Investment apps in Switzerland – a comparison
Investment apps are becoming increasingly popular in Switzerland. But which ones have the lowest fees, the lowest costs, the lowest starting amounts and the most user-friendly handling? We have compiled a comprehensive summary for you. This will make it easier for you to choose the right investment app in the jungle of digital investment.
Table of contents:
- Which investment apps are available in Switzerland?
- Investment app fees in Switzerland
- Free investment apps in Switzerland
- Investment apps in Switzerland – Overview
- Custody fees for investment apps in Switzerland
- Direct comparison of individual investment app providers
– Truewealth vs Selma
– Selma vs yova
– Selma vs. findependent
– Selma Finance Experience
– findependent vs Swissquote
– Descartes
– Raiffeisen Rio Experience
– Clevercircles Experience and fees
– SaxoSelect
– Truewealth Experience
– Inyova Experience und Inyova Review - Criteria for investment apps in Switzerland and their evaluation
- Best investment apps in Switzerland in test – reviews and ratings for Android and iOS
- Which is the cheapest investment app in Switzerland?
- Investing with investment apps in Switzerland – 6 good reasons
- Investment apps in Switzerland – tips and tricks
- FAQ Investment Apps Switzerland
Which investment apps are available in Switzerland?
There are roughly a dozen investment apps in Switzerland. In addition to some innovative start-ups that have launched their own user-centred solutions, there are some providers that have larger financial groups (banks) in the background. These often target existing clients and are intended to prevent clients from withdrawing their money from the banks’ own high-margin products and transferring it to the competition (i.e. cheaper investment apps).
Trading Apps Switzerland
In addition to the actual investment apps, there are a large number of so-called trading apps from banks and trading platforms from Switzerland and abroad. They are sometimes called broker apps. These trading platforms require users to have extensive knowledge of the financial markets and continuous monitoring of the stock market. To ensure comparability in this test, trading apps are excluded. We will therefore not look for the best trading platform in Switzerland, the test winner of the trading apps in Switzerland.
Investment App – what is it?
An investment app allows you to invest money in equities, bonds and real estate. Why investing money makes sense and what the advantages are compared to a savings account, we show you with our yield calculator. Instead of the tedious trip to the bank branch, you only need a smartphone to use the investment app. Opening and processing are completely online. There are many different investment apps, but only a few are suitable for getting started and for worry-free investing.
An investment app offers a simple and inexpensive introduction to investing. It is just as suitable for experienced investors as it is for larger assets. For larger investment amounts, the advantage of low fees has an even greater impact.
With an investment app, the investor delegates the management, monitoring and optimisation of the funds to a regulated asset manager authorised by FINMA (Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority). The asset manager is compensated for this with a management fee.
Investment app fees in Switzerland
As the investment app is an (online) asset manager, corresponding fees are incurred for the management of the assets. In addition to these management fees, there are also custody fees for safekeeping, i.e. the storage of the securities. Very often, however, these costs are included in the all-in fee.
If you take over the management of your investment yourself, the management fees are of course omitted. Instead, you pay transaction fees for each purchase and sale. What remains are the custody fees, which are also incurred in the case of independent management.
Free investment apps in Switzerland
The download of the app is free of charge, i.e. comes with no costs. It should also be possible to open an account without incurring any costs. The same applies to withdrawals and the closing of the account at a later date. Here, too, everything should be free of charge.
The fees that arise are the costs for managing your assets. The investment app itself is therefore actually free of charge in terms of download and account opening.
Investment Apps in Switzerland – Overview
The following table provides a good overview of the fees charged by investment apps for digital asset management in Switzerland. The table is sorted from A-Z. The fees refer to investment assets of CHF 50,000. A custodian bank domiciled in Switzerland is a prerequisite for inclusion in the table. And of course the offer must be available as an app (which is also the reason why Descartes does not appear in this table).
Investment Apps in Switzerland | Recurring fees for digital asset management | Entry amount | Freemium Models |
Clevercircles | 0.65% | 5’000 | No |
findependent | 0.40% | 500 | CHF 2’000 free of charge |
Inyova | 1.20% | 2’000 | No |
PostFinance | 0.75% | 5’000 | N0 |
Raiffeisen Rio | 0.65% | 5’000 | No |
Selma | 0.68% | 2’000 | No |
Swissquote | 0.75% | 50’000 | No |
TrueWealth | 0.50% | 8’500 | No |
Vontobel Volt | 0.96% | 25’000 | No |
The respective product costs are to be added to the above fees. These are in the range of around 0.20% per year. Raiffeisen Rio is an outlier: their product costs (TER for Total Expense Ratio) can be as high as 0.60%. The TER for the sustainable ETFs in Postfinance’s e-asset management are also very high (0.50%).
In addition to the listed recurring costs for administration and custody, there are costs for trading (stamp duty) and sometimes also exchange rate surcharges. These costs only occur for the initial investment, top ups or rebalancing. These costs vary depending on the investment app. A good guideline for these costs is around 0.10% stamp duty on the transaction amount and a maximum of 0.5% foreign currency surcharge for the part of the transaction volume that takes place with an ETF in a foreign currency.
Investment Apps in Switzerland – Overview
The following table provides a good overview of the fees charged by investment apps for digital asset management in Switzerland. The table is sorted from A-Z. The fees refer to investment assets of CHF 50,000. A custodian bank domiciled in Switzerland is a prerequisite for inclusion in the table. And of course the offer must be available as an app (which is also the reason why Descartes does not appear in this table).
Investment Apps in Switzerland | Recurring fees for digital asset management |
Clevercircles | 0.65% |
findependent | 0.40% |
Inyova | 1.20% |
PostFinance | 0.75% |
Raiffeisen Rio | 0.65% |
Selma | 0.68% |
Swissquote | 0.75% |
TrueWealth | 0.50% |
Vontobel Volt | 0.96% |
The respective product costs are to be added to the above fees. These are in the range of around 0.20% per year. Raiffeisen Rio is an outlier: their product costs (TER for Total Expense Ratio) can be as high as 0.60%. The TER for the sustainable ETFs in Postfinance’s e-asset management are also very high (0.50%).
In addition to the listed recurring costs for administration and custody, there are costs for trading (stamp duty) and sometimes also exchange rate surcharges. These costs only occur for the initial investment, top ups or rebalancing. These costs vary depending on the investment app. A good guideline for these costs is around 0.10% stamp duty on the transaction amount and a maximum of 0.5% foreign currency surcharge for the part of the transaction volume that takes place with an ETF in a foreign currency.
Moneyland study: These are the most favourable investment apps
The independent comparison platform moneyland.ch examined the costs of digital asset managers in Switzerland. They found that digital investment apps are significantly cheaper than traditional asset managers. However, the apps differ considerably and findependent is the cheapest investment app in Switzerland. The entire study is available here (in German only).
Custody fees for investment apps in Switzerland
In addition to the actual management fees, the fees shown in the table above also include the custody fees for the safekeeping of the securities at the custodian bank in all cases. As a rough guide, one can assume an annual rate of around 0.20%.
Direct comparison of individual investment app providers
We have formulated a direct comparison for a few selected investment apps in Switzerland.
Selma vs Inyova
Selma vs Inyova – The fees of Yova or Inyova are almost twice as expensive as the Selma costs, which is also not one of the cheapest investment apps. Inyova specialises in impact investing, among other things, and thus tries to justify the higher costs. Both providers, Selma and Inyova, are massively more expensive in terms of fees and costs than the investment app from findependent. Inyova costs almost 3 times as much as findependent. With Selma, the costs and fees are around 50% higher.
Selma Finance experience
Selma Finance experience: The Android app from Selma gets just 3.8 stars. The iOS app gets 4.2 stars. However, both ratings are relatively weak in terms of user experience. By comparison, users of findependent give the investment app ratings of 4.8 and 4.7 stars respectively.
Clevercircles Experience and fees
Clevercircles’ fees are somewhat unclearly formulated and require additional calculations from the user in order to achieve full transparency. Although the fee is 0.65% of the invested assets, there is a minimum fee of 40 francs. So if you invest only 5’000 francs at the beginning, the fee is in fact 0.80% (40 francs of 5’000), and the 0.65% only applies from an investment sum of 6’154 francs.
Truewealth Experience
Truewealth’s experiences are positive in the majority of cases. Negative comments are made about aspects such as the high entry fee (8,500 Swiss francs), the user experience that could be improved and the partially non-transparent fee model.
Inyova Experience und Inyova Review
Inyova experience can be described as sufficient. The Google review is 4 stars. On Trustpilot it is 2.7 out of 5 stars, which is rather in the lower range.
Criteria for investment apps in Switzerland and their evaluation
Basically, the following criteria are of primary interest from the user’s perspective:
Best investment apps in Switzerland in test: reviews and ratings for Android and iOS
The investment app from findependent has the best rating. It has 4.8 stars out of a possible 5 in the Google Play Store. Together with Truewealth and Clevercircles. In the Apple App Store, the findependent app has 4.7 stars (as of July 2022).
Which is the cheapest investment app in Switzerland?
The cheapest investment app in Switzerland is the investment app from findependent. The annual fee is only 0.40% (or less, depending on the investment amount) and includes asset management and custody fee. The tax statement is also included. Another striking feature of findependent is that the first 2’000 francs can be invested free of charge. This amount can be further increased by means of recommendations.
If you invested CHF 15,000 with us, you’d pay no fees on the first CHF 2,000, then 0.40% or CHF 52 per year on the remaining CHF 13,000. In relation to your total investment of 15,000 francs, this represents 0.35% per year.
Investing with investment apps in Switzerland – 6 good reasons
Investment apps in Switzerland – tips and tricks
Are you looking for the right investment app for you in Switzerland? Then these tips and tricks will also help you:
- Decide whether you want to stay on the safe side and invest your money broadly and with minimal risk in passive ETFs (index funds) or whether you want to go “all in” and prefer individual shares and cryptos.
- When comparing fees, make sure you compare like for like.
- When looking at the total costs, remember that you’ll not only be charged for the management , but also the funds used. Here you should definitely prefer low-cost ETFs (TER 0.20% per year) and avoid expensive investment strategy funds from banks (2-3% per year).
- Check reviews on Google and in the app stores for Android and iOS.
- Consult other sources such as the comparison platforms Comparis and Moneyland.
- The website should give you an insight into the “look and feel” of the investment app, perhaps there is a video or even a demo version.
- Before opening an account, check whether there are any vouchers for a cashback or free investment (for good).
FAQ – Frequently asked questions about investment apps in Switzerland
An app for investing money - how safe is it?
Access to the investment app is secured by biometric data or PIN. Often, money can only be transferred from the investment app to an account in the same name as the owner of the investment app. The securities themselves are held in a custody account of the partner bank and, in the event of bankruptcy of the same, are not part of the liquidation estate, so they are safe (as long as they are ETFs, investment funds and direct investments in shares and bonds). In this respect, an online asset manager does not differ at all from the traditional and expensive bank solution. Balances in the pass-through account are also secured up to CHF 100’000.
Is an investment app an asset manager?
An investment app itself is not an asset manager. But the company offering this investment app is an online asset manager. This must be regulated and licensed by FINMA (Financial Market Supervisory Authority).
What is the difference between an investment app and a trading app?
With a trading app, you have to select the ETFs yourself, determine the weighting, estimate the currency risk, execute the transactions and check everything regularly. An investment app (if a digital asset manager) takes care of all these tasks for you. With a trading app, you pay brokerage fees for each individual transaction and possibly a custody account fee. With the investment app, you pay an asset management and custody account fee, but no brokerage fees.
Foreign currency surcharge and stamp duty apply in both cases.
What is the best app for passive investing?
One of the most important factors in passive investing is cost. Therefore, you should choose the cheapest investment app without compromising on quality and security. According to a study by the comparison portal Moneyland, the investment app from findependent is considered the cheapest app in Switzerland. Therefore, from this perspective, one can say: findependent is the best app for passive investing.
Is a trading app also an investment app?
In principle, every app that revolves around digital investment is an investment app. As the name suggests, however, a trading app focuses on continuous trading in securities of all kinds. This trading is initiated by the user, without any guidance or advice from the provider of the trading app. The provider only provides the platform for this trading. It is therefore not a digital asset manager. Consequently, there is no asset management fee. The trading app earns money with the transaction fee, among other things, because every purchase and sale via this trading platform incurs costs for the user.