I’m getting to the point where the new ramped up SQ custody fees start to annoy me, so I wrote a message to them explaining my thinking. Got a call back a half an hour later offering me nothing. They said that in order to be even considered, one needs to suffer a lot from the new fees and trade at least a few times per month (like, I’m getting paid once a month, why would I trade more than once a month? Also, why would I wait for the fees to pile up before moving elsewhere?) Has anyone been more successful negotiating down the fees?
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New fees?
Yeah… not sure how you negotiate but you need to call them with “I need you to waive those fees or will move my assets, kthxbye”. Also, make sure to call “premium” support, not the public one (if you have enough assets to be affected by those fees you should see slightly different contact details when you log in). And of course, they aren’t going to waive them for everyone. Buying once a month with slightly more than a million clearly won’t work.
I assume @varepsilon is doing well and has passed the first million threshold, after which SQ applies an additional 0.03% per year.
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I’ve written before about this on this forum, but when SQ a couple of years ago (starting in 2023) tried or actually did introduce new fees (custodoy fee based on AUM above some threshold), I wrote them a polite message
- asking them to either waive the fees or wave goodbye my assets
- that I wasn’t interested in a discussion with them and that they should just escalate to their necessary management level able to make that call and let me know of their decision
Heard back within two weeks that they would leave me on their flat rate for that year and refund me the additional custody charges already charged by crediting me with a corresponding trading fee credit as compensation for the additional fee already charged, but that they couldn’t guarantee that they would keep this arrangement with me in the years following (they have so far).
Fine with me – I also won’t guarantee them I’ll stay with them if they make another move in charging me more based on my AUM with them. 
I don’t feel bad about this at all: their trading fees are still outrageous (compared to, say, IBKR), and their “Swissness” label is really just a fig leaf and marketing label (IMO).1
[1] I have also written about this elsewhere on this forum, search for 'sub-custodian' and '@Your_Full_Name' if you're interested in the technical details of what happens to "your" assets when some dumb orange utan were to yank the chain on your assets, or search for "swiss broker" if you're interested in a more
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May I ask if you trade a lot there, like the other two users who reported so far? SQ folks seem to be pretty clear that they want to make more money from their (expensive) transactions.
Just open an account at Saxo and move some positions there. I think SQ need to let go their custody fees in near term. They are not competitive against Saxo.
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I don’t trade there anymore unless I partially or completely sell positions only held at SQ. Plus some regular FX conversions, which might explain why SQ stays put for now on me.
Normal course of action for my SQ account:
- receive dividends on SQ via corporate actions (i.e. no fees)
- convert to CHF if necessary with FX fees1
- reinvest via corporate actions into just a very few companies – BNS, IMB, LGEN, MAIN, OXSQ – for, well, just a couple of cents, per position, on every re-investment event every month or quarter, depending on the company
The “normal” course of action of DRIP2 creates maybe a dollar or so of additional revenue (for SQ) from re-investments, but following your hunch, the FX gains (for SQ) are probably in the $1000 or more range (I am really not very familiar how they also fleece their customers in this area), which might already exceed how much additional custody fee I would pay them if they applied their AUM model to me.
After writing my reply, I feel I should more accurately calculate what excactly SQ is still providing to me as an additional benefit, aside from brokerage/custody diversification, which is not insignificant, given I rely on getting cash dividends delivered accurately (ok, SQ also sucks at this) and on time (guess what: SQ has room for improvement here, too).
Anyway, apologies for derailing this into a SQ rant …
[1] Hard to guestimate for me how much FX fees I generate for them. For a back of the napkin calculation, let's assume I convert to 10k CHF from mostly USD held at SQ.
I know SQ's FX rates are also dawgshit, but I've been tolerating it for now -- maybe it's already enough for SQ to say that "this sucker is spending so much on our FX fees, let's leave him alone (for now) on the custody account fees." I could easily see that as an explanation why they haven't bothered following up.
[2] DRIP: Dividend ReInvestment Plan
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Do you know what the threshold is to get premium support? Do they disclose this?
Don’t know & don’t think so. I believe it was surprisingly low, maybe 250k?
And I mean premium is a big term. Basically, you get a phone line where someone still picks up for you to trade, because their system crashes whenever there is some market turmoil.
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Actually this is what I’d call premium because that’s exactly the sort of things I need when I want to buy when there is a market crash. More valuable than the metal card.
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I’d call it premium if they had a system that would actually withstand a high load. I understand that scaling a system is not that easy on the back of sustained successful growth. But, it’s a persistent issue for years now, almost to the point that you can predict on certain news that you won’t be able to trade properly.
Or in SQ’s view: That’s why we need that additional fee from y’all 
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Where do you see this? Either I’m looking at a wrong place, or the threshold isn’t 250k, but much more.
Just checked…and, it’s gone! Don’t know when they scrapped it (I very rarely log in through a browser), but I also only see the known public customer care number. Concerning, I assume that the other number still works, but you now end up in the same call center after all 