Fact check: ABS has already been doing this a while, since november last year http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/n...ive-rates.html

Difference being that ABS only has 30,000 customers, whereas PF has 3,000,000.

Quite an obvious move from PF. They don't have a loan book that they can flex the pricing on to maintain their net interest margin like a full service bank.

Exactly, ABS might disappear tomorrow and nobody would even notice, it's just a small niche bank. But half of the country keeps money in PostFinance. I'm sure other banks would now follow it

At least ABS would be able to brag that they charged negative interests before it became mainstream!

Ok, but it is still a retail bank... which was the title of this thread.

Will be interesting to see if CS or UBS ever follow suit, or keep taking the hit on behalf on account holders.

See my previous post regarding the loan book. The big banks have levers to pull that PF don't. I can't see retail clients being charged negative rates anytime soon by CS or UBS.

Following your logic they shouldnt charge their rather expensive account management fees either but they do

Again it's for accounts over a million.

Who keeps over a million in cash in a retail bank?
Whoever it is they deserve to get charged that and more

Not really. It's a different part of the banking P&L to net interest income. Retail deposits are also very important for regulatory reasons too, so better not to scare the horses with negative interest rates.

... or I could lock it up in equities and property and not have it handy when I want to buy a new car. A million in cash isn't all that much for a lot of people, and easily falls within the "spending money" bucket for some for those, it makes sense to keep it in a current or savings account.

UBS have started charging for more of their services. For example, I used to be able to take cash from the ATM of other banks for free - now there is a charge. If you have 0% interest and arbitrarily set bank charges, effectively you have -ve interest.

For sure, but when you're at the level of keeping over a million at a current account, you have a lot more options that doing it at "retail".

That's what private banking is for

What mine of car are you buying? And how much is the insurance???

Migros is reported to be consideing negative interest on anything more than 250,000CHF in savings account

Do you have that on your account? If no, no worry to you then

If yes, no worry to you then

...if you can afford to keep that level of cash sitting dormant then you can afford to pay interest

Luckily there are quite a few banks which still pay decent interest. See this comparison.

If a bank has the nerve to charge you for investing in it, drop them like a hat and move your money to the more sensible banks.

P.s. I wouldn't recommend keeping more than 100k in any one bank anyway.

Probably a good idea to get an understanding go how the Swiss guarantee works, is not like the EU one.

Well unless it's a cantonal bank, the guarantee is less than the EU rules, still up from 30K pre 2008

I thought IB were already charging to have CHF >100,000 since a long time ago. It has been the case since I opened my account over a year ago for sure.

In most retail banks here, we essentially have a small negative interest rate, in the fact that we need to pay a fee for the account and receive no interest.

Retail banks who charge negative interest also opens the possibility of negative interest rate mortgages.

Here's the best "explanation" of negative interest rates that I've come across, from Howard Marks: https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/...mysterious.pdf (including an imaginative use of 1000CHF notes)

You realise that the SNB has set a negative base rate?