non-UK located Brokerage for Swiss Resident

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
Hello

My partner and I would like to shift our stock holding from our large US brokerage to Europe. However, due to his previous Non Dom tax status in the UK, and electing to be taxed on a remittance basis before we moved to Switzerland, we need to maintain our stock holdings outside the UK (at least for a few years).

So we are searching for a broker with the ability to hold our stocks outside of the UK, in Europe, and not have extortionate fees. Here is what we have tried so far FYI:

-Interactive Brokers - Not possible as they only let us have one account with them in the UK because we are Swiss residents.

-UBS/Large CH Banks - Fees are extremely high especially for holding and transfers in/out

-SwissQuote - We opened and account with them as they're in Luxembourg and seem to be quite cheap with their pricing model however their back office spent 3 weeks sitting on the email from our US broker to the point where the US brokerage cancelled the order. Calling them they didn't apologies and seemed to think it was normal so reluctant to stay with them.

-Degiro - They are an online only broker which is fine. I just called them, they have an offer to transfer stocks in for free. They don't have a holding fee. It sounds a little too good to be true. Would be great to know if anyone on here has experience using them and could share insights.

Thanks everyone!

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I've had a good experience with Swissquote, even in terms of adding new instruments.

For me the in specie transfer from by prior CH bank went smoothly but did take a while, neither side was particularly quick and seemed to be out of sync in their communication.

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@newtoswitz thank you

Thanks for the feedback on Swissquote. Sounds like they were equally slow for you too. I wonder if we can try chasing it more so the transfer doesn’t get cancelled again. I think we called Swissquote three times in total but they took 3weeks to respond to the US broker so of course it got cancelled.

Also, after looking into Degiro again we discovered they don’t hold stocks in a custodial type account. So if they go bust then your stocks are at risk.

In contrast, Swissquote offer the option for customers to opt-out of this non-custodial approach.

Interactive Brokers - Worth noting the person I spoke to said they used to have a non-domicile account which sounds perfect but they’ve stopped doing it. Pity they don’t still do this or let us hold a second account outside the U.K.