Alpian Review 2025 – Pros & Cons
| Updated: |
(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)
Alpian is a Swiss digital private bank that focuses on the mass affluent. It wants to offer private banking services to more people and make them easier, simpler, and more humane than traditional private banks.
If you are looking for a private bank, should you use Alpian? This review will cover this question in detail by reviewing its fees, features, and philosophy. By the end of this review, you will know whether you should use Alpian.
| Monthly banking fee | 0 CHF |
|---|---|
| Users | Unknown |
| Card | Visa Debit |
| Currencies | CHF, EUR, GBP and USD |
| Withdrawals in Switzerland | 2 CHF per withdrawal |
| Withdrawals abroad | 2.5% fee |
| Currency exchange | 0.2% (0.5% during weekend) |
| Management fee | 0.75% |
| Product costs | 0.20% |
| Languages | English, French, German, and Italian |
| Custody bank | Interactive Brokers |
| Depositor protection | 100’000 CHF |
| Established | 2022 |
| Headquarters | Geneva, Switzerland |
Private Banking
Private banks are serving affluent clients with customized services and advice. They are generally helping affluent customers invest their money.
I have not talked much about private banking on this blog before. The reason is simple: private banking is generally expensive. I have never seen the need for private banking before.
However, several readers have told me they were interested in private banking. I would never recommend very expensive traditional private banks. However, digital private banks may offer a good alternative for people who want to delve into private banking without excruciatingly high fees.
So, we can see what Alpian offers to people looking for affordable private banks.
Alpian
Alpian is a digital private bank, aiming to help affluent people with their money, without paying the outrageous costs of traditional private banks.
Use the code SWISSP to receive up to 200 CHF reward.
Alpian is among the first Swiss digital private banks. The bank was created in 2019 and launched to the public in 2022.
They focus on mass affluent people, which are people with wealth between 100,000 CHF and 1,000,000 CHF. You can still use them if you have more or less than that, but it is essential to mention that traditional private banks focus on higher categories of wealth.
Mass affluent people have not many suitable options for investing with an advisor. They are not rich enough to go a private bank like Lombard Odier. They could go to UBS, but they will not get a private advisory service either. So, if they are not willing to invest by themselves, they are stuck with few options. This is why Alpian offers private banking services to the mass affluent.
One of their goals is to demystify private banks. In most people’s eyes, private banks are only for the ultrarich. Alpian wants to break that myth. To achieve that goal, they provide an online knowledge platform about investments and private banking. In fact, they could rather qualify as a premium bank rather than a private bank. To offer private banking service without a huge fee, they are using automation to reduce fees where humans do not provide value and focus on areas where they produce more values.
Traditional private banks are generally only used for investments. On the other hand, Alpian also focuses on providing a great bank account. So, you could use this bank as your main bank and directly invest with them.
Finally, Alpian wants to grow its customer wealth, not only make money. Therefore, they do not accept any investment kickbacks or have custom products. This allows them to focus on the best products available.
Now, we should see in detail what their features and prices are.
Banking features
Each Alpian account is a multi-currency account. This is great to have this by default. Alpian supports CHF, EUR, GBP, and USD. All these currencies are under a single IBAN. You can convert between these four currencies directly within the app.
Additionally, you can get a savings account. With Alpian, your interest rate will be 0.10% up to 125000 CHF and 0.35% above that (as of April 2025). These interest rates are slightly above average, for large amounts.
With your account, you get a Visa debit card that you can use to pay and withdraw money in Switzerland and abroad. This card does exactly what you expect from a debit card.
Currently, Alpian supports Google Pay and Apple Pay! They do not yet have their own TWINT app, but you can use the card with the prepaid version of TWINT. Furthermore, they do not yet have support for e-bills, but this feature is incoming.
Alpian also has support for virtual cards. This is good because it is a great way to increase security by using virtual cards for some services. They also support instant transfers between customers.
Overall, Alpian has all the features you would want from a bank. It is good that they have a multi-currency account. There are very few Swiss banks offering that feature.
Investment features
Alpian also offers wealth management features.
Alpian uses an artificial intelligence model to generate a basic portfolio model for their investors. These portfolios are then vetted and customized by professional wealth managers.
Each portfolio is different based on a thorough questionnaire. This goes much further than the standard Robo-advisor questions. In the end, each portfolio is different.
The client then has the choice to let the wealth management team implement or change things. This allows an excellent level of customization. It is important to know that Alpian advisors are not incentivized by product sales. This ensures that they can provide unbiased support.
As far as sustainable investing goes, Alpian provides a tool to measure the impact of your portfolio. If you want something more or less sustainable, you can communicate with the wealth managers to improve in any direction.
For your portfolio, they will use ETFs only. You cannot invest in single stocks with Alpian. Alpian also mostly uses CHF-hedged instruments.
Interestingly, Alpian is using Interactive Brokers for its investments. Therefore, it is essential to know that your stocks will not be stored in Switzerland. This is not a problem (I use and recommend Interactive Brokers), but it is essential to understand when comparing financial services.
Overall, Alpian offers interesting features for designing and managing your portfolio. A team of certified wealth managers will supervise it.
There are three different investing mandates:
- Guided By Alpian. In this case, Alpian will guide the investor with advice from experts. However, the investor is then in charge of the portfolio. This mandate is available starting at 10’000 CHF.
- The investor can change the portfolio as he sees fit and will see whether the changes are in accordance with the profile made by Alpian.
- Managed By Alpian. In this case, Alpian will actively manage the investor’s portfolio. This mandate is available starting at 30’000 CHF.
- Compared to a Robo-advisor, customers will not be put into a few profiles. Instead, each customer will have its portfolio, different for each customers.
- Managed by Alpian Essentials. This is the simplest mandate, starting at 2’000 CHF. The portfolio will be passively managed by Alpian. This mandate is great to start testing Alpian investment.
- With this mandate, you can choose between five strategies (from prudent to very dynamic) and three different investment universe (global, Swiss and sustainable).
For me, a digital private bank is close to a Robo-advisor, except that you get access to professional wealth managers. These wealth managers will create your portfolio and adapt it over time. With Alpian, you can get access to a professional advisor at any time (true for each mandate).
Banking Fees
First, we can look at the banking fees.
An incoming transfer in the base four currencies will be free. All incoming transfers in other currencies will be converted to CHF, with a markup of 0.20% (on top of the interbank exchange rate). The markup increases to 0.50% during the weekends.
All outgoing transfers in the base four currencies will be free. Using other currencies will cost you between 2 CHF and 7 CHF, with the same markup mentioned before.
All payments with the card in the four default currencies are free of charge, given you have the amount already. If you do not have the necessary amount in one of the four available currencies, you will pay 0.20% for each currency exchange (0.5% during the weekend). For all other currencies, you will pay the VISA exchange rate, which is about a 0.50% surcharge.
So, overall, these currency exchange fees are much better than the average in the industry. These fees are likely the best among Swiss banks. Very few Swiss banks can beat these rates.
If you want to withdraw money in Switzerland, you will pay 2 CHF for a CHF withdrawal, 5 EUR for a EUR withdrawal, 5 USD for a USD withdrawal, and 5 GBP for a GPB withdrawal. It is pretty disappointing that there are no free CHF withdrawals in Switzerland.
If you withdraw money abroad, you will pay 2.5% of the transaction amount. This is relatively expensive.
As of September 2024, there is no more management fee on the banking account. Overall, these fees are good. The currency exchange fees are well below the average for Swiss customers. I just wish you could withdraw money for free in Switzerland.
Investments Fees
For managing your wealth, Alpian will charge you a 0.75% fee on the value of your investments per year. VAT is included in this fee. There are no maximums nor minimums on this management fee. If you have 100’000 CHF with Alpian, you will pay 750 CHF per year in fees.
This management fee includes all advice by Alpian and your portfolio management. The annual tax report is included in the management fee. It also includes all transaction costs. However, this management fee does not include the following:
- The Stamp tax duty.
- Currency exchange fee (0.2% during the week, 0.5% during the weekend).
- Product costs in case your portfolio invests in ETFs.
Regarding currency exchange fees, it is important to mention that most investments at Alpian are hedged to CHF, reducing the fees. It is up to you to decide whether currency hedging is good.
First, traditional private banks are more expensive, generally around 2% per year (sometimes significantly more). So, while expensive, Alpian is much cheaper than a traditional private bank.
And even in general, Alpian’s management fee is not great! Since most investments will be in ETFs, the total fee will be about 1.00% on average. Additionally, since Alpian does not use US ETFs, we can expect to lose 15% of US dividends.
However, any retail bank will be pricier. Currently, the average investment management fee is about 1.38% (as per Alpian, 31.08.22). So, it is interesting that a digital private bank can be cheaper than a retail bank. However, these fees are still significant. And there are some free retails bank as well.
Banking limits
Like with most bank accounts, there are some limits to your Alpian account. This is especially true for digital banks which tend to have more limits than traditional banks.
Fortunately, there are no limits within the accounts. So you can transfer any amounts of money between your accounts or to another account. This is great because some digital banks have some daily or monthly limits.
On the other hand, use of the card is limited. You withdraw 3’000 CHF per day only. And you only spend or withdraw a total of 10’000 CHF per month with the card.
The only time when these limits would be a problem is if you need a considerable amount of cash. In this case, you would likely need another account from a traditional bank, transfer to it and then withdraw from it.
Other perks and features
On top of the standard features, Alpian also has some perks for its customers.
With your Alpian account, you can get an American Express Gold card at a lower price. The first year, you will only pay 175 CHF instead of 350 CHF. You will also get a 50 CHF bonus in your Alpian account and 45’000 reward points for your account. If you like the perks of these cards, this is a good way to save on your card memberships. For more information, read the details of this offer.
For instance, you will be able to get priority service with Resolve, a mortgage broker. You can also get access to American Express Platinum for a reduced fee (net 250 CHF for the first year). An Amex platinum provides you with access to lounges and concierge services, for instance. Another example is their partnership with First Caution, a rental guarantee insurance.
Obviously, it is very difficult to value these perks because they will depend on each customer. Some people (like me) would put very little value to it. But I know some people that would thoroughly enjoy these premium perks, and these probably make sense for a private bank.
Alternatives
Since Alpian is first a wealth management platform, we should compare it with other investment platforms.
I have not yet evaluated other private banks, so I cannot compare them. So, I will first compare them with Robo-advisors. Alpian is not a Robo-advisor because humans also supervise each investment portfolio. But I doubt that this brings much value on top of a Robo-advisor.
Since Alpian focuses on the mass affluent, we will compare the fees for a portfolio of 250’000 CHF, which should be pretty common in this category.
Finally, people willing to manage their money with a broker account should not be concerned. Any good broker will be much cheaper than any private bank or Robo-advisor.
Alpian vs traditional private banks
Although I cannot compare it to a specific traditional private bank, we can draw some conclusion when comparing Alpian with the traditional private bank.
At Alpian, you can start investing like a private bank with as little as 30’000 CHF. With a traditional private bank, the limit would be much higher (in the million range). This means you can get access to private banking services at a much lower threshold.
Additionally, Alpian will be significantly cheaper than a traditional private bank. Indeed, with Alpian, fees are around 1%. A traditional private bank will have fees around 2% at least (and sometimes around 3% or more). Alpian can achieve this by automating most of the investing. That way, advisors can focus on creating portfolios for customers at scale.
Overall, if you are searching for a cheaper private bank or if you are not rich enough for a traditional private bank, Alpian can be a great way of entering into the private banking world.
Alpian vs Selma
Invest easily with Selma: a great way to invest in the stock market without the hassle of doing it yourself.
- Beginner-Friendly
- Degressive Fees
Selma is a Robo-advisor that is very easy to use and uses index ETFs to propose a simple portfolio to their users. This is entirely automated, based on a few questions they will ask you.
As far as features go, both investment offers are relatively similar. In the case of Selma, your portfolio will be entirely managed by a computer, while it will be managed by a computer supervised by humans with Alpian. Both will invest in ETFs.
The main difference will be in the fees. At Selma, you will pay only a 0.47% management fee, compared to Alpian’s 0.75% fee. This is a very significant difference.
In both cases, we need to add the TER of the ETFs to the fees, about 0.25%. This gives us a total of 0.72% for Selma and 1.00% for Alpian.
So, Selma is about 30% cheaper than Alpian. This difference is significant.
In addition, your shares at Selma will remain in Swiss custody. This is not a huge advantage, but at the same price, I would prefer Swiss custody.
If you are not necessarily looking for a private bank or a fully-fledged solution, I would recommend Selma over Alpian.
One advantage of Alpian is that you can personalize your portfolio to a higher degree. By speaking with the wealth managers, you can influence your portfolio. With Selma, your personalization would be very limited.
If you are looking for an all-in-one solution, Alpian could be interesting since it is both a bank account and an investment service. However, you will pay higher fees.
Alpian vs Investart
Since Alpian uses Interactive Brokers as a custody bank, I thought it would be interesting to compare with Investart.
Investart is a Robo-advisor that uses Interactive Brokers as well. It offers direct investment in ETFs with a very high level of customization.
From an investment perspective, I would say that both services offer similar platforms. Of course, you will get human supervision with Alpian, but you must balance how much that is worth.
You may require less knowledge to use Alpian. With Investart, you must choose products directly, which requires some knowledge. On the other hand, at Alpian, some people will design a portfolio for you.
Again, the main difference will be the fees. But the total fee of Investart is about 0.50% (average product costs) while Alpian’s is 1.00%. So, Investart will be much cheaper than Alpian.
For more information, you can read my review of Investart.
Alpian FAQ
Is Alpian safe?
Alpian is a Swiss licensed bank. This means that Esisuisse insures your deposits for up to 100'000 CHF. Your investments are in custody of Interactive Brokers, which is a safe and regulated institution as well. So, yes, Alpian is a safe bank.
How much do you need to open an Alpian account?
There is currently no minimum to open an account with Alpian.
How much do you need to invest with Alpian?
The Essentials mandate is available starting from 2'000 CHF. You need at least 10'000 CHF to use the Guided by Alpian plan. And you need 30'000 CHF to use the Managed by Alpian plan.
Who is Alpian good for?
Alpian is good for people that want an affordable private bank in Switzerland.
Who is Alpian not good for?
Alpian is not good if you are looking for the cheapest bank. It is also not good if you want your investments stored in Switzerland since they use Interactive Brokers.
Alpian Summary
Alpian
Alpian is a digital private bank, aiming to open private banking to the mass affluent.
Product Brand: Alpian
4
Pros
- Multi-currency account
- Fair pricing for a private bank
- Access to professional wealth managers
- Transparent pricing
- Excellent currency conversion fees
- Low minimum to start trying investment mandates
- Savings account with good interest rate
- Advisors do not get any kickbacks
Cons
- No free withdrawals in CHF
- Expensive for investments
- No support for e-bills
- Does not use US ETFs
- Cannot opt out of CHF-hedging
Conclusion
Alpian is a digital private bank, aiming to help affluent people with their money, without paying the outrageous costs of traditional private banks.
Use the code SWISSP to receive up to 200 CHF reward.
When compared with traditional private banks, Alpian offers an interesting alternative. It offers reasonably good bank accounts and fees significantly lower than these large private banks. If you are looking for an account with a private bank, Alpian is a good choice. This will give you access to professional advisors.
Since they have removed the banking fees, Alpian provides an excellent banking package with an excellent price. They have very reasonable currency exchange fees. On the other hand, their investing solution is more expensive than traditional Robo-advisors (but they are also more personalized to each customer).
Therefore, you have to ask yourself whether a private bank is worth the price. Compared to a standard bank and an investment broker, you will pay a lot more to Alpian.
When considering that passive investing works well and that 95% of fund managers cannot beat passive investing over the long term, we must ask ourselves why we should pay such fees.
For me, the mass affluent should not pay such fees. This may become more reasonable if you are a High Net Worth Individual (more than a million) since you have enough money not to care too much. But to grow your wealth, you must be careful about such fees.
Using the same entity for your bank account and investments may not be the best idea. The best banks do not offer investments, and the best investment platforms do not offer bank accounts.
Despite being among the mass affluent myself, I do not use a private bank and am not looking to use one. I am fairly content with my simple bank system and prefer to separate my investments from my bank. However, I understand that some people want to have access to an advisor and do not want to invest themselves.
If you want to use this private bank and want to save on fees, you can use my code SWISSP to receive up to 200 CHF. You will receive 75 CHF if you deposit more than 500 CHF and 125 CHF if you invest 10’000 CHF with Alpian (paid 45 days after investment).
If you are interested in private banks, you could be interested in Everon, another digital private bank.
What do you think of Alpian? Are you interested in private banks?
More reading
Zak vs Neon: Best Swiss digital bank account in 2025?
Zak and Neon are two great Swiss digital bank accounts. Which of Zak vs Neon is the best for your needs? We find out!
Zak Review 2025: Free Bank Account from Bank Cler
Zak is a great digital bank account from Bank Cler. Learn all there is to know about this bank account in my unbiased review of Zak!
Revolut Review in Switzerland 2025: Pros & Cons
Revolut is a digital bank account with a physical card that you can use to pay abroad without fees. Should you use Revolut? We will find out!
Learn easy ways to optimize your finances and save thousands in Switzerland with our exclusive e-book. Learn about the most cost-effective financial services tailored for savvy residents and expats!
Get Your FREE Swiss Money-Saving Guide
Hi Baptiste,
Once again, thanks for the great content.
One thing that I’m not sure I understand: is it possible to use alpian as an alternative to e.g. WISE or Revolut?
Let’s imagine the following case scenario:
* I transfer some CHF to alpian.
* Convert the funds to EUR.
* Send the EUR to another bank using SWIFT or use it pay by by card e.g. for a hotel (both in Euro zone countries)
I guess there might be some fees while executing transfers in other currencies than CHF.
Also, if I understand correctly, there is a single IBAN, with multiple currencies under the hood. I guess alpian maintains the balances in all the supported currencies internally and then when they execute an outgoing transfer, always the same IBAN is used, but with various currency information.
Regards,
Alojzy
Hi Alojzy
Yes, you could use them to replace Wise or Revolut.
For EUR in the Eurozone, there is no fee. So, your example would be a 0.20% exchange fee. If you are using other currencies, you will indeed have to pay extra fees: https://www.alpian.com/pricing
And yes, there is a single IBAN for all four currencies.
Got it, thanks a lot for clarification.
Take care!
Alojzy
Single IBAN to receive, not to send. Each currency has its own sub-IBAN and Interactive Brokers recommends not to use Alpian to send USD per example, because they can’t confirm that the account is held in our name.
Oh, thanks for sharing. I did not know that!
So, you have a single IBAN for you, but they use internal IBANs for the transfer out in other currencies and that internal IBAN is not in your name?
Dear Baptiste, I’d be interested in having my monthly pension funds transferred to Alpian from the US Treasury and like to know if this is possible.
Also, I checked to see if Alpian is licensed through FINMA and indeed it is, but FINMA has it registered as Foreign Controlled despite being located in Geneva. Do you know what foreign entity controls ALPIAN?
Hi Roberto
They probably can receive money from the US.
The majority shareholder of Alpian is an Italian bank, maybe that’s why FINMA says it’s foreign-controlled? The shareholder is Intesa Sanpaolo.
Hello Baptiste,
FYI. They do not do business with Americans. I’ve been in touch with them and despite my being a resident of Switzerland for 25 years, they refused my millions coming from a USA bank. I was dumbfounded to say the least.
Hi Roberto,
Thanks for sharing, it’s important to know that. I am not surprised because most new banks will not accept US citizens because of the strict regulations and administrative hassle.
This is quite sad, but this is unfortunately common.