I couldn't quite find an answer to this 2 part question on here post the recent financial turmoil.... unless I missed it, in which case I'm sorry up front

We have a personal CHF account and a € savings account here with UBS, a current and savings account in France (with broadly similar rate to here), and current and savings accounts in the UK in Sterling, and are looking for a good home for our CHF personal account excess.

Question:

P 1 - Is there a decent saving account lurking in CH that's paying more than the 3.5 we are getting in the UK.
P 2 - If the money is blighty bound, how's the best way to get it there, straight UBS t/x, HifX, or stuffed in my wallet.

Cheers & happy new year

Put 6,365 per person into your Pillar 3s for 2008 if you have not done this already.

3.5 is a very good rate. I would transfer and take advantage of that. Research the bank well though.

Don't use UBS to transfer the money. Use a 3rd party transfer company. Someone must have used one out there. I have used OzForex before, I think xe.com also does it. I use the bank directly through a friend. I get the spot rate and paid CHF 5 last time in fees :-)

Hi Papa Goose,

Happy New Year!

I can't advise on good CHF savings accounts, but just wanted to check do you really want to move any more money into GBP at the moment? The way the pound has fallen over the last few months is scary (I moved here in July '08 when the exchange rate was about 2.05, and it is now at about 1.6). If you want to spend the money in Britain in the future then now may (or may not) be a good time to move it over, but if you will eventually want to spend it in either CHF or Euro's (which seem to be tracking relatively closely now) then I personally wouldn't want to open myself up to the exchange rate risk if the pound continues to fall further, which could very easily outweigh the advantages of a couple of extra percent interest.

Also, if the Bank of England cuts rates in the UK again this week (widely tipped to be 0.5% cut) then your current 3.5% interest account could be paying out less next month anyway...

Hope that is useful,

GenevaSculler

If you have a cash excess and don't know where to put it, I can give you my account number so you can put it there

Hi GS,

The question made sense when I asked, but your right it's looking way shaky now, and we are going to keep it in €'s now. I'm glad I didn't actually move it back to Blighty now, so my dullardiness (is that a word) was for once is a blessing!

Hope you had a good Christmas things are looking up for you in 2009

Get in line SL. PG do you want a crunchie i can sell you 1 for a few thousand bucks

I but what sort of return would I get on that.... and be clean


It's Hissing Sid sutter, your exploited your crunchie cache, what else ya offering ?

Therapy, oh i also have some coop points up for grabs, and a crunchi wrapper (it is made of gold you know)

It's a worry.....

Here's a graph. The bottom one shows how it all went wrong in November and December, although it bounced a bit today for some reason
http://www.wechselstube.ch/euroca/eu...&ACT=C&LANG=en

No news so far for my 2009 prospects, but I'm happy to give the year a few weeks to get started!

GS

PS I think the word you are looking for is tardiness

If it is such a worry i can look after it for you

So, In addition to PG here, I'm also looking for something.

Apart from the third pillar pension fund (Which I think I'll be setting up this year), are there actually any accounts here that are worthwhile using for saving?

I don't really want to tie the money up in anything which might incur penalties if I want to take the money out, and really just want something I can add a little too each month.

On my UBS e-banking I have the option to tranfer money to a savings account, but as far as I can tell, it offers no real advantage in interest and just seems to serve as a way of getting the money out of temptation.

The best normal savings account I've found so far is the PostFinance e-Deposito account. It pays 1.75% on CHF, and 2.125% on Euros.

More details here. I haven't opened one yet so can't offer any more insight into the pros and cons...

Thanks, I didn't bother looking around much a couple years ago, 1.75 was also about the best I could find and it didn't compare at all well with my e-savings rate from Nationwide.

Two years later I now see my e-savings rate has dropped to 2% so the swiss alternatives suddenly don't look too bad.

Now that I look at the UBS site, they have an Investment fund that lets you put in and take out money as you wish, and says it pays 2.5%. But then it also says the value is dependent on how the funds are doing, and they could lose value, how does that work?

How can they say 2.5% interest, yet also say it depends on how my particular chosen funds are doing? They also say they take a cut for management, and other charges are added. I have no clue about this sort of thing, is this something to stay clear of?

It says it only pays interest on any amounts not invested in the funds. Without reading the full details I don't know for sure, but I doubt they would let you open an account and not put any money into one of their funds and just earn the interest?

With regards the whole concept, I guess it depends on whether you want to save your cash in a savings account, or want to invest it in a UBS fund... Given the way things have been going last year, I'd personally prefer to keep it in cash, especially if you don't understand what they are actually going to do with your money.

Me thinks you may be right...

The stock market was a pretty bad place to be last year. Converting Euros into dollars was pretty good for me when Euro was above $1.55. Now, it is a tough call. Putting into 3rd pillar sounds like a good idea, and I will stay in cash for a while until I feel better about going back into the market. I might diversify a bit, though, into 3-4 currencies.

Would like to know more about the 3rd party currency exchange companies.

fduvall

I wish tardy was right, sadly politely dense is more appropriate in my case... but thanks for the bandage and the account advice.