Transferring to foreign chf account

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
As I've left Switzerland I need to close my Swiss bank account. Rather than transferring all my chf into gbp I've decided to keep a small chunk in chf- my partner and kid are Swiss and in the non corona world we regularly go back, may move back in a few years, etc...

So I've opened a chf account with my UK bank.

Usually I would transfer money from my Swiss bank to my regular gbp UK bank with transferwise or current fair. These give the best return.

I wonder though, has anyone got experience of transferring to foreign accounts of the same currency? How much is typical that banks charge for this? Will I likely be best off with an odd chf-chf transfer or does a straight bank transfer cut it?

2
I think UBS charge 20 or 25 for international transfer and your UK bank might also charge for receiving one.

Ask your bank. There might even be charges simply for taking your money out.

3
If I were you I'd load a revolut (or possibly transferwise) account with CHF from your Swiss bank and then pay it into your CHF denominated uk account.

Bank to bank might charge if the bank is outside Switzerland. Most do even if it's CHF denominated.

4

Revolut CHF account is in UK/GB no?

5
If you send money by bank transfer to your revolut CHF account the address is Credit Suisse in Zurich. So I don't think there are charges. They've had a local IBAN since late 2019 - https://thepoorswiss.com/good-new-re...nking-license/

Maybe it's different if you set up your revolut account abroad then move here.

6

Ah yeah sorry, it's the Euro account with a GB IBAN

7
I used to have a Swiss Franc account in the UK and closed it, as it was cheaper to send money to / from Switzerland to my GBP account than it was to maintain the CHF account. Things may have changed now but the monthly fee then was £70 and the cost to transfer or receive about 3 times the amount from my current account.

8
I'd definitely recommend Transferwise (or another local Swiss account provider) for this.

Even once you get the CHF into the UK based account, a regular UK bank will probably charge you foreign transfer fees for using it Switzerland which makes it a bit pointless!

9
Assuming you come to Switzerland for holidays and you are now based in U.K., then i personally would get a Monzo account in the U.K. and just use that when coming back to Switzerland. No point in fafing around with other accounts unless you’re dabbling in trying to gain a little on exchange rates when the Swiss franc is worth more at certain times.

Failing this, if your partner is Swiss and if she has an address or family here then she could open a free Neon bank account and you use this when here in CH? It’s free and worth the same way essentially as Monzo etc...

Both these options are banks so you will be covered if things go badly. They both also offer the same type of service as TransferWise & Revolut. They both have TransferWise built in so you can open a Monzo account, keep it in a pot & use it fee-free essentially in CH. or if you open a Neon account you can yea after via Monzo’s built in Tranferwise to Neon.

10
They are properly registered for the purpose they serve - for example in the UK they are regulated by the FCA as an Electronic Money Institution.

The difference with a bank is that they have to be a member of a scheme which provides deposit protection.

However, as Transferwise doesn't lend money there is no possibility of a run and therefore no need for this - the money is always there, in your account.

In any case, nobody should have that much cash stored for any length of time in any bank, you're just throwing away potential growth.

11
Wow

I've never heard of neon before. I've tried looking for a Swiss account like this before but had no luck, n26 with its euro accounts in Switzerland being the closest I've seen.

How are they doing? Had some bad luck with n26 pulling out of the UK.

So they're a stable place to keep chf sans fees?

We do have a Swiss address we can use. Albeit getting to it over the next few months isn't possible.

12
Iv got N26 too for Europe use. Great bank and had it for years now. Neon is good, had it for around a year or so and had no problems. Built in TransferWise is good, I now get my salary paid in to Neon and send money to N26 each month so similar to what you will be doing i guess but just in reverse! I think the main thing is to inform yourself with all these things. Withdrawals usually get charged when abroad but fee is minimal compared to my UBS account which is super high for withdrawals.

13
Before having the Swiss IBAN at Revolut the international transfer costed me 5 chf.

Of course if you open a CHF "pocket" in your Revolut then any incoming CHF lands there with no conversion, no fees.

14
Open a "Giro Suisse" CHF account with Sparkasse Hochrhein in Germany.

It gives you a "normal" CHF account with a "normal" Swiss CH... IBAN, even if it's a "normal" German bank.

They're pretty easy when it comes to opening accounts for people who are not Swiss residents.

I wrote about it here (towards the end of the article):

https://steemit.com/banking/@cafunke...to-switzerland

Would love to receive more feedback on whether they're good (or not). I know one guy who moved away from Switzerland and he's happily using it. He reported an extremely cumbersome and crappy online-banking interface, but apart from that he's happy.