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Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Credit Suisse To Charge Fees on Wealthy Customers


Sun 20 Oct 2019 | 01:16 AM
Taarek Refaat

Credit Suisse will start charging wealthy customers with large cash deposits in Swiss francs.

The Swiss bank said in a statement earlier this week that customers and corporations will be charged a fee of -0.75 percent on cash balances above 2 million Swiss francs ($ 2.02 million).

Corporate customers with balances in excess of 10 million francs will also be charged a fee of -0.85 percent.

Credit Suisse explained that the new rules will come into effect as of January 2020 for inpidual customers and November 15 for corporate customers.

The bank is not the first Swiss financial service to pass negative interest rates on its customers. Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) said last July that it would charge -0.75 percent on deposits of more than CHf 2 million, while Postfinance imposes Fees for inpidual customers with balances exceeding  CHf 500,000.

"As other banks have been doing for some time, Credit Suisse offers negative interest rates to customers with very high Swiss franc cash holdings," Credit Suisse said, noting that the reason for this was the continuing negative interest rate phenomenon.

It is noteworthy that the interest rate in Switzerland is the lowest globally, where the Swiss central bank has imposed a negative interest rate -0.75 percent since the beginning of 2015 on reserve deposits.