What are the advantages of a Swiss bank account?
A lot of Americans have used Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying taxes. However recently several large Swiss banks have started disclosing the details on some of their customers to the IRS. There isn't much security in Swiss banking at this point in time. "This doesn't answer your question, but as an aside, it's important to understand that your second and third bullet points are completely incorrect; while it used to be true that Swiss bank accounts often came with ""guarantees"" of neutrality and privacy, in recent years even the Swiss banks have been caving to political pressure from many sides (especially US/Obama), with regards to the most extreme cases of criminals. That is to say, if you're a terrorist or a child molester or in possession of Nazi warcrime assets, Swiss banks won't provide the protection you're interested in. You might say ""But I'm not a terrorist or a pervert or profiteering of war crimes!"" but if you're trying so hard to hide your personal assets, it's worth wondering how much longer until Swiss banks make further concessions to start providing information on PEOPLE_DOING_WHAT_YOU_ARE_DOING. Not to discourage you, this is just food for thought. The ""bulletproof"" protection these accounts used to provide has been compromised. I work with online advertising companies, and a number of people I know in the industry get sued on a regular basis for copyright or trademark infringement or spamming; most of these people still trust Swiss bank accounts, because it's still the best protection available for their assets, and because Swiss banks haven't given up details on someone for spamming... yet." For an American it nearly impossible to open a Swiss bank account. Even a Swiss person want to open a bank account, we have to fill out a document, which asks us if we have a greencard or other relationships with the united states. Some Swiss banks have transferred the money of Americans to Singapore to protect their clients. So you see, the Swiss banks do very much for their clients. And yes, we don't ask very much about money ;) And we are a politically neutral country, but we like the United States more than Russia and of course we have enemies, like the ISIS "Here are some reasons why it is advantageous to hold a portion of your savings in other countries: However, it should be noted that there are some drawbacks to holding funds in foreign banks: Don't worry; I haven't forgotten about the elephant in the room.  What about tax evasion and money laundering? In general, simply transferring funds to a foreign jurisdiction will do nothing to help you evade taxes or hide evidence of a crime.  Pretty much any method you can think of to transfer money is easily traceable, and any method that is difficult to trace is either illegal or heavily-regulated, with stiff penalties if you get caught. There are a few jurisdictions that have very strict banking privacy laws (the Philippines, for example).  If you can somehow get the money into a bank account in one of these countries, you might be OK... at least, until that country's government decides (or is pressured) to change its banking privacy laws. But, what would you actually do with that money?  Unless you want to go live in that country, you're going to have to transfer the funds out to spend them, and now you're right back on the radar — except now it's even worse, because the fact that the funds come from a suspicious jurisdiction will automatically cause your transfer to get flagged for investigation! This is where money laundering comes into play.  There are lots of ways to go about this (exceptionally illegal) activity, many of which do not involve banks at all (at least, not directly).  How money laundering works is outside the scope of this question, but in case you are curious, here are a couple of articles about the ""dark side"" of finance: In short, if you want to break the law, opening a foreign bank account isn't going to help much.  In fact, the real crime is that offshore banking has such a criminal reputation in the first place! That said, it is possible to create legal distance between yourself and your money by using a corporate structure, and there are legitimate reasons why you might want to do this.  Depending on which jurisdiction(s) you are a tax resident of, you can use this method to: Exactly how to do this is outside the scope of this question, but it's worth thinking about, especially if you have an interest in geopolitically diversifying your financial assets. If you're interested in learning more, I came across a pretty comprehensive article about Offshore Basics that covers how and why to set up offshore legal structures. (and yes, that makes now 4 links from the same site in one post! I promise it's just a coincidence; see disclaimer below) I am a US citizen with bank accounts in several countries (but not Switzerland; there are far better options out there right now). I have no affiliation with the website linked in this answer; while I was doing research for this answer, I found some really good supporting content, and it all just happened to be from the same source."
Mr. Raphael Lilla is a business enthusiast with more than 20 years of experience working in the Swiss and International financial markets. An honoured member of the International Society of Business Leaders, Raphael has a Degree in Master in Law. Currently, he is operating in the bullion market as Executive Director of SBC Group AG, Switzerland, and as Managing Director of Swiss Bullion Company International LLC, Dubai. I may be moving to Switzerland soon and would like to know if there's a similar system to move money between a Swiss bank account and a U.S bank account. There is no easy way.  The most common method is International Wire or SWIFT. These kinds of transfer are generally charged in the range of USD 20 to USD 50 per transfer. It generally takes 2 to 5 days to move the money. Some Banks have not yet given the facility to initiate a International Wire from Internet banking platforms. One has to physically walk-in. So if this is going to be frequent, make sure both your banks offer this. As the volume between US and Switzerland is less, there may not be any dedicated remittance service providers [these are generally low cost]. In Switzerland you should have access to many brokers with fair rates, e.g. Interactive Brokers. Going through them you then put the money in various Swiss stocks like Roche, Novartis, Swisscom, Credit Suisse, Logitech, etc. No stock should be more than 10% of the total. Since you pay 0% taxes on investment profits, you really should invest.  By going through a broker instead of your bank, you can cash out at any time without losing outrageous fees for the stock commissions (often 2% for banks, around 0% for brokers).  If you're employed you can also ask your employer to increase the amount of your salary that goes to the pension (2. Säule), which is not limited like the 7000 you mentioned (3.Säule). they may be willing to issue mortgages with smaller deposits, but may take longer to make a decision That cannot be farther from the truth. If you are getting a mortgage on a smaller deposit, you will be paying a higher interest rate. Time to take a decision depends very much on your credit situation, earnings, spending and the amount of loan you want to avail of. advantages and disadvantages compared to banks today Nothing specifically that is obvious. You deposits are guaranteed by FSCS, which is primarily everybody's biggest concern. One thing I did observe was they generally have saving accounts which pay better than the big banks, but that is for one to compare and find out.  In ownership structure you own a part of the building society because you are a member by having an account(bank/mortgage) with them. Not the case with a big bank though unless you own any shares. You can make a case for the difference of the big bank's multiple business as compared to a building society. One advantage not pointed out yet is that closed-end funds typically trade on stock exchanges, whereas mutual funds do not.  This makes closed-end funds more accessible to some investors. I'm a Canadian, and this particular distinction matters to me.  With my regular brokerage account, I can buy U.S. closed-end funds that trade on a stock exchange, but I cannot buy U.S. mutual funds, at least not without the added difficulty of somehow opening a brokerage account outside of my country. One of the main advantages is that duplication from a few sources is no longer a vector.  The two big examples, the lesser first, card skimming and breaches like Target's.  The chip essentially generates a unique transaction code, and that is generated inside the chip.  So even if you installed a chip skimmer, you'd have to beat the merchant to using the code, and it would only be good once.  The same is true if you get something like the Target breach.  Instead of a giant dump of card numbers, you get a giant dump of used codes, which aren't very useful for getting money.  Even if the risk of stolen cards goes up, it should be a huge advantage for the banks.   Additionally, a number of the banks are now implementing quick and short term freezes, like the Discover It card app.  You simply click freeze in the app if you aren't sure where your card is, and unfreeze it when you do.  The assumption here is that people are more likely to freeze it and do so sooner than if they have to wait for a new card in the mail.  Theoretically, there's nothing stopping a consumer from keeping the card frozen all the time, and unfreezing it when they walk into a store, except the impracticality of it. "I think your best bet here would be HSBC.  They will provide the required currencies, credit/debit cards, and very easy to use online banking transfers.  This includes an online ""Global Account View"" which features all of your accounts on a single screen and allows you to ""drag and drop"" money between accounts. Regarding fees, I suspect you will need to be a ""Premier Account"" holder in order to avoid any fees imposed on transactions such as money transfers and exchanging money between currencies.  In my experience HSBC offers extremely good exchange rates when exchanging ""large"" amounts of money ( greater than $10,000 / GBP 5,000 ).  Exchanging small amounts will carry a larger spread but still much better than most banks offer. In my experience, exchanging GBP 5000 will have a spread of about 0.50-to-0.75 percent, while exchanging more than GBP10,000 will have a spread of as little as 0.10-to-0.20 percent. In order to qualify for a ""Premier Account"", if my memory of HSBC UK serves me correctly, you will need to have at least GBP 50,000 net across all of your HSBC managed accounts, including stockbroking and other investment accounts. In order to open a banking Swiss account, you will need to travel to Switzerland and apply in person.  You cannot open a foreign bank account remotely.  With a foreign investment account, I believe you can open accounts remotely.  For example, I opened an account with Fidelity Switzerland using my Fidelity UK account directly from the UK, however obviously Fidelity does not provide banking services so this is not of interest to you. The simplest thing to do is to visit your local HSBC branch and discuss it with them in person. Other UK banks, such as Barclays, will also provide such services, but in my experience they are not as competitive on fees." "I'm pretty sure that the banks here will only allow a joint account with either all citizens or all ""foreign resident"" or tourists. You may be able to do something with Leumi since they have a US branch in NYC. What many people do (who are US citizens) is open a bank account either at a physical branch or online and then it can be managed all online. Make sure no monthly balance fees or atm fees etc. If you need to transfer money most banks will ""buy"" a US check (I have done this with Leumi) or you can go to the ATM and pull out a few thousand shekel from the USA account and deposit it right back into the Israeli account.  My wife and I did this when we first arrived. Discount Bank seemed to have no fees for pulling money out and a good USD/ILS rate. Just make sure you don't have foreign transaction fees / high rates on the US account. If you need to deposit checks for him you can use the remote deposit feature and just take a picture. בהצלחה!"