I don’t see a repeating pattern for various customers as unlucky.
SAXO must have the most understaffed yet overzealous compliance department of any Swiss bank.
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They completed the acquisition in March and appointed a new CEO.
Let’s see how this turns out 
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Do you have numbers?
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It is well known that they are understaffed:
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SAXO stans in full force. 
Honestly, I just haven’t had any issues with opening my account nor had any need to contact customer support after. Having not looked beyond the couple of anecdotes in this thread it’s hard to see how big the issue is.
I feel for you, but also if you look at e.g. Reddit pretty much every broker has stories of them failing customers with customer support, so numbers would help pull it out of our individual lived experiences.
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I had no issue at all opening my account, started on 25.03 early afternoon, account open and available on 26.03 before noon
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My experience with opening a Saxo account in the Netherlands is different. It was last summer, on Sunday. It got approved on Sunday within an hour! My thought was with Indian staff having no weekends.
But then they messed up with the referral I used to open it. Had to contact them and wait for something like two weeks before they gave me transaction costs credit.
Happy to report that the account is finally open!
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That’s been a long journey. Just out of curiosity:
- what additional documents did Saxo ask for?
- and did they explain why it took so long?
More documents on the source of the funds because the first documents were from the sending account and not the receiving account and that somehow wasn’t enough.
No explanation why it took so long, overloaded I guess.
I don’t understand this part.
The money wasn’t from you, but from someone else? But transferred to Saxo via your account? But the explanation of where the money came from was provided by the other person?
someone -> you -> Saxo
↑
first explaination
Or are the sending and receiving accounts in your name?
you -> you -> Saxo
↑
first explaination
I find it interesting to see what banks take issue with.
Sorry for the late reply, the first case. They somehow needed confirmation it landed in my account.
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Saxo charged me “Client Interest” on my Autoinvest account. How can this be possible? 8.08% for in total 4 days in May.
Their AI chat:
It looks like the “Client Interest” charge on your Autoinvest account could be related to interest applied to your cash balance, often when there is a negative balance on your account. Interest can be charged or credited depending on whether your account value (including cash and any unrealized profits/losses) is positive or negative. If the balance was negative during the period, it might result in an interest charge on your account.
I cannot remember I have ever paid any “interest” on my stocks or ETF I fully owned and paid (no margin).
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Same happened to me, in my case it was because I sold stocks and directly transferred the funds. Because the funds were not settled yet, they lent me money in theory, but I was not aware of that. I complained and got the money back.
In my opinion very bad UX and not documented anywhere as far as I know. Swissquote actually shows you a warning when you try to do this and tells you when the funds will be settled.
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Just a quick experience report after moving my portfolio to Saxo.
I tried opening the account on a Saturday, but the application needed manual review first, so it wasn’t approved immediately. By Monday everything was cleared, and I initiated a transfer of my stocks and ETFs from IBKR to Saxo. The process was straightforward with both brokers, and Saxo provided a clear status update every step of the way.
By Thursday, the transfer was already complete and my account was automatically upgraded to Platinum. So far, I’m pretty impressed.
The only really annoying part has been getting the W-8BEN form.
I requested it on Monday and still haven’t received it. No response from support either, and the AI chatbot is refusing to help when you ask for the f*** formular.
Why not just make the form available for download like pretty much every other broker? They guard that thing like as if it was the lauch codes for a nuclear strike…
I honestly didn’t expect getting a simple tax form to take longer than transferring an entire investment portfolio 
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Maybe you can just download via link here and send it to their customer care or the person who helped open the account
when I did this last year, I got the form from them but it is the same form
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Thanks a lot! I somehow completely missed that page myself. Saxo should just hire you for customer support!
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I will send them my CV 
In general with the age of AI, customer service is becoming very frustrating. Companies are trying to hide customer service away to push automation but sometimes AI doesn’t do the job and you need human. I feel in age of AI, winner will still be whoever figures out how not to frustrate customers
even IB is making it difficult to reach someone but I still manage to send them messages
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I don’t remember filling and signing a W-8BEN with a Swiss broker. One assumed from the beginning that I was a Swiss resident based on the opening documents, and for another a phone call after I noticed that the 30% wasn’t split was enough to fix it.
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