Review of FlowBank, New Swiss Bank
- Thread starter dragodrago
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I assume this is based on your personal experience? How big was the "symbolic" amount? Did they force you to sell the stocks or did you transfer it to another broker?
I'll skip the specifics for privacy reasons.
They don't force you to do anything. They disable deposits into your account, send you a snail mail letter of termination and kindly ask you to sell/transfer out assets so they can fully close the account afterwards.
Flowbank seems like a very small operation. Their mobile app is riddled with bugs. Their website is often experiencing technical issues and downtimes. There are︀ no good reasons to use them at the moment. Unless you really need a yet︁ another non reliable Swiss brokerage.
They don't force you to do anything. They disable deposits into your account, send you a snail mail letter of termination and kindly ask you to sell/transfer out assets so they can fully close the account afterwards.
Flowbank seems like a very small operation. Their mobile app is riddled with bugs. Their website is often experiencing technical issues and downtimes. There are︀ no good reasons to use them at the moment. Unless you really need a yet︁ another non reliable Swiss brokerage.
From another thread, I see that people have had their accounts frozen and some even encountered problems because they left their money with this bank! I don't quite understand the criticism or the issues from the bank's side. The essence of running a bank should be to have people leave as much money with them as possible, right?
It depends, if interest rates are negative in the currency you deposited then bank would not be happy at people just parking money as they would be losing money. Also banks need to maintain capital ratio related to the amount of deposits they hold etc. If your not generating money for them then your costing them money you see in terms of capital and also in terms︀ of compliance costs etc. Compliance is not cheap at all. Each sanction check lookup and︁ a world-check lookup costs money so do adequate number of staff etc.
I opened an account with them selecting "savings" as the reason for opening it. Why would they even put this option (and accept you as a client) if they don't want you to use them as a bank?
Yes, I opened an account with them. I used my US virtual phone number. After a while, they sent me a W8 form to fill out and send back, I completed and sent back. After two weeks again, I sent back. After two more weeks again, I sent back. After two more weeks, they closed my account. I called them and they said that the person doing the W8 has moved to another position and nobody was reading the emails. Hence, they closed me︀ account. They even took back the welcome bonus as my account was not "open long︁ enough."
I hope the bank gets better one day.
I hope the bank gets better one day.
I think they are like Seba, which is now called Amina. They do not really know their business model but have some idea and some investment money from the low interest rate days. They then attract customers. The customers come, but they figure out it is not the ones they like. They guys working there are recent immigrants from neighbouring countries, just trying to follow the rules. And once the business is running, they find out that they are losing money and close accounts. It is hard to make money with any infrastructure business nowadays. The customers look at pricing and if you offer 0%︀ FX but fees on SWIFT, people come with local transfers from Postfinance for the FX︁ and then back to Postfinance for 2 CHF SWIFT. Of course, people use each service︂ for the part they are cheap and not the other way round.
We earn money and we let it︁ in the companies account and cant risk withdrawing it to our personal accounts because of︂ these games
Swiss banking services used to be the best and now its the worst︃
Starting fromt the Email Dukascopy sent me last week saying they will send all my︄ financial activities to my country of residence by April as they made my limits with︅ 20k per quarter they just shut it down for no reason
Swiss banking services used to be the best and now its the worst︃
Starting fromt the Email Dukascopy sent me last week saying they will send all my︄ financial activities to my country of residence by April as they made my limits with︅ 20k per quarter they just shut it down for no reason
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