Can we close the UBS private bank account remotely(with no physical presence). if I return to my country, and hold it for few months till all my settlements happens and then sending mail to UBS bank to close this account. Will that work?
The experience of a friend was quite different. She lives in South Africa and fed up with the fees of UBS for holding the account and for share transactions, she moved her money to another institution. Without boring you with all the details it took about 2 months to effect all the transfers, and even the cash movement took about 15 days when they insisted she send a legalized letter with her signature to them.
They would not even accept any instructions through their secure mail system!!
It then took 7 days from DHL delivering the signed document, and signed for by UBS, for the account manager to acknowledge it - claiming it had to go through several departments and the internal mail system first, as he was not in the building the letter was sent to - despite that being the address he gave her.
That is a completely different thing. If you transfer securities between any two institutions you can expect at least a month or more for it to happen. For a start the instruments have be physically delivered so getting the physical certs for a start and that can mean the bank has to wait for the company or whoever to deliver them.
I'd recommend, before you leave Switzerland definitely, you ensure that that account is set up for you to do e-banking while out of the country request all bills you know will come in, in advance, and pay them transfer almost all of your money out of your Swiss bank account, leaving enough funds to cover bills that may arrive, later appoint someone you know and trust to hold a Power of Attorney over your Swiss account, on the bank's standard form (if you don't have a friend to do that, pay a bookkeeping service) don't inform the bank right away that you are leaving arrange at the post office for your mail to be redirected to said person you trust. Then, after you've left, your account will still be there to receive incoming payments and you can pay bills sent to you in the post, because your trustworthy person will inform you of them.
Once you've settled everything, transfer the last amounts to your account abroad. Then ask your person to go to the bank and close the account, drawing out the final balance, which you should set at about Fr. 20 or Fr. 50 or so, (whatever the bank's fees will be, to close the account), plus a little more. Thank your friend and ask them to have a beer with the last few Francs.
Sorry the reply is a bit late, but this is not so. It's all electronic now so no certs are physically delivered. I've transferred shares between brokers and banks and it was done same / next day. The back offices speak to each other, agree terms, if any, and it's done. Often the brokers use the same depository agent so it's literally just a name change.
Ironically the broker she transferred to also used UBS as a depository for the Swiss shares but that did not hasten the process.
When we left Switzerland, I gave notice at the Gemeinde and then went to see the manager of my local UBS branch. He was extremely helpful, gave us 3 months after our leaving date with no fees. He transferred our savings account contents plus a proportion of the current account to our UK account. He commented that we could not have done this at the in-branch machine as there is a limit to the value of transactions. Back in the UK after 3 months we had an email from UBS saying they would close it as agreed and this happened with the residue transferred fine. Extremely helpful though we only got him directly as he walked past when we were trying to explain what we wanted to the customer service desk. Only thing which seems to be still live is getting emails from UBS Club offers!