Swiss Bank Fees for Foreign Transactions

Good day,

I would like to receive help with a problem I have been having.

Problem: For many years now I have been receiving sales commissions from a Swiss company at irregular intervals. These are sent to my German bank account. Because these commissions are paid out in Swiss francs and the company is unable to make the payments in euros, I end up paying heavily in the way of bank fees for each money transfer.

Recently the company started paying out each commission individually instead of letting them accrue and then transferring larger sums. This has resulted in a larger share of each commission being eaten away by transfer fees. The bank fees now come to around one-fourth of each transfer, which eats up a large part of my profit and makes my business relationship with the Swiss company less beneficial to me.

My question is, could you recommend some Swiss banks which do not charge transaction fees for money transfers to German accounts and also charge low annual account fees - or none at all.

Thank you for your help with this.

Kind regards

Hi there,

There are several key bank fees which affect non-residents who hold Swiss bank accounts:

1. Annual account fees
2. Additional non-resident account fees
3. International transfer fees (SEPA and non-SEPA transfers)

You can use the moneyland.ch private account comparison to compare the annual cost of accounts based on annual account fees and the number of international transfers you make every year.

SEPA transfers generally work out cheaper than non-SEPA transfers for transfers to accounts in countries which use the euro. Using peer-to-peer transfer services like Transferwise and Currencyfair can work out cheaper than using bank transfers in many cases. Swiss online transfer comparison Monito lets you compare bank, peer-to-peer, wire transfer and currency broker services to find the cheapest option for transferring money to Germany from Switzerland.

Non-resident fees likely have the biggest effect on your total banking costs. These are not accounted for in the moneyland.ch private account comparison. However, they average 300 francs per year across Swiss bank accounts. Non-resident fees vary between banks, and some banks have lower (or no) non-resident fees for customers who reside in Germany. Some banks waive non-resident fees for customers who hold a certain amount of assets at the bank or for asset management customers.

You can find a comparison of non-resident fees at Swiss banks in the moneyland.ch guide to non-resident fees.

Best regards from Moneyguru

More on this topic:
Swiss private account comparison
Swiss savings account comparison