Swissquote new fees

Did I read it correctly? The flat fee goes from 9 chf to 5, while the custody fee goes from 15 to 20chf quarterly.

“To guarantee you the best experience” they say…

It seems they are going in the wrong direction to be honest… FIRE is probably not their best field.

80chf/y for clients with less than 150k while Postfinance offers 90chf/y with trading credits and yuh 0.5% flat fee.

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Not to mention Interactive Brokers :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I still find the old pricing on their website. Where did you see the new one?

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They have a newsletter.

The flat fee for “ETF Leaders” stays at CHF 9 per trade, unfortunately. What’s getting lower is the fee for small trades (up to CHF/USD/EUR 1000) of stocks and non-flat fee ETFs. So it’s slightly less terrible to trade small amounts.

That’s the new minimum fee, yes. However, at least the cap remains the same at CHF 50 per quarter. Except that for assets above CHF 1 million, a fee of 0.0075% per quarter will be added to cover external safekeeping fees.

Overall, the changes are not drastic. However, I wonder why they saw the need to add the extra fee for large accounts. Too many people buying shares on foreign brokers and then transferring them to Swissquote for safekeeping for a long time?

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That was my plan, especially since I can also buy quotes on my name there.

TradeDirect, while still way more expensive than IB, seems better for custody keeping and allows to register swiss shares too. CornèrTrader, while a terribly outdated bank/broker* has no custody fees if you trade at least once per quarter.

*I mean, come on, third party two factor authentification on request only, and requesting an email to transfer money out, really?

Isn’t CornerTrader using TradeDirect?

As far as I know, they’re two separate brokers. Their sites/apps don’t look remotely the same either. TradeDirect is a solution by the Banque cantonale vaudoise (BCV). It has a similar fee structure as Swissquote, though with other thresholds and amounts.

https://www.tradedirect.ch/en/home/advantages-and-pricing.html

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CornerTrader is basically SaxoBank with a few customer service employees in Geneva who are part of the CornerBanca group that make you believe they are a broker

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What’s nice is that the 2.- fee for outgoing transactions is gone.

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Yes, it’s now even almost usable as a full (and free) bank account. I don’t know whether that’s the goal or not. The main things missing are probably a debit card (for ATMs) and eBill. They already offer QR payments, a free virtual “credit” card and TWINT. I’m not sure whether the virtual credit card is usable with Google Pay, though. Swissquote Mastercard is listed on Google Wallet Help but I don’t see it mentioned on the Swissquote website.

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https://links.imagerelay.com/cdn/2958/ql/trading-pricing-2023-en

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I also don’t understand the reason for that change. It means an increase of fees from ~200/year to ~500/year for people holding 1mln. Or does the penalty only apply to assets that are above the 1mln mark?

The fee will only apply to the part above CHF 1 million, as I understand it. Otherwise, it would be ridiculous.

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"Für Vermögen über CHF 1 Million wird eine Gebühr von 0.03% p.a. erhoben, um die externen Kosten für die Sicherung von Vermögenswerten zu decken. Aufgrund der Investitionen von Swissquote in die sichere Verwahrung von Krypto-Assets, werden die Depotgebühren künftig auch Positionen in Krypto-Assets berücksichtigen."

Do shares cost (significant external cost) to be gesichert?
The way the next part directly follows on related to crypto, could it be people that people are holding largish amounts in crypto at Swissquote, and the external costs (“insurance against hacks”,etc) for crypto is high, and they want to cover this?

No. Cornertrader uses software from Saxo Bank. I’m not sure if Tradedirect does as well. But apart from the software, they are completely different banks/stock brokers (Cornèr Banca, BCV, Saxo Bank).

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That they would add custody fees for crypto makes sense, since nobody is trading crypto with them now, but many likely holding crypto there.

With regards to trading fees, I think they’re banking on people paying more attention to brokerage fees than to custody fees.

The CEO claims that this indeed matches their external costs.

„Die 3 Basispunkte pro Jahr (0.03%) entsprechen unseren externen Depotkosten (SIX zum Beispiel für Schweizer Aktien“, schreibt Swissquote-CEO Marc Bürki per WhatsApp.

„Falls nur Titel deponiert werden und nichts gehandelt wird, dann verlieren wir Geld mit dem Kunden.“ Deshalb der neue Tarif.

„Wir werden aber mit jedem Kunden, den es betrifft, diskutieren – und den aktiven Kunden werden wir die zusätzlichen Gebühren entlassen.“

https://insideparadeplatz.ch/2022/12/02/billig-broker-swissquote-vervielfacht-seine-depotgebuehren/

In the SIX price lists I see 0.0022-0.004% p.a. for Swiss shares and ETFs and 0.015% p.a. for international ETFs. I’m not familiar with these price lists, though, so I may be missing something.

https://www.six-group.com/dam/download/securities-services/custody-and-settlement/info-center/clients/pricing/scu-fees-220701-en.pdf
https://www.six-group.com/dam/download/securities-services/custody-and-settlement/info-center/clients/pricing/scu-fees-220701-international-en.pdf

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Wow, thanks @jay for that precise and direct answer to my question (which I didn’t think could actually be answered, who would’ve thought SIX publishes such price-lists).

So, what they Swissquote are now going to charge for depots >1M (3 bps) is more than a factor of 10 higher than probably what would be necessary to cover the external depot costs (at SIX, 0.2 bps, if that list applies).

Mark-up is what it is, and they are free to charge whatever fees they want, but their explanation is probably lies/BS. “Für Vermögen über CHF 1 Million wird eine Gebühr von 0.03% p.a. erhoben, um die externen Kosten für die Sicherung von Vermögenswerten zu decken.”

Anyhow, I don’t have >1M at Swissquote, and Fr 80 instead of Fr 60 p.a. I can live with. I am just a little worried about what this could mean for Postfinance’s next round of “to give you an optimised experience we need to introduce …% depot fees …”.
After all Sq and Pf are kind of partners, with a very strongly overlapping customer base.