Charles Schwab International Review 2025 – Pros & Cons

Charles Schwab International

Charles Schwab is both a bank and a stock broker. The company was founded in 1971 and has a rich history.  They serve both retail and institutional clients. They have over 300 branches in the US and the UK. Charles Schwab is a huge banking institution with over 8.5 trillion assets under management. It is the biggest discount broker in the United States.

Charles Schwab International is their division for clients outside of the United States. I will review this division only in this article.

Investing with Charles Schwab International

Here is what you can do with Charles Schwab International.

You can invest in pretty much every instrument:

• Stocks and ETFs
• Bonds
• Options
• Mutual Funds
• Margin Loans

For simple investors like me, this is already more than enough. I only use ETFs and sometimes stocks, but I do not need other instruments.

In the past, there was a minimum deposit of 25’000 USD to open an account. But this has been waived in 2025 and you can now open an account without any minimum.

With Charles Schwab International, you can only deposit money in USD. For that, you can use a check or wire transfer. You can deposit other currencies. Charles Schwab even has a CH IBAN. But other currencies (like CHF) will be automatically converted to USD.

And conversions are Charles Schwab are not cheap (at around 1% for CHF/USD). This limitation is highly inconvenient if you get paid in CHF. If you only have CHF, you will lose 1% of your deposits every time you transfer to CHF. This makes it impractical for Swiss investors.

Fees

When reviewing a broker, investing fees are essential.

The first major point of Charles Schwab International fees is that they offer zero-fee investments in US stocks and ETFs. These zero-fee transactions constitute a significant advantage of Charles Schwab. You cannot go lower than zero on fees! However, you should sometimes be careful about zero-fee brokers.

They also do not charge any custody fee or inactivity fee.

It is important to note that I mentioned US stocks and ETFs. And this is indeed where the low fees end. If you want to trade an ETF in a foreign stock exchange, you will pay a 50 USD fee. This fee is very expensive, which means that you should only consider Charles Schwab International if you have a portfolio with only US ETFs. Otherwise, you should avoid it.

If you need a currency conversion, you will pay different fees depending on the currency you need. For instance, to convert in EUR, you will pay 19 USD per conversion. If you convert with CHF, you will pay a 1% fee (it can be lower if you convert more than 100K).

If you withdraw money, you will pay 25 USD per wire transfer. However, if you have more than 100K in assets, you can do one wire transfer for free per month.

Charles Schwab International has reasonable fees if you have USD and only buy US stocks and ETFs. But if you need to convert currency or want to invest in foreign exchanges, Charles Schwab International will be very expensive. This will not do well for a Swiss investor.

Security

The security of your investments is also fundamental.

Charles Schwab is regulated in the United States, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

In case of bankruptcy, your assets are protected by SIPC protection (the standard protection in the US). SIPC protects up to 500’000 USD of your assets. There is a cash limit of 250K in this protection. These amounts are higher than the protection for Swiss brokers.

As for technical security, I have not found anything wrong with Charles Schwab. They use high standards of security and two-factor authentication.

In 2021, an issue at Charles Schwab led to much personal information being leaked to external email addresses. They did not share much information about this event, but a data leak of sensitive information is still essential to know!

Overall, I think Charles Schwab’s assets are relatively safe. Nevertheless, the fact that there was a major data leak is still concerning.

Charles Schwab International vs Interactive Brokers.

We compare Charles Schwab International with Interactive Brokers (IB), another popular US broker.

Regarding fees for US stocks and ETFs, Interactive Brokers will be slightly more expensive. However, you will pay about 0.35 USD for investing in US stocks and ETFs with IB. This fee is almost insignificant.

IB will be much cheaper for investing in non-US stocks and ETFs. It is also much cheaper (2 USD) for currency conversion.

Moreover, you can wire CHF directly to IB where you can only wire USD to Charles Schwab.

Overall, I do not see any significant disadvantage of IB over Charles Schwab. On the other hand, IB has several advantages for a Swiss investor. Therefore, I highly recommend IB over Charles Schwab International if you want a US broker.

If you want more info on IB, you can read my review.

FAQ

Charles Schwab International Summary

Charles Schwab International

Charles Schwab is a bank and broker from the US. They are offering brokerage services in the world.

Product Brand: Charles Schwab

Editor's Rating:
3

Pros

• No transaction fees for US stocks and ETFs
• Extensive range of investing instruments

Cons

• Only possible to deposit USD
• Only meant for trading US stocks and ETFs
• High currency conversion fees
• The website is poorly organized and not very transparent

Conclusion

Overall, I do not recommend Charles Schwab International for Swiss investors. You can only deposit USD in your account. This limitation is already a blocker for most investors. Some better brokers will allow you to deposit CHF into your account.

On top of that, Charles Schwab is only good for US markets. The fees will be too high if you plan on investing in any other stock exchange. For many investors, this will be another blocker.

From their website and the data available, I do not feel it makes any sense for a Swiss investor to go with Schwab.

If you want a US broker, I recommend you go with Interactive Brokers, the broker I am using right now. You should read my review of Interactive Brokers to get more information.

If you prefer a Swiss broker, look at the best Swiss brokers.

If you want to learn more about this broker, you can head to their website.

What about you? What do you think about Charles Schwab International?