Hello,

I posted a little while ago with my intent to move to Zuirch. Since then my partner has got her Swiss Passport and ID card.

We are hoping to create a Swiss bank account from abroad now that he have swiss citizenship and supporting documents.

Could any one advise how we would go about doing this.

We are currently in Australia and wanting to leverage the Strong AUD while it lasts.

Thanks in advance

Chris

Least hassle unfortunately is:
1. Fly to Zurich
2. Walk into UBS at the airport
3. Open account.

If you want to open a swiss bank account you won't be able to open it while living in Australia, you need a permanent swiss adress.
Ever since the chaos with america the swiss banks are becoming really tight. The only way you can open a bank account in Switzerland whilst living outside is if you put ALOT of money into the account.

Once you move to Switzerland
and have the permit showing you live here now, stating your address.
All you need to do is go into a UBS or Credit Swiss and present this permit
and you will be on your way to open your accont.
Take your passport along just in case.

Cheers and enjoy the move.

Sam

Not completely accurate. Different banks have different policies. PostFinance will happily open an account for a non-resident, I do not know which other banks do so. The problem with opening an account while you are outside the country is identifying yourself. It is possible that they might accept copies of your passport authenticated by the Swiss consulate.

Not true. UBS does it, as long as you are not a US person. How do I know? because after our move to Switzerland was delayed after we had already opened the account, we got whacked with a CHF 30/month charge after 12 months, until we actually moved here.

PostFinance won't - you have to go to one of their branches in Switzerland or Liechtenstein.

it appears that Postfinance do offer this service. They send out the documents in mail and I need to get them endorsed by Swiss Consulate in AUS.

Thx for the advice

One further question if I may, does any one know if I pay any type of TAX when transferring money into a swiss bank account ?

Thx Chris

I know that I pay no tax transferring money from the US to CH, and believe that this should apply to most, if not all, countries.

But you will almost certainly pay a fee for the wire transfer, and the bank that makes the exchange will make a profit on the exchange rate. There are many threads here on finding the best exchange rate.

Cheers I was not sure if there was any crazy tax when bring in foreign currency.

I pretty familiar with banks screwing you on the transfer, such is life i guess