Why are there no ETF Sparplans (ETF savings plans) in Switzerland?

Investing / Brokers
82

I asked Passiv whether the process is fully automatic and they said it’s not:

No, the process is not fully automatic. Passiv will monitor your account and let you know when something needs your attention, but it will not automatically make trades on your behalf. This restriction is due to Canadian securities law.

If you allow trade access on your account, you can use Passiv’s One-Click Trades feature to place all trades in a single click.

So it seems the only way to a fully automatic solution without any fees are German brokers/banks. Swiss Investart could do the trick but since they’re pretty new in the market people don’t trust them…

83

That is not automatic either since you need to log in to a bank or Fx account to convert chf to euro and transfer to Germany

84

You can do it like this if you have PostFinance. You can open an additional EUR account for free there if you have a CHF account.

All steps are scheduled to work automatically.

Leave a bit of time as a reserve for clearing the payments, like two days.

  1. Postfinance CHF Transfer to Revolut CHF
  2. Revolut CHF to Postfinance EUR
  3. Postfinance EUR for free to German Broker.

If you keep the minimum amount to what you are planning to transfer on your Revolut account you can skip step 1. It will just recharge the Revolut account from the credit card.

If there a wild swings in the CHF-EUR exchange rate, you’ll have to adjust the CHF amount you transfer to or keep on Revolut.

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85

I have both EUR and CHF accounts at UBS. Do you think it’s not possible to make a standing order from UBS - > Germany in EUR?

86

For sure this is possible but how will you convert from CHF automatically? I assume UBS spread and fees will be over 1%. Possibly you could do something like yetanothername says

There is no easy solution in CH but the market is getting more competitive every year. I will stick with IB as it is the best all round broker for my situation and try the approach shared by tartufo.

87

I will let somebody else who has experience with automatic transfers of EUR to EU countries answer this.

Switzerland had ETF Sparplans in the past exactly like the Germans, Italians, Americans, etc. have them. It was Swissquote who offered them a few years ago. Why did they cancel this service? I don’t know. I can only assume they didn’t have any competition so they cancelled this “cheap” service. So in the case of cheap ETF Sparplans the Swiss market went backwards and I’m tired of waiting.

88

My UBS personal advisor says automatic SEPA transfer to Germany is possible and it costs 0.30 chf. They will convert automatically from CHF to EUR at the current exchange rate.

Does that sound reasonable? Or I should do the UBS → Revolut → UBS currency conversion? I guess I should test both options and see how much difference in cost there is…

89

I checked UBS quotes. UBS client rate for up to 25,000 CHF showed Bid/Ask 1.0852/1.1228. If that is the rate they apply you will pay ~1.7%.

By comparison Interactive brokers Bid/Ask 1.10360/1.10365 plus a commission of 1.85CHF. So small you can almost ignore it. I believe Revolut would be similar but neither of these solutions are fully automated like you are looking for.

90

For the transfer fee: Absolutely.
For the currency conversion and spread: you can do much better elsewhere.
(Transfer)Wise should charge about 0.5% or less.

…on a premium account. They do surcharge otherwise if > £1000 a month.

91

Yes. But unfortunately they don’t provide IBAN bank details (as discussed above) for the CHF currency so I can’t automate everything…

92

Swissquote now offers recurring trades (weekly, every two weeks or monthly). However, the list of ETFs is limited (it does include VEVE and VT, though) and the usual fees apply. Unlike Yuh, Swissquote also still doesn’t support fractional shares, i.e. the number of shares will be rounded down. At least some progress.

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