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Fees are the silent killer of your returns. Over 20 years, even a 0.5% difference in annual costs can add up to tens of thousands of francs — money that either compounds in your portfolio or ends up in your provider's pocket.

Yet most investors have no idea what they're actually paying. Banks hide fees in product costs, custody charges, and transaction fees. Robo-advisors advertise a single number but forget to mention fund costs. And DIY platforms sound cheap — until you place your first trade.

In this article, we lay it all out honestly: What does investing in Switzerland really cost? We compare four typical paths with verified 2026 tariffs, show the two cost factors nobody talks about — and explain why the TER discussion is often the wrong discussion.

The Big Fee Comparison

All costs are based on a CHF 10,000 investment and include all fees: management, product costs, transactions, custody charges, and stamp duties. Source: arvy.ch/en/fees with verified provider tariffs (as of March 2026).

ETF Robo-Advisor: Cheap, But Passive

Robo-advisors like Selma, findependent, or True Wealth are the cheapest automated solution on the Swiss market. For around CHF 90-95 per year on CHF 10,000, they invest your money in a portfolio of ETFs — broadly diversified, automatically rebalanced, with zero effort required on your part.

The advantage: maximum simplicity at minimum cost. The disadvantage: you don't own individual stocks but index funds that mirror the entire market — the best companies alongside the worst. There's no active selection, no quality filter, no human being making investment decisions for you.

Additionally, at no robo-advisor do the founders invest their own money in the same portfolio as you. Interests aren't aligned — the provider earns its fee regardless of whether your portfolio goes up or down.

arvy: Professional Investing from CHF 84 per Year

arvy sits at CHF 84 to CHF 111 per year on CHF 10,000 — the same price range as a robo-advisor — but delivers a fundamentally different product. Instead of investing in passive index funds, the arvy team selects quality companies: businesses with strong cash flows, growing dividends, dominant market positions, and excellent corporate governance.

Everything is included in that fee — no exceptions: professional portfolio management, all transaction costs, foreign currency charges, the annual tax statement, and access to all educational content including the weekly newsletter arvy's Weekly with over 12,000 readers.

What sets arvy apart from every other provider: the three founders — Florian, Patrick, and Thierry — have each invested over CHF 100,000 in the same portfolio. Same fees, same returns, same risk. No other provider in Switzerland can make that claim.

Learn more about the investment philosophy behind arvy in our Owner's Manual. Why the founders invest themselves: Skin in the Game.

Traditional Bank: Expensive and Often Opaque

The traditional bank — whether Raiffeisen, UBS, ZKB, or Credit Suisse — charges CHF 300 to 400 per year on CHF 10,000 for a comparable investment. That's 3-4× more than arvy or a robo-advisor.

Where does the difference come from? Banks layer costs across multiple levels: an advisory fee (often 1-1.6%), custody fees (CHF 50-100/year), product costs from in-house funds (TER of 0.8-1.5%), and additional transaction fees. Clients are often steered toward in-house funds that generate higher margins for the bank — not because they're better for the investor.

The bank advisor earns a salary and often commissions — regardless of how your portfolio performs. Interests are structurally misaligned.

Worth knowing: Since the Swiss Financial Services Act (FinSA) came into force in January 2020, every Swiss bank is obligated to provide you with a detailed Key Information Document (KID) on request. It must disclose all ongoing costs, entry costs, and distribution commissions (retrocessions) ex-ante for 12 months. If your bank refuses or stalls, that itself is a signal.

DIY Platform: Cheap Only on Paper

Platforms like Swissquote, DEGIRO, or Interactive Brokers advertise low transaction fees. At first glance, it sounds attractive — but the actual costs are often significantly higher than expected.

At Swissquote, you'd pay CHF 630 per year on CHF 10,000 with an active portfolio of 40 transactions. Add custody fees (CHF 60/year), the tax statement (CHF 100), and currency conversion costs on every foreign stock purchase.

But the biggest cost factor with DIY is invisible: your own time and your own mistakes. You need to research, trade, rebalance, and maintain the discipline to not panic-sell during downturns. Studies show the average retail investor loses 1.5-3% in annual returns through emotional mistakes — far more than any fee. More: → Master Your Emotions When Investing

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

The fee on the factsheet is rarely the whole truth. Here are the costs most providers don't prominently communicate — and how arvy handles them:

Sources: SIX Group (Swiss stamp duty), comparison platforms (Moneyland/Comparis), provider tariff sheets as of March 2026. Your own time is the underestimated factor: 50h/year × CHF 80/h opportunity cost = CHF 4,000 on a CHF 100,000 portfolio = 4% annually.

FX surcharges in detail

Every time you buy a stock in USD or EUR, your provider converts the currency — and profits from it. Banks and brokers typically charge 0.5-1.5% on top of the exchange rate. At arvy, FX surcharges are included in the management fee — no additional costs.

Stamp duty in detail

Swiss stamp duty is 0.075% on domestic and 0.15% on foreign securities — per transaction (SIX Group). For a portfolio that trades regularly, this adds up. arvy transparently discloses stamp duty: 0% to 0.102% p.a. depending on investment profile.

Tax statement

Most brokers charge CHF 50-100 for the annual tax statement. At arvy, it's included in the fee — automatically generated, eTax-compliant for direct import into your tax return.

Your own time

If you invest on your own through Swissquote, you spend hours on research, order placement, and portfolio monitoring. Time you could alternatively use for your career, your family, or your hobbies. With arvy and robo-advisors, this effort disappears — you set up a standing order and let the rest run automatically.

The 2.4% Dividend Reinvestment Gap — the Biggest Cost Factor Nobody Talks About

Here's where it gets interesting. The discussion around TER spreads of 0.1-0.5% overlooks two cost factors that together are 10-25× larger. Let's start with the first — and the better quantifiable one.

J.P. Morgan and FactSet have measured the MSCI World 1970-2025 across two different indices:

Source: J.P. Morgan Guide to the Markets / FactSet, MSCI Index Methodology. The gap varies slightly across sub-periods; the long-run average consistently sits at ~2.3-2.5% p.a.

Why this matters for provider choice

Different providers handle dividends differently:

• arvy: Dividends are reinvested automatically — no discussion, no button to press, no manual decision.
• Robo-Advisors (Selma, finpension, VIAC): Also reinvest automatically because they use accumulating ETFs.
• Bank mandates: Depends on the mandate type. Discretionary mandates usually reinvest; advisory mandates often pay out to your account (where the money sits at 0.5% savings rate).
• DIY: You decide. Many investors turn reinvestment off "because they want to see the cash" — and forfeit the biggest lever of their portfolio long-term.

This isn't a TER discussion. It's the silent main reason DIY investors systematically underperform robo-advisor customers, even when they pay less in fees.

The 1.5% Behavior Gap — and Why Education Is Worth More Than TER Optimization

The second hidden cost factor: the Behavior Gap. It measures the difference between a fund's return and the actual return its investors achieve. Why is there a gap? Because investors buy and sell at the wrong time.

In 2014, Vanguard first quantified what good behavioral coaching is worth in the study Advisor's Alpha — and updated the numbers in 2019 and 2022. The result is consistent across all three studies: ~1.5% p.a.

Four independent studies, all in the same order of magnitude. The Behavior Gap is one of the best-documented anomalies in behavioural economics.

Why the Behavior Gap exists

Three psychological mechanisms drive the Behavior Gap:

• Panic-selling in crises: Those who sold in March 2020 (Covid crash) missed the +70% recovery in the following 12 months. Those who sold in 2008 are still not back in the market.
• FOMO-buying at peaks: Those who jumped into tech growth stocks in November 2021 (top) lost 50-70% in 2022.
• Performance-chasing: Investors switch into funds that performed well in the last 3 years — and miss the rotation into the next outperforming strategy, which typically comes from a different style.

How arvy addresses the Behavior Gap

arvy's entire product design is built to recover those 1.5%, not to shave 0.1% off TER:

• Concentrated portfolio: ~30 carefully selected quality companies instead of 1,400 ETF positions. When Nestlé falls 15%, you don't think "sell" — you think about the 150-year history of a company that sold food through two world wars, the Great Depression, 2008, and Covid.
• Weekly education: arvy's Weekly sends a portfolio company analysis every Friday to 12,000+ readers. Those who understand Visa, LVMH, or ASML don't panic at -20%.
• Skin in the Game: When the founders have CHF 100,000+ of their own money in the same portfolio, arvy doesn't chase short-term trends — and that discipline transfers to clients.
• Swiss regulation (FINMA): No temptation to chase short-term fees through high-risk products.

What Fees Really Cost Over 20-30 Years

Fees seem small — 0.5% here, 1% there. But over decades they eat deep into your wealth through negative compounding. Here's a concrete example:

Assumptions: CHF 10,000 starting capital, CHF 500/month savings rate, 7% average annual return, 20-year horizon.

Calculated with constant 7% p.a. gross return and constant fee. Real returns fluctuate; the qualitative point stands: arvy/robo vs. bank: over CHF 50,000 difference on just CHF 10,000 starting capital + CHF 500/month. On CHF 100,000 starting capital: over CHF 500,000 difference over 30 years.

Try it yourself with our Fee Comparison Calculator — or with the general arvy Investment Calculator.

Conclusion: What Really Matters?

The cheapest option isn't always the best. And the most expensive one is almost never the best. What matters is the ratio of cost to value:

A robo-advisor at CHF 94/year gives you passive index investing with no human decisions. Solid, cheap, boring — and perfectly adequate for many investors.

arvy at CHF 84-111/year gives you professional stock selection by a CFA team, three founders investing CHF 100,000+ alongside you, and weekly investment education that makes you a better investor — and thereby reduces the 1.5% Behavior Gap. At the same price as a robo-advisor.

A bank at CHF 343/year gives you an advisor who earns commissions and sells in-house products. No skin in the game, no transparency about true costs, and over 20 years that's roughly CHF 75,000 more than arvy — on just CHF 10,000.

Swissquote at CHF 630/year gives you maximum freedom — and maximum risk of making expensive mistakes. The Behavior Gap is systematically higher for DIY investors because there's no education, no guidance, no professional selection.

The question isn't "What does it cost?" — the question is "What do I get for it?" And even more important: "What does the provider I'm NOT choosing cost me in opportunity?"

With arvy you get professional quality investing, complete transparency, founders who invest their own money alongside yours, and a product design optimized for the two most important cost factors (dividend reinvestment and Behavior Gap) — at a price lower than any bank and comparable to any robo-advisor. It's the kind of wealth management we've always wanted for ourselves. And now we're sharing it with you.

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