Just a little rant about UBS...

[OxygeN]

Hi all.
This sucks!
I've successfully closed all my investing positions at UBS (it took quite some days) and today I finally got the amount paid out on my account (after 8 full days!). So now I log into IBKR and prepare for the transaction to move my money over there and on the UBS online banking I set it also up. As soon as I want to do the transaction, I get informed that I can't withdraw more than 50k per year and if I do so without announcing it in advance, I have to pay 0.5% fee on everything that's over 50k!!! WTF!!! They told me they would put the money on my savings account, but did not mention anything like this (fees, withdrawal limit)!
I understand that they feel they're losing one of their clients (but in fact they aren't, because my mortgage is at UBS), but a good banker would at least say "hey, just be reminded that you can't do this and that or you have to pay fees if you do"... I mean: they did remind me to cancel the recurring payment which I had running into the 3A, so why not doing the same for this transaction???

I've sent an email already, asking them kindly to move everything without fees over to my checking account... let's see what happens.

Sorry for my rant, but it sucks wanting to move quite some money from UBS to IBKR and being stuck at 50k per year max withdrawal (except when paying fees)!

I'll update you...

 

[Baptiste Wicht]

Sorry to hear that, @OxygeN.

I agree that this really sucks. It feels like a cheap technique to keep their customers at all cost. I agree that this should be well communicated since this moves money from one place where you have access to it to one place where you don't

I hope you will get this sorted out and this is a good reminder for other people not to trust UBS (and likely banks in general).

 

[OxygeN]

Yeah... at worst, I'll have to wait 3 months apparently.
The details can be found here.
Specifically, on page 12:

And the note number 3 reads:

Dammit! I might have to be "out-of-the-market" for 3 long months! If that will be the case, then I will have to think what to do:

• withdraw 50k (paying Fr. 5.- per payment), then announce that I want to withdraw the rest in 3 months time;

or

• withdraw everything at once, paying the 0.5% fee (which is a bit less than CHF 1'000.- / almost corresponding to the management fee for a quarter).

I know that the 0.5% fee would probably be recovered quite quickly with VT - and in any case I'm investing long-term, therefore it might not really matter. Nevertheless, it sucks knowing that I would give back some money to UBS!!!

 

[Baptiste Wicht]

It's not an easy choice indeed. On the one hand, 3 months out of market is long. And on the other hand, 0.5% fee is high.
At the very least, you can transfer quickly the first 50K.

 

[justatreeinthesea]

@OxygeN - You did the right thing writing to them. I was in a similar situation with 6-figure to move to my broker and they lifted the limit.
I was quite shocked a few years back when I found out that such limits existed at some banks on current accounts and I'm now avoiding storing too much money on banks with limits, especially since most of them have poor savings rates.

 

[OxygeN]

So, here's how it went:
the substitute for the lady I wrote my email, called me the day after and asked if I actually needed the money (instead of putting it in the savings account). I explained her that yes, I needed the money and TBH I would've expected the same "customer care" from UBS as when I moved away my 3A (see my initial post). I of course told her that I was aware of the email that was sent to me, in which UBS told me they would've put the money into my savings account but also that I didn't know neither about the yearly withdrawal limit, nor about the horrendous fees. She understood and told me that if I would be doing the transfer in the following 15 minutes, she would be informed when it happens and thus she would take care of removing any sort of fees. Also, as every transfer greater than CHF 150'000.- will trigger an event which would sent me out a paper to sign, and this would delay the whole thing even more, she suggested that she would remove this "hurdle" as well.
Well, I thanked her and after 5 minutes I had moved all my money from my savings to my checking account!
This was yesterday and I have verified online: no fees applied!

She told me that her colleague didn't do it on purpose, she just might not have made some additional thoughts in terms of "customer care".

All's well that ends well!

PS: as I now still fear the 150k limit, I'm just going to move my capital to IBKR in 2-3 slices... I mean: I've been out-of-the-market for 10 days or more now, so a couple of days won't matter.

 

[Baptiste Wicht]

Great news! It was a great idea to write them and push them to move it to a checking account!

 

[OxygeN]

Indeed!
Next steps will involve moving my savings account to some other bank. I tried registering with wiLLBe but as I don't have my ID in credit card format, they can't validate my identity
I'm already both a Wise and Revolut customer: do you know about the interest rates on these? I think they're nil...
So, if I can't get into wiLLBe: what other checking account would you suggest to use?

 

[Baptiste Wicht]

Maybe Neon or Yuh?

It will depend on how much savings you have. If you do not have much, it's not worth chasing interest rates.

 

[OxygeN]

I'll look into Neon and Yuh.
My savings are around 20-30k