Children's Account Switzerland: The Complete Guide

Your child has something no adult investor can ever buy: time. If you start with CHF 100 a month at birth and leave the money untouched until adulthood, your child has roughly CHF 43'000 at 18. If you keep going until they buy their first apartment at 30, it's CHF 122'000. Both at realistic market returns. Both from CHF 100 a month. This isn't magic. It's the compound interest that Swiss parents pay too little attention to.

By Thierry Borgeat, Co-Founder arvy · 18 min read · Last updated May 2026

Most Swiss parents think of "saving for the kids" as a savings account at their hometown bank. Maybe a baptism gift from the godparents. A Goldvreneli from grandma. A few hundred francs in an account that pays 0.5% interest a year — and then handed over to the child at 18 with a few thousand francs to their name.

The intention is good. The execution is one of the most expensive financial decisions Swiss parents can make. Not because savings accounts are "bad" — but because the child is giving away something they'll never get back: an 18-, 25-, or 30-year investment horizon. That's the most valuable asset in all of finance. And most parents give it away without realising.

This guide explains everything you need to know about children's accounts in Switzerland: why the maths shifts dramatically in favour of investing over saving, what the legal and tax rules are, what providers exist, what makes sense at birth, and how to make sure the gift doesn't turn into a PlayStation weekend at age 18.

It's also the central entry point to every other children's account article we've written — from the honest provider comparison through the interactive calculator to the 6 lifecycle deep-dive articles that cover every family phase and every gift perspective individually — from "what does a child actually cost?" through three gift perspectives (parents, godparents, grandparents) to the transition to your now-adult child at 18. If you take only one thing from this guide: the right time to start is always now — whether your child is three weeks or thirteen years old.

1. The maths that changes everything

Before we talk about providers, taxes, and strategies, we need to talk about the number that drives all of it. It's a simple number. It's mathematically undeniable. And it's the reason children's accounts are one of the most underestimated financial decisions in Switzerland.

Here it is: CHF 100 per month. 18 years. 7% average annual return. What comes out at the end?

Let's put that in perspective. You're not just giving your child money you saved. You're giving them twice as much money as you saved. And not because you're some investing genius — but because you simply gave the market, which has historically delivered around 7-9% per year on global equities over a century, time to do its job.

But 18 years is only the first milestone. What happens if your child doesn't touch the money at 18, but lets it keep growing until their first apartment? Until graduation? Until their first home purchase?

All values at 7% annual average return — the long-term historical average of global equity markets. Actual returns vary; past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Look at the number in the bottom-right corner: CHF 365'991. That's what CHF 300 a month becomes when you start at birth and leave the money running until your child's 30th birthday. You've contributed a total of CHF 108'000 over 30 years. Compound interest has turned those CHF 108'000 into nearly a quarter of a million extra francs.

This isn't Las Vegas. It's not crypto. It's not luck. It's just time × market × discipline — the formula behind every great wealth accumulation in history.

And here's the central insight: your child is the only investor on the planet who can start with an 18-, 25- or 30-year investment horizon. As a 35- or 40-year-old, you no longer have that lever. Pension funds don't have it. Family offices don't have it. The only investors with three decades of uninterrupted compounding ahead of them are newborns. And their parents decide whether that potential gets used.

2. The savings account trap and why it's so expensive

Now let's compare the investing scenario with what most Swiss parents actually do: a children's savings account at their hometown bank.

Swiss banks currently pay between 0.5% and 1% interest on children's savings accounts. It feels "safe." It feels responsible. And over 18 years, it ruthlessly erodes your child's purchasing power.

Read that again. With identical contributions — CHF 100 every month for 18 years — the difference between a savings account and investing is nearly CHF 20'000. That's not a little more. That's an entire additional savings-account-lifetime on top.

At higher amounts, the gap grows even larger. CHF 200 a month over 18 years:

• Savings account at 1%: CHF 47'311
• Invested at 7%: CHF 86'144
• Difference: CHF 38'834

Over 18 years. With the same monthly effort. The only difference: where the money was parked in between.

But isn't investing "risky"?

This is the most important question in this guide, and it deserves an honest answer. Yes, the stock market fluctuates. If you invest CHF 100 today, your money may be worth CHF 80 next year. That's the nature of markets.

But for a children's account, one fundamental fact is overlooked by many parents: you have an 18+ year investment horizon. And over every 18-year period in the history of global equity markets — through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the oil crisis, the dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, COVID-19 — the market has ultimately delivered positive returns. There has not been a single 20-year period in 100 years in which a globally diversified equity portfolio lost money.

Put differently: the only risk that really matters for a children's account isn't "the market falls next year." It's "you lose to inflation over 18 years." And that risk is guaranteed with a savings account, while it has been historically near zero with a broad equity market.

If you want to dig deeper into this, we wrote an entire article on the concrete maths: CHF 50 per Month for 18 Years: The Gift No Toy Can Match.

3. When to start (spoiler: now)

The most common question we get from parents is: "My child is already 5 (or 8, or 12) — am I too late?"

The answer is always: no. But the answer has two layers, and both are worth understanding.

The first layer: The best time to open a children's account was the day of birth. The second-best time is today. Every month you wait costs you compound interest that will never come back. If you start with your 5-year-old today, you still have 13 years until adulthood — that's still a huge runway for the market to do its work.

The second layer: Compound interest isn't linear. It's exponential. That means: the last years of your investment horizon are dramatically more valuable than the first. Here's what we mean:

Look at the last column. With 5 years of investing, you only get CHF 1'201 in compound interest gains. With 18 years, it's CHF 21'472 — that's 17 times as much, even though you've only contributed 3.6× more. That's the exponential nature of compound interest. And it's the mathematical reason why "start now" is by far the most important decision — more important than how much you contribute, more important than which provider, more important than anything else.

What if I only have a short runway?

If your child is already 12 or 13 and you're only just starting to invest, something different applies: over a shorter time frame (5-6 years), market volatility becomes a more real risk. There have actually been 5-year periods in market history where equities lost money — though most 5-year periods were positive.

For these cases, two legitimate strategies exist:

1. More aggressive allocation anyway: If the money isn't strictly needed at 18 (e.g. only at the end of university at 24), the effective horizon stays around 12 years. That's enough for a high equity allocation.
2. Glide path: Start with a high equity allocation, but reduce it in the last 2-3 years before the planned withdrawal. This locks in gains and prevents a crash right before the payout from destroying your plan.

What you should never do: not start at all because you think it's too late. Even 5 years of investing at 7% return beat 5 years of a savings account at 1%. The question isn't "should I." The question is "how much, and how aggressively."

4. Concrete scenarios for real families

Enough theory. Let's look at three real family scenarios that show how different starting points and contributions play out.

These numbers aren't wishful thinking. They're maths. If you want to verify them yourself, you can do so anytime with the arvy Child Investment Calculator — it shows you every variant interactively, with different amounts, time frames, and return assumptions.

And if you want the lifecycle context — what does a child actually cost in Switzerland, and how does your savings plan fit into the full family budget — see our complete cost guide. Spoiler: direct costs 0-18 are CHF 250'000–400'000, with lost income up to CHF 700'000–1 million.

What if grandparents and godparents join in?

This is where it gets really interesting. If you don't save alone, but run a "multi-generational strategy" — parents monthly, grandparents at birth and birthdays, godparents once a year — the effects multiply.

This strategy is significantly more powerful than it appears at first glance. The grandparents' CHF 5'000 alone grows to almost CHF 17'000, because it has 18 years to compound — a near-tripling. If grandparents instead transfer CHF 50'000 as advance inheritance during their lifetime — rather than holding it on a savings account until classic inheritance — that's over CHF 200'000 more value for the grandchild. More on this in two deep-dive articles: The Best Gift at Birth (birth-gift focus) and Investing for Your Grandchildren in Switzerland: A Guide for Swiss Grandparents (with advance-inheritance math and cantonal tax details).

5. The provider landscape in Switzerland

In Switzerland today, a handful of providers offer digital children's investment solutions. The main names are arvy, findependent, True Wealth, Finpension, and UBS key4. The differences come down to four dimensions:

1. Investment strategy: Actively selected quality stocks (arvy) or broad passive ETFs (everyone else)
2. Ownership structure: Account in the parent's name or directly in the child's name
3. Minimum contribution: Some start at CHF 1, others at CHF 50 or CHF 500
4. What happens at 18: Automatic transfer or parental control retained

We've written a complete, honest comparison of all providers — including the areas where arvy is not the best choice. If you're seriously deciding, read it: Children's Investment Account Switzerland 2026: The Honest Comparison.

Here's just the short version: there is no single best children's account. There's the best one for your specific situation.

• If you absolutely want the lowest fees: Finpension Invest (0.39%) or findependent (0.40-0.44%). Passive ETF strategy, no education layer, simple apps.
• If you want the money legally in your child's name: True Wealth or UBS key4. Both offer locked child assets with automatic transfer at 18.
• If you want your child to actually understand what they own: arvy. Actively selected ~30 quality companies like Visa, LVMH, Microsoft, Nestlé, with weekly analyses and educational materials that become useful for your child once they're old enough to read them.

What we'll talk about more concretely toward the end of this guide is the third point — the educational dimension. It's the main reason we built the arvy Children's Account in the first place.

6. Tax, legal, and ownership

The legal situation around children's assets in Switzerland is surprisingly simple — once you know the basic rules. Here are the most important ones:

Ownership: Whose money is it?

If, as a parent, you open an account in your own name and contribute money for your child, the money legally belongs to you, not the child. This has advantages and disadvantages:

• Advantage: You retain control. You decide when (and whether) the child receives the money. You can also use it for family purposes in an emergency.
• Disadvantage: In the case of divorce, personal bankruptcy, or legal claims against you, the money can theoretically be affected.

If you open the account directly in the child's name (locked child assets), the money belongs to the child. This protects it from parental creditors, but also means you lose control completely on the child's 18th birthday. What your child does with the money then is no longer in your hands. We cover the full transition process — what happens legally, fiscally, and mechanically at majority — in the deep-dive article From Child Account to Own Portfolio: The Transition at 18.

Taxes: What do you need to know?

The Swiss tax system is surprisingly mild for children's accounts:

The detailed legal and tax breakdown is in our deep-dive article: Investing for Children in Switzerland: Tax, Legal, and the 5 Mistakes Parents Make.

7. How to involve grandparents and godparents

One of the most powerful things you can do with a children's account is to actively involve grandparents and godparents. Not just because additional money brings additional compound interest — but because it creates a cultural shift.

Instead of yet another plush toy or Goldvreneli at the baptism that ends up in a drawer, grandparents can contribute directly to the children's account. Instead of another toy at the 5th birthday that gets retired in a year, a contribution of CHF 200 that will be worth more in 13 years than any toy.

The beautiful thing about this: you don't have to "sell" anyone on it. You just have to explain what's happening. Most react positively, because they wanted to give something meaningful anyway — and a plush toy simply has a different 18-year value than an invested contribution.

We wrote three deep-dive articles on this topic — one for each family role. From the parents' perspective: Money Gifts for Children: Goldvreneli, Savings Book, or Stocks? (with historical math: CHF 100 in 1995 as a Goldvreneli is worth CHF 354 today, the same amount in MSCI World CHF 750). From the godparent perspective: Investing for Your Godchild in Switzerland: A Practical Guide for Godparents — with three legally clean options for godparent investing and the math: CHF 500 yearly from the Götti becomes CHF 17'000 at 18. And from the grandparents' perspective: Investing for Your Grandchildren in Switzerland: A Guide for Swiss Grandparents — with the most powerful lever of all, advance inheritance during your lifetime: CHF 50'000 gifted now is CHF 207'000 more for your grandchild than classic inheritance.

For the bigger picture, our article The Best Gift at Birth includes concrete templates for how to have the conversation with grandparents.

8. The real gift: financial education

Here comes the part of this guide that most other comparisons and advisors miss completely. And it's the most important.

Imagine two 18-year-olds. Both receive a children's account worth CHF 43'000 on their 18th birthday. The money is identical. Everything else is different.

Child 1 received a card once a year at Christmas with a comment like "look, your account has grown." They vaguely know there's money there. They have no idea how it came to be, what it means, what it symbolises, or how to handle it. On their 18th birthday they get a letter from the bank with a five-figure number. Statistically, a non-trivial portion of that money will be consumed within 24 months: a car, a travel trip, new clothes, an iPhone, maybe a bit toward a lifestyle upgrade. The money was never really in the child's head — it was just in an account. And what was never in the head can't be treated with respect.

Child 2 has talked with their parents over the last 5 years about what's in the portfolio. They know their money is in Visa and Microsoft and Nestlé. They've understood why their portfolio fell 30% in March 2020 and recovered by September. They asked at family dinner one day "why don't we own Tesla shares" and the parents answered honestly: "because we don't find the balance sheet convincing — look, here are the numbers." Somewhere around age 13 or 14 they understood what compound interest really is for the first time — not as abstract school maths, but as the force that silently grows their own money every day.

Which of these two children will use the inherited capital better long-term? Which will preserve and grow the first 30'000 francs, and which will spend them on consumption? The answer is obvious. And the answer has nothing to do with which bank managed the account. It has everything to do with whether the child was involved in the account in the years before — as a learning subject, as a family conversation, as part of their financial education.

That's the real gift of a children's account. The money is nice. The education is transformative.

We wrote a separate article on this with the 7 concrete lessons missing from school but possible at home: Teaching Kids About Money: 7 Lessons No Swiss School Teaches. And for a wonderful story about an 11-year-old girl learning to understand money, read our Book Club summary of "A Dog Called Money" by Bodo Schäfer — one of the best children's books on finance ever written.

9. The complete lifecycle — 6 deep-dive articles

So far we've covered the strategic foundations: mathematics, providers, taxes, gifts, and education. But a children's account isn't a snapshot — it's an 18-year project with very distinct phases. Each phase has its own questions, its own decisions, its own mathematical levers.

We've written a deep-dive article for each of these phases that picks up where this hub leaves off. If you're in one of these phases — or preparing for one — these six articles are the logical next read.

10. Why we built the arvy Children's Account

We don't build a product because another product is missing. We build a product because a specific kind of parent doesn't find a fitting solution in the market.

For the arvy Children's Account, those are parents who want two things at once: first, that their child's money is invested in real, understandable quality companies — not in an anonymous index of 1'500 firms. Second, that the account isn't just a financial vehicle, but an educational foundation for the family over the next 18 years.

The arvy Children's Account is based on the same ~30 hand-picked quality companies as the arvy Savings Plan and the arvy Pillar 3a. The selection is made by the same team of three CFA Charterholders (Thierry Borgeat, Florian Jauch, Patrick Rissi) who manage our own six-figure co-investments. You own the same companies for your child as we own for ourselves.

What it also has, that most other providers don't: a complete educational ecosystem that grows with the child. The arvy Weekly for parents now — and for the child in 10 years, when they're old enough to read company analyses. The Book Club with summaries of the best investment books. 11 interactive calculators covering every aspect of family financial life — budget, savings plan, compound interest, FIRE, taxes, rent or buy.

And at the end of the day: an account that doesn't feel like an anonymous bank product, but like a shared family project for the next two decades.

11. Your next steps

If you've read this guide all the way to here, you now probably know more about children's accounts in Switzerland than 95% of parents in this country. The question is: what do you do with that knowledge?

We recommend three concrete next steps, in this order:

Step 1: Calculate your own number

Before you open anything, look at what your specific plan over 18 years actually delivers. Play with amounts. With time horizons. With return assumptions. See the number your family could concretely have.

→ arvy Child Investment Calculator (free, no signup)

Step 2: Compare providers honestly

We're a provider and we have a bias. But we wrote a complete comparison that also shows when other providers fit your situation better. Read it before you decide — regardless of which provider.

→ Children's Investment Account Switzerland 2026: The Honest Comparison

Step 3: Start. Today.

We showed in Section 3 that compound interest is exponential — which means every month you wait costs disproportionately much. This is independent of the provider and independent of the amount. If you start today with anything, you'll have more in 18 years than if you start in a year with the perfect plan.

If arvy fits for you: → Open arvy Children's Account
If another provider fits better: open it there. But do it. Today.

The complete arvy Children's Account library

This guide plus the 5 lifecycle deep-dives above form the strategic foundation. Here are the complementary tools, comparisons, and educational materials that round out the picture:

Written by Thierry Borgeat, Co-Founder arvy. Reviewed by Patrick Rissi, CFA and Florian Jauch, CFA.
The three founders co-invest over CHF 100'000 of their own money in the same portfolio as arvy clients.

Disclaimer: This article is for general information and educational purposes and does not constitute personal investment or tax advice. The 7% annual return assumption used here is based on historical long-term averages of global equity markets and is not a guarantee of future returns. Actual returns vary significantly and can also be negative. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Tax and legal regulations vary by canton, family situation, and individual circumstances — for specific advice, consult a qualified tax advisor. The mention of other providers (findependent, True Wealth, Finpension, UBS) is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement or affiliation. arvy is a FINMA-supervised Swiss asset manager. All calculations can be reproduced with our Child Investment Calculator.