Saxo Bank Review 2024 – Pros & Cons

Saxo Bank

Cheapest Swiss Broker

Saxo Bank

4.5

Extremely affordable

Start investing with a Swiss broker at incredible fees! Start trading with Saxo Bank and get 200 CHF in trading credits.

Pros:

• Low currency conversion fee
• Swiss broker

Invest with Saxo

The offer is only valid for Swiss residents and the credits only valid for 90 days.

Saxo Bank is an investment bank from Denmark. It was founded in 1992. It is a large institution with over one million clients and operates in 28 countries.

Saxo Bank is a private company. The three principal shareholders are the Geely Holding Group (a Chinese group), the founder and CEO Kim Fournais, and Sampo Plc.

In Switzerland, investors deal with Saxo Bank (Switzerland) Ltd, a fully licensed Swiss bank. Some people will argue that Saxo Bank is still a foreign broker, but a Swiss investor will only deal with the Swiss entity, subject to the same rules as any Swiss broker.

So, there is little difference between dealing with a Swiss broker and a foreign broker that is domestically regulated. Therefore, I will sometimes refer to it as a Swiss broker, but it is more a Swiss-regulated broker.

In 2019, Saxo Bank acquired BinckBank, significantly increasing its size. Thanks to scale, Saxo Bank was able to reduce fees later and grow faster.

Indeed, in January 2024, Saxo Bank drastically reduced its fees in Switzerland (and other countries). Some of the prices were reduced by an order of magnitude.

I was really surprised by these changes because Saxo used to be an expensive broker. But this is excellent news for Swiss investors. And I hope that other Swiss brokers follow this trend and reduce their costs.

Saxo Features

We can start by looking at Saxo features. With Saxo, you can trade many different products:

• Stocks and ETFs
• Bonds
• Mutual Funds
• Options
• Futures
• CFDs
• and more…

So, you should have more instruments than you need. Most people will only need stocks, bonds, and ETFs for their investment journey.

Saxo has a full Swiss banking license from FINMA. This is a good point because many Swiss brokers are not banks but only securities dealers and use a third-party bank as an intermediary.

Saxo offers an excellent range of ETFs. This range of ETFs include US ETFs, meaning there is no penalty by using inferior European ETFs.

Saxo is available in German, French, English, and Italian. However, the Italian support is partial only because the website and the onboarding are not available in Italian.

A limitation of Saxo is that you cannot register your shares in the share register. This means you will not be able to get some shareholder perks if you want to (for instance, getting Lindt chocolates).

So, with the basics covered, we should delve into the details of Saxo Bank for a Swiss investor.

Saxo account tiers

Saxo has three different account tiers:

• Classic, without any minimum
• Platinum, with a minimum initial funding of 250’000 CHF
  • Same as Classic, but lower prices
  • Priority support
• VIP, with a minimum initial funding of 1’000’000 CHF
  • Same as VIP, but even lower prices
  • Access to trading experts and events

In this review, I focus on the Classic account. However, it is important to know that you can get even better conditions if you have more initial funding.

Even if you start with a Classic account, you can switch to a higher tier once you reach the necessary threshold.

Saxo Fees

When investing long-term, it is critical to limit your fees. You want your money, not to give it to your broker. So, we must look at Saxo’s fees in detail.

First, you will pay a 0.22% custody fee per year. While this is an expensive base fee, it is capped at 10 CHF per month or 120 CHF per year. As far as Swiss brokers go, this is a fair custody fee. You can even get this fee waived if you opt for securities lending (see the next section).

On top of trading fees, the custody fee is the only fee you will pay. Saxo does not have any extra account management fees or inactivity fees.

For all the stock exchanges I have checked, the trading fees are the same for stocks and ETFs. So, here are the fees for some major stock exchanges:

• SIX Swiss Stock Exchange: 0.08% (minimum of 3 CHF)
• Euronext Paris: 0.08% (minimum of 2 EUR)
• London Stock Exchange: 0.08% (minimum of 3 GBP)
• NYSE: 0.08% (minimum of 1 USD)
• NASDAQ: 0.08% (minimum of 1 USD)

These fees are good for Switzerland. The percentages are relatively low, and the minimums are excellent.

As a Swiss investor, you must often trade in foreign currencies because few suitable ETFs are priced in CHF. When this happens, you will need to pay a currency conversion fee.

Fortunately, Saxo has an excellent currency conversion fee of 0.25%, the best among Swiss brokers.

Finally, we must also look at the Swiss Stamp Tax Duty fee. Being regulated by FINMA as a Swiss entity means paying this fee for each stock market operation. You will pay 0.075% for Swiss shares and 0.15% for foreign shares. This fee is the same for each Swiss broker.

Overall, these fees are outstanding. Saxo seems much cheaper than most Swiss brokers. The currency conversion fee is especially nice compared to other brokers, where the average is more than 1%.

If you want a tax certificate, Saxo can generate an e-tax certificate for you, for 100 CHF. These certificates are optional, since you can file your taxes without them. However, if you do not use it, you will need to enter all your operations one by one. This should be offered for free by brokers. In the end, it is up to you to decide between time and money.

Securities Lending

As of the 26th of June 2024, you can enable Securities Lending on your account. If you do so, Saxo will be able to lend your shares to other market participants.

There are two benefits of doing that. First, the custody fees will be waived entirely. This can save you a significant amount of money. And moreover, you will receive 50% of the revenue generated by securities lending.

Since your shares will be lent, there are some extra risks. If Saxo bankrupts while some of your shares are lent, you are not entitled to the shares directly, only to the collateral value. Saxo will always provide 102% of the loan value as collateral. In theory, you cannot lose much. The more you can lose is the difference between the current share value and 102% of the value when the lending started.

While shares are lent, you also lose your voting rights.

I like the way this option was implemented with the waiving of custody fees on top of half of the income. This is a great a way to generate a little income and save on fees for aggressive investors.

Saxo AutoInvest

Starting in September 2024, Saxo introduced the AutoInvest feature. This feature lets you automatically invest in a portfolio of ETFs.

With that feature, you can choose a portfolio of ETFs and a monthly investment. Saxo will then invest automatically each month in your portfolio, based on a fixed monthly amount. Moreover, the purchase fees are waived and there are no extra fees for using that feature. The sell fees still apply, as well as the custody fees (can be waived with securities lending). Stamp duty and currency exchange will also be charged if they apply to these fees.

This is a great feature, but there is a catch. You cannot use all ETFs, only a selection, provided by Saxo. And this selection does not contain any US ETFs, nor any Vanguard ETFs. So, on one hand, we are saving on transactions fees, but on the other hand, we are losing  on US ETFs. This can be a great feature if you do not plan to invest in US ETFs or if you have a small portfolio where purchase fees overweight the advantage of US ETFs.

Opening an account at Saxo

Opening an account with Saxo is simple. Everything happens online from their website, which should not take more than 15 minutes.

The online application is fairly straightforward and similar to most brokers these days. It consists of three main steps:

1. The usual form filling.
2. Approval of your account (proof of identity and residency).
   1. This is done either with your webcam or from your phone.
   2. You will need to have you ID ready and be in a well-lit place.
3. Funding.

I will not bore you with the details of each step because they are easy to go through. Overall, it should take about 10 minutes to create the account fully. The only thing that can take time is the funding, which can only be done through a wire transfer. The funds may take time to arrive in Saxo.

There is no minimum for opening an account. This is good news because you can start trading with little money. This is great if you want to test a service. And since there is no minimum custody fee (only a maximum), you can test the service with little fees.

So, overall, opening an account at Saxo will be very simple.

Trading with Saxo

To trade with Saxo, you have several options:

1. The SaxoTraderGO platform, supported on mobile and desktop
   • This is the default interface for most clients, allowing you to do all your trade operations and get access to data.
2. The SaxoTraderPRO platform supports only PC and Mac
   1. This platform is made for professional investors, supporting up to 6 monitors.
3. The SaxoInvestor platform, supported mobile and desktop
   1. A simple investor done for simple investors. This interface is limited to stocks, ETFs, bonds, funds, and options.

In most cases, simple investors will have more than enough features with the SaxoInvestor platform. But it is good to have advanced options for investors that need them.

Overall, everybody should find what they need to trade with Saxo.

Is Saxo safe?

Before using a broker, you must ensure it is as safe as possible.

Saxo is regulated in Switzerland by FINMA. And all its other entities are also well-regulated in different countries. As they have to obey many regulations (by being in many countries), they have to run a tight ship.

Saxo has been well-established since 1992. It has also been profitable for several years. Financial security is a good sign because the risks of going bankrupt are slim.

Saxo is a bank. Therefore, it does not have to use another custody bank. However, like any Swiss bank, your cash will be protected by Esisuisse. This protection guarantees up to 100’000 CHF per person.

The securities should be safe in the event of bankruptcy because they are held in segregated accounts in your name.

Saxo enforces a second-factor authentication (2FA) to protect your account further. 2FA is essential for your online personal finances! Currently, they only offer SMS 2FA. While it is much better than nothing, I would prefer a more robust 2FA option.

You can also choose to trust a device on which you log in. You only have to enter your second factor once, not at every login. While this is convenient, it reduces security and should be avoided, in my opinion.

Investing with Saxo is safe, like investing with any other Swiss broker.

Saxo Reputation

We should also look at a broker’s reputation before using it to invest in the stock market.

I generally use TrustPilot as a source of reviews. So, we can start by looking at the reviews of Saxo Group on TrustPilot. It is essential to mention that this includes reviews for all parts of Saxo, not only the Swiss entity. Overall, Saxo gets a 3.7 score out of 5, which is not great but also not horrible for brokers.

We can also find reviews for Saxo Switzerland on Trustpilot. Here, Saxo gets a score of 4.4 out of 5, which is great. However, this is only out of 75 reviews, which is a very low number.

Looking at the negative reviews, we can find a few common themes:

• Difficult to reach customer support.
• Fees are too high (before the changes from 2024).
• Difficult to fund the account because of KYC procedures.
• There are a few technical and speed issues on the platform.

On the positive side, we can find the common themes:

• Good customer service.
• Easy to use platform.
• Good execution of trades.

After reading through many of these reviews, I am not worried about the negative comments or the global score. First, many people complain about the fees, but I would guess that most did not read all the fees carefully before. This happens in almost all brokers I have reviewed.

As for customer service issue, this is also the same in almost every broker. Sometimes, it is difficult to resolve some issues, and people get heated and post negative comments. But reading into the positive reviews, it looks like there are also some positive reviews of the customer service.

I also looked at the Google reviews of Saxo Switzerland. They got 4.3 stars out of 5. The negative and positive reviews are very similar to those on TrustPilot, with more positive reviews than before. Again, this also includes people using a broker without reading their pricing structure.

Overall, I think Saxo’s reputation is good but not impeccable.

Alternatives to Saxo

It is always important to compare a broker with its alternatives. We should compare Saxo with at least Interactive Brokers (a foreign broker) and Swissquote (a Swiss broker).

Saxo Bank vs Swissquote

Best Swiss Broker

Swissquote

4.5

Very affordable

Everything you need to start investing in the stock market! Open an account with Swissquote and get 100 CHF in trading credits with my code MKT_THEPOORSWISS.

Pros:

• Swiss broker
• Easy to use

Invest with MKT_THEPOORSWISS code Read Our Review

The MKT_THEPOORSWISS code is only valid for active Swiss accounts.

Swissquote is my favorite Swiss broker. It has many features, and its prices are pretty fair, as far as Swiss brokers.

Both brokers have a good reputation and have been established in Switzerland for a long time. They are both regulated in Switzerland and will provide the same level of security. They both offer access to many stock exchanges. And since they are both in Switzerland, they must levy Swiss Stamp Tax Duty.

We start with the custody fees. The maximum is 120 CHF per year at Saxo, while 200 CHF per year at Swissquote, a slight advantage for Saxo. Also, Swissquote charges an extra 0.03% fee (without maximum) on assets above one million CHF.

Fortunately, neither of these brokers has any extra inactivity or management fee. And both brokers have an excellent range of ETFS, including US ETFs.

We need to compare the trading fees of these two brokers. On the SIX Stock Exchange, here are some examples of costs for these brokers:

• 500 CHF: 3 CHF at Saxo and 5 CHF at Swissquote.
• 2000 CHF: 3 CHF at Saxo and 20 CHF at Swissquote.
• 5000 CHF: 4 CHF at Saxo and 30 CHF at Swissquote.
• 10000 CHF: 8 CHF at Saxo and 30 CHF at Swissquote.

The differences are pretty significant. Saxo can be several times cheaper than Swissquote!

Here are a few examples of trading fees for a stock on the NYSE:

• 500 USD: 1 USD at Saxo and 5 USD at Swissquote.
• 2000 USD: 1.60 USD at Saxo and 20 USD at Swissquote.
• 5000 USD: 4 USD at Saxo and 30 USD at Swissquote.
• 10000 USD: 8 USD at Saxo and 30 USD at Swissquote.

Again, the differences are significant. Saxo is, again, much cheaper than Swissquote.

Another significant advantage of Saxo is its currency conversion fee. Indeed, at 0.25%, Saxo is almost four times cheaper to convert currency than Swissquote at 0.95%.

Overall, Saxo appears to be significantly cheaper than Swissquote. This is excellent news because we have few affordable brokers in Switzerland.

If you want even more information, you can read my full comparison of Saxo vs Swissquote.

Saxo Bank vs Interactive Brokers

The best broker

Interactive Brokers

5.0

No custody fees

The broker you need to buy stocks and ETFs reliably and at extremely affordable prices. Trade U.S. stocks for as little as 0.5 USD!

Pros:

• Extremely affordable
• Wide range of investing instruments

Invest your money Read My Review

Finally, we should also compare Saxo Bank with a foreign broker, Interactive Brokers.

Both brokers are well-regulated and have a good reputation. Saxo Bank is regulated in Switzerland, while Interactive Brokers is regulated in the UK and US. From a safety standpoint, both brokers are on the same level.

We can start with the custody fees. Saxo Bank charges a maximum of 120 CHF per year for custody. IB, on the other hand, has no custody fees. Neither of these brokers has inactivity fees or any other account management fees.

For trading fees, I will use the Interactive Brokers Tiered pricing system. This system is generally cheaper for small operations but not always for large operations.

On the SIX stock exchange, here are the fees for both brokers:

• 500 CHF: 3 CHF at Saxo and 4.45 CHF at IB.
• 2000 CHF: 3 CHF at Saxo and 4.68 CHF at IB.
• 5000 CHF: 4 CHF at Saxo and 6.13 CHF at IB.
• 10000 CHF: 8 CHF at Saxo and 9.38 CHF at IB.

Interestingly, Saxo is cheaper than IB for operations on the Swiss Stock Exchange. This is precisely what I would expect of a Swiss broker. However, many Swiss brokers are more expensive than Interactive Brokers.

Here are a few examples of trading fees for a stock on the NYSE:

• 500 USD: 1 USD at Saxo and 0.36 USD at IB.
• 2000 USD: 1.60 USD at Saxo and 0.41 USD at IB.
• 5000 USD: 4 USD at Saxo and 0.51 USD at IB.
• 10000 USD: 8 USD at Saxo and 0.67 USD at IB.

IB can be significantly cheaper on US stocks. However, I am still impressed by how Saxo comes close to IB. Other Swiss brokers are much more expensive than IB.

Another advantage of IB is that you will save on stamp tax duty since this tax is only due to Swiss brokers.

Finally, currency conversion is 0.25% at Saxo Bank, while IB charges 2 USD for each conversion. So, Saxo will be cheaper for conversions below 800 USD, and IB will be cheaper after that.

If you have a portfolio that uses US ETFs or stocks, Interactive Brokers will be significantly cheaper than Saxo. But Saxo is quite competitive.

If you are interested, I could do a complete comparison of these two brokers in the future.

FAQ

Saxo Summary

Saxo Bank

Saxo has significantly reduced its fees, is it good now? This in-depth review covers this broker in detail to see whether we should use it.

Product Brand: Saxo

Editor's Rating:
4.5

Pros

• Excellent prices
• Excellent currency conversion fee
• Many investments available
• Well-established company
• Good security
• Custody fees can be waived with securities lending
• Access to US ETFs

Cons

• Onboarding not available in Italian

Conclusion

Cheapest Swiss Broker

Saxo Bank

4.5

Extremely affordable

Start investing with a Swiss broker at incredible fees! Start trading with Saxo Bank and get 200 CHF in trading credits.

Pros:

• Low currency conversion fee
• Swiss broker

Invest with Saxo

The offer is only valid for Swiss residents and the credits only valid for 90 days.

Saxo is a good, well-established, and very affordable Swiss broker. This service offers access to all the stock exchanges you need and many investment products. When compared with other Swiss brokers, they are consistently among the cheapest.

I appreciate that Saxo reduced its fees significantly. I hope this will start a good trend in Switzerland, where many services are overpriced.

If you want to see how this compares against an existing broker, you can read my comparison of Saxo and Swissquote.

What about you? What do you think of Saxo?

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