(Just checked and seems to be the case)

Though yes weekend might be in favor of wise possibly. (I also wonder which rate is applied by radiant for weekends)

I can’t find the post, but someone said that Revolut has now a markup and to get the market rate you need to “force it”

edit: All about Revolut [2022] - #112 by San_Francisco around this post

Yeah looks like wise is 0.4% fees: Wise Card Fees: Spend Anywhere in the World

Revolut is typically much smaller.

https://thepoorswiss.com/neon-vs-revolut/#8-example-of-exchange-fees

we are going offtopic though

They turn to be pretty much the same in the end - in my recent example chf-eur exchange.

Revolut had

  • lower fees but
  • worse exchange rate/spread

Wise had

  • higher fees but
  • better exchange rate/spread

The total difference on 1000 chf was <1eur.

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