Investment apps in Switzerland – a comparison

Name: findependent
Brand: findependent
Rating: 5.0 (63 reviews)

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.

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	0.42%	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	0.42%
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.

Truewealth vs Selma

Selma offers the lower entry amount of CHF 2’000 compared to Truewealth at CHF 8’500, but the significantly higher fees of 0.68% (Truewealth 0.50%). Only with assets of CHF 150’000 or more do Selma’s fees fall below 0.50%.

Selma vs yova

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 vs. findependent

Selma fees are clearly higher, around one and a half times as expensive. Selma has a starting amount four times as high and scores much worse in the investment app users’ rating.

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.

findependent vs Swissquote

Swissquote’s entry level is a whopping 50,000 francs, compared to findependent’s start wiht as littel as 500 francs. In addition, Swissquote’s robo advisor is rather expensive. With an annual fee of 0.75%, Swissqoute charges around 70% more than findependent’s 0.44%.

Descartes

Descartes Vorsorge has a interesting fee model with 0.65 to 0.80% flat fee, which includes TER, transaction fees and foreign currency surcharges. However, the Descartes offer is only available from a minimum investment amount of CHF 25,000 and is also only available as a web app, not an Android or iOS app.

Raiffeisen Rio Experience

The experience with the Raiffeisen Rio Investment app is mixed. Users of the Android app only give it 3.5 stars (out of a possible 5).

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.

SaxoSelect

SaxoSelect does not offer an investment app and is therefore not included in the above table. The fees for SaxoSelect’s digital asset management are a respectable 0.75% and the minimum investment amount is CHF 10’000.

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.

Learn more about findependent’s fee model

Criteria for investment apps in Switzerland and their evaluation

Basically, the following criteria are of primary interest from the user’s perspective:

How high are the fees for investment apps in Switzerland?
A fair management fee should be around 0.50%. Apart from findependent (which is even below 0.50%), only Truewealth charges fees in the range of 0.50%, but with a clearly higher starting amount. All other providers of investment apps are more expensive than findependent. Some are even significantly more expensive.
Are there any start-up credits or free administration?
In order to be able to try out the investment app without any worries, free management should be offered for the first investment. This also reduces the total fee for management via the investment app.
How low is the entry amount, the so-called minimum investment?
To ensure that an investment app is actually accessible to everyone, the entry amount should be a few hundred francs.
Can I put together my own portfolio?
Some investors would like to have the possibility to compile their own portfolio. In practice, however, this option is rarely used. Moreover, a digital asset manager is actually paid for managing the funds in your investment app, so why do it yourself and not delegate it?
Which ETFs are used?
The ETFs used differ from investment app to investment app. What is important is that they are physically replicated ETFs, that the ETFs have a high trading volume and that they have an attractive pricing (TER).
What are the product costs (TER) of ETFs?
The product costs should be in the range of around 0.20% per year. These product costs have nothing to do directly with management but are incurred by the ETF itself (the index fund used in the portfolio) and are charged by the fund provider. You do not have to pay these costs separately, they are not debited from your account, the TER is always deducted directly from the value of the unit of a fund. This is then used to calculate the so-called net asset value of the ETF.
Are prior knowledge and stock market skills necessary?
No prior knowledge is necessary for investment apps from digital asset managers. You define the investment strategy that suits you and the investment app takes care of the rest.
Some providers, such as Saxo, also offer you the option of managing your savings independently in their investment app. Here, it is highly recommended to have knowledge of the stock market in order not to take unnecessary risks.
Is the depositary bank in Switzerland?
This is an important point. For security reasons, the custodian bank should always be in Switzerland. We write more about this below.

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 0.44% (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. With the standard 2’000 francs free of charge, the investor saves even more. If he/she has invested a total of 15’000 francs, the findependent fee is only 0.38%.

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Investing with investment apps in Switzerland – 6 good reasons

Everything digital
For investment apps in Switzerland, you don’t need to go to a bank branch or have a long conversation with an expensive advisor who wants to talk you into something.
Time and place independent
Your investment app is always where you are, conveniently available on your smartphone at any time and yet secure thanks to biometric data or PIN. Moreover, withdrawals are only possible to an account that is also in your name. You can check the current status of your savings around the clock.
User-centred
Investment apps in Switzerland are built around the user. This is how apps with simple and uncomplicated handling are created.
No previous knowledge necessary
An investment app guides you step by step. If you decide on a passive investment solution, you will always achieve the return of the overall market.
Investing money at low cost
Investment apps in Switzerland let you invest your money cheaply and easily. At a fraction of the cost of traditional asset management or an investment strategy fund.
For small and large assets
You can start with small amounts, a few hundred francs are usually enough. Or you can invest the majority of your money in an investment app in Switzerland and then benefit even more from the cost advantage.

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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 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.

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.

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 authorised by FINMA (Financial Market Supervisory Authority).

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.

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