arvy Review 2026 – Pros & Cons

arvy

arvy itself was founded in 2023. The company has a FINMA license as a manager of collective assets.

The story is quite interesting because it is very different from other robo-advisors. In 2018, the story started as asset management for a multi-family office. The founders created a fund that reached 200 million USD while they were managing 400 million USD in total. They then founded arvy and its arvy equity fund upon which the robo-advisor service is based.

In 2025, arvy was managing about 50 million CHF.

The service is only available to Swiss residents and is currently available in English and German. It is worth noting that the service is not open to US citizens.

Arvy is primarily a robo-advisor service, through its arvy savings plan. But they also have a third pillar account, arvy pillar 3a plan, based on the same investing strategy. In this article, we will focus only on the robo-advisor service. If you want additional information on the third pillar, please let me know in the comments below.

Now, we can see in detail what arvy is and what it costs.

Investing strategy

It is essential to understand how a robo-advisor invests before using such a service.

Most Swiss robo-advisors invest in ETFs. Some robo-advisors invest in stocks or mutual funds. arvy has a different strategy because they use their own arvy equity fund.

The arvy equity fund invests in stocks following an active approach. They are using their own approach to select large-cap and mega-cap stocks. It is interesting to mention that this fund is also available as a fund (outside arvy) with brokers like Swissquote.

The fund invests in the whole world, but it currently has a strong focus on the United States, with 73% invested, followed by France with 14.2%. Other countries have much lower weight. One interesting fact is that arvy invests much less in tech (about 5%) than a standard index (27%). This may reduce sector risk.

For reference, here are the top 5 constituents of the fund (as of March 2025):

• Eli Lilly & Co. (Health Care)
• Rollins Inc. (Industrials)
• Philip Morris (Consumer Staples)
• Waste Management Inc. (Industrials)
• Safran SA (Industrials)

Everything that is not invested in stocks is invested in bonds. And for that, arvy is investing into the Flossbach von Storch Bond Opportunities fund. Again, this is an active fund but from another company.

arvy has only three strategies:

• Defensive with 30’% equities
• Balanced with 60% equities
• Growth with 100% equities

It is great that we can invest 100% in equities. So, at most, there are two positions in our portfolio at arvy, two active funds. The funds themselves have more constituents, but at least the portfolio is simple.

Investments are processed twice a month, on the second and sixteenth calendar days.

Overall, I am not convinced by arvy’s strategy. I am more in favor of passive investing. History has shown that over the long term, active investing performs worse than passive investing. The fact that no customization is possible is a disadvantage for me as well, but it could be an advantage for people that do not want to choose.

It is worth mentioning that both founders invest their own money in this fund, meaning they have ‘skin in the game’ alongside their clients.

Arvy Fees

When comparing multiple robo-advisor services, it is important to compare the fees. It is usually what will make the most difference in terms of total returns over the long term. So, it is necessary to look at the fees of arvy in detail.

The most important point is the management fee. arvy has a management fee of 0.89% per year. This is a high fee to start with. You can get it down by referring people (0.05% per referral, down to 0.69%). You will pay this fee each year based on your total assets invested with arvy.

Additionally, the products costs must also be considered. These vary for each strategy:

• Growth: 0.22%
• Balanced: 0.186%
• Defensive: 0.147%

Additionally, strategies with bonds incur some stamp duty fees. But the strategy with stocks does not incur any (since they use their own funds). Since the conservative approaches have lower product costs but higher stamp duty, we can take 0.22% as the baseline for the product costs.

Additionally, we must take US withholding tax into account. Since the arvy equity fund has its domicile in Liechtenstein, it is subject to a 30% US withholding rate (like it would in Switzerland). The dividend yield of US stocks is about 1.5% and they have about 73% in US stocks. So, this will give us an extra 0.32% extra indirect fee (or surcharge).

In total, once we put everything together, we get a total fee of 1.43% (0.89%+0.22%+0.32%). This fee is expensive even compared to Swiss robo-advisors. And even compared to some traditional banks, this fee is not very competitive.

One should really have trust in the arvy methodology to pay such a high fee. Paying more than a 1.40% fee is too expensive for me.

One good thing is that the tax statement is included in the fee. This is good because some Swiss financial services are using that an extra fee.

Onboarding

To create an account with arvy, you need to download the mobile application from your app store (App Store and Google Play are supported).

The rest is quite standard; you will need to give out your personal information and answer the usual risk questionnaire. After that, your account will have to be verified by the bank.

We can expect onboarding to take about two business days. This is standard for services that rely on a custodian bank. So, overall, it should be simple and relatively fast to start investing with arvy.

Deposits and withdrawals

We can then continue with how arvy handles deposits and withdrawals.

arvy is based around a savings plan. You need a minimum of 100 CHF to open an account. And then, you need to set up a recurring investment of at least 50 CHF per month to continue investing.

I like the fact that they encourage people to contribute regularly to their accounts because regularity is key to getting good investing returns. But they are also quite flexible. Indeed, you can stop investing at any time. You are not locked into a fixed amount.

You can also withdraw at any time. For that, the shares will be sold, and you should be getting back your money in a few business days (the time to settle everything with the custodian bank).

Safety

Whenever considering any service to invest any amount of money with, it is essential to ensure the money is safe.

arvy is an asset manager, not a bank, so they cannot hold securities. For that, they use Hypothekarbank Lenzburg as a custodian bank. This is a well-established bank that has a good reputation. If arvy were to go bankrupt, the money would be safe with HBL. It will likely take time to recover assets.

This is slightly more complicated since they also manage their own fund. But the shares inside the fund are safe. In case of bankruptcy of arvy, the fund will either be liquidated and people will get back the proceeds, or the fund will be allocated a new manager that will manage it.

Overall, money should be safe with arvy. We should mention that it is a relatively new company that manages a low amount of money.

Alternatives

Finally, we should compare arvy with some alternative robo-advisors.

arvy vs Finpension Invest

Excellent Robo-advisor

Finpension Invest

5.0

Very affordable

An excellent and innovative Robo-advisor by Finpension.

Pros:

• Most tax-efficient Robo-advisor
• Access to private markets

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If you use the FEYKV5 code, you will receive 25 CHF in fee credit. Only for Swiss residents.

Finpension is a mature company in Switzerland that serves multiple markets, including a robo-advisor service, Finpension Invest.

Both allow you to invest 99% in stocks. Finpension Invest only invests in index ETFs, while arvy invests in active funds. Finpension Invest also lets investors invest in crypto and private markets. And we can do custom portfolios with them, something that is not possible with arvy.

Finpension has total fees of 0.64% (it can go lower in some cantons depending on taxes). arvy has a total fee of 1.43%, more than twice the fee. You may think that arvy’s active investing strategy may yield higher returns (and it may), but this means trading uncertain future returns for certain costs.

Overall, given the lower fees and the higher flexibility, I feel like Finpension Invest has a significant advantage over arvy. I doubt that the active fund will generate enough returns to offset the higher costs.

arvy vs Findependent

Findependent Robo-Advisor

4.5

Very affordable

Findependent is a very affordable Robo-advisor with a focus on sustainable investments. Invest your money easily! Get 20CHF in your account with code PoorSwiss.

Pros:

• Excellent fees

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By using my code, you will receive 20 CHF after investing 500 CHF.

Findependent is another recent robo-advisor, started only two years before arvy.

Both allow you to invest 99% in stocks. Findependent uses index ETFs and uses sustainable ETFs by default, but you can use custom strategies if you prefer.

The total fee of Findependent is 0.71%, almost exactly half of arvy’s 1.43% fee.

Again, I find it hard to justify the twice higher fee of arvy and feel like Findependent will have a significant advantage over arvy.

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arvy Summary

Is arvy the right robo-advisor for you? We review arvy’s active investing strategy, its high total fees, and how it compares to top Swiss alternatives.

Editor's Rating:
3

arvy Pros

Let's summarize the main advantages of arvy:

• 99% invested in stocks
• Simple portfolios

arvy Cons

Let's summarize the main disadvantages of arvy:

• Use active investing
• Relatively high fees
• Only available in German and English
• Only available on mobile, no web app
• No custom portfolios

Conclusion

Overall, the arvy robo-advisor service is interesting because it is different from other robo-advisors. It uses its own equity fund instead of ETFs. And it uses active investing instead of passive investing.

However, I am not convinced these differences make it very interesting. The active management comes at a high cost, with more than 1.40% per year. It feels like investing money in a bank. My belief is that such high fees will weigh down investor returns.

If you want to use a robo-advisor to manage your money, there are some better robo-advisors available. You can look at the best Swiss robo-advisors if you need help choosing.

As usual, I should mention that I am not using robo-advisors myself. I am investing directly in ETFs with a broker account, which is cheaper than a robo-advisor. Robo-advisors are not bad at all; they are a way to reduce the complexity at the expense of fees for people that are not ready to invest by themselves.

What about you? What do you think about arvy?