Custody terms in Switzerland: what safekeeping actually costs

The question of the typical custody fee comes up often and cannot be answered honestly with one number. Not because the answer is secret, but because the stated fee covers only one of four cost blocks, and banks cut those blocks differently.

For an independent wealth manager this is not an academic nicety. The custodian is the one infrastructure decision the firm does not make alone, and its terms feed directly into what clients pay at the end of the year.

The short version

• The stated custody fee is one block of four. Safekeeping, transaction costs, currency spreads and product costs together make the price.
• Two tariffs are comparable only over a specific portfolio and a specific year, not over a percentage.
• Art. 8 para. 2 FinSA requires information on costs; Art. 9 para. 1 FinSA requires it before the contract or the service.
• Art. 26 FinSA permits third-party compensation only where clients were expressly informed in advance and waive it, or where it is passed on in full.

What makes up the price

Safekeeping. The custody fee proper, usually a percentage of assets held with a minimum and sometimes a maximum. It is the most visible and most easily compared part, which is exactly why conversations narrow to it.

Transactions. Brokerage per trade, often tiered by volume, venue and instrument. Their weight depends on the mandate’s turnover. A strategy with four adjustments a year and one with forty pay very different sums at an identical custody fee.

Currency. The spread applied to the exchange rate on every purchase, sale and income credit in a foreign currency. It rarely appears as its own line on a statement and is regularly material in internationally oriented portfolios.

Product costs. The ongoing costs of the instruments themselves. They do not run through the bank statement but reduce the instrument’s performance, which is why they are easily missing from a fee summary.

Why the custody fee alone does not carry

Because the four blocks are cut differently. A bank with a low safekeeping fee and high brokerage, and one with the reverse profile, cannot be ranked by the first number. Comparing them that way does not select the cheaper bank, it selects the cheaper label.

The comparison becomes sound only with a specific portfolio: its size, its currency structure, its expected number of transactions, calculated over a year. That is more work than reading two price sheets, and it is the only calculation that supports a decision.

A second point is rarely weighted and is felt daily: how long an account opening actually takes, and how sound the data interface for positions and transactions is. Neither appears on a price sheet.

What the law requires to be disclosed

Art. 8 para. 2 FinSA obliges financial service providers to inform clients about the personally recommended financial service and the risks and costs associated with it. Letter b of the same paragraph adds the economic ties to third parties.

The timing is in Art. 9 para. 1 FinSA: information is provided before the contract is concluded or the service is rendered. A cost summary that arrives with the first annual statement does not meet this.

Further reading: FinSA and FinIA in practice: rules of conduct for wealth managers

Compensation from third parties

Art. 26 para. 1 FinSA permits third-party compensation on one of two conditions: either clients were expressly informed in advance and waive it, or the compensation is passed on in full.

Paragraph 2 makes the information requirement concrete. It must state the nature and scope of the compensation and be given before the service is rendered or the contract concluded. Where the amount cannot be determined in advance, the calculation parameters and ranges must be stated; the amounts actually received must be disclosed on request.

Paragraph 3 defines the term broadly: compensation means benefits accruing to the financial service provider from third parties in connection with a financial service, in particular brokerage fees, commissions, discounts or other pecuniary benefits. A discount on the custody fee tied to placed volume therefore falls within scope.

What to settle before the conversation with the custodian

What turnover the strategy actually has. What share of the portfolio is held in foreign currency. Whether transactions are included in the tariff or billed separately. Whether discounts are tied to volume and therefore fall under Art. 26 FinSA. And how the costs will appear in client reporting, because what has no line there is hard to explain.

Further reading: The operational base for independent wealth managers

Where Everon stands

Everon holds the custodian relationships as a partner for affiliated wealth managers and provides the infrastructure used to open accounts, run portfolios and produce reports. The FinSA disclosure duties stay with the licensed institution; a partner does not take them over, it supplies the figures that satisfy them. Talk to us.

Last reviewed: August 2026. Sources: FinSA (SR 950.1), Art. 8, 9 and 26.