Hi,

My relative, who lived in Switzerland opened an account with a large investment company. Her initial investment capital had increased quite substantially due to commodity shares going up.

When she passed away she left the money to her closest relatives who live abroad. As a consequence it has taken 1 year for the money to be sent to all the beneficiaries. Since then her account was closed and, i think, converted to different currencies. However we have lost over £100,000 because of this.

My question is if anyone is aware if investment bankers/banks use money from 'closed accounts' to reinvest in stocks, shares or exchange rates?

Just a thought as to why we lost so much money after the account was closed?

We were told by the bank that it was lost during the exchange of currencies.. Although £100,000, which works out to be about 12.5%, seems to be a considerable amount..

Any thoughts??

maybe some of it was in euros which has tanked?

Sorry to hear about your loss. Are you one of the beneficinaries? Who handled the estate? Not the sort of questions you will find on the forum I'm afraid. Likely to be losses due to volatilities in the underlying assets / currencies she was holding and conversion rates, give or take any charges added on top.

Your best bet is to look into how this 12% loss came about, unlikely to be recovered unless there were eligitimate charges / theft / or transfers before her passing.

If the Bank was authorised to make investment decisions then you have to accept gains as well as losses.

It's possible that the investments were just held, the market is more than 12% lower in the last 3 months.
The CHF went from 2.4 to the £ down to 1.20, it's now 1.41, in the last month the GBP value of CHF cash has fallen more than 12%.

Without knowing exactly what the assets were & what currencies it's difficult to know, you talking about a loss in £ terms. That loss may be a small part of a previous gain due to exchange rate volatility.

Can you not ask the bank for an account history so you can see any impacts of currencey exchange and fund value£?
BTW. Your a lucky guy. Spend it well.

are you the executor of the will?

The thing to bear in mind is in the UK on death an account is Frozen, in CH a power of attorney may specifically state that it continues after death, that would explain activity after death.