How to open a bank account in EFG (Zurich) SA

• savings (investment) accounts;
• requirements for the minimum account balance – 2,000,000 USD;
• an account can be opened without leaving Switzerland, but a meeting with a banker who regularly visits Moscow is required.

We all work with people rather than organizations, don’t we? The banking sector is no exception. This is why it was a human factor that defined our choice of yet another Swiss bank. This one is more than 150 years old, investment- and savings-oriented, it has standards terms, slightly higher bank fees, clear requirements and well-known products – a bank of which Switzerland has dozens.

After the first wave of the world’s 2008 economic crisis, the Alpine Republic developed a tendency for the experienced well-educated staff, usually Swiss citizens of ‘non-Russian origin’, to leave their long-occupied working places at first-rate banks which have been affected by the crisis greater than the others and therefore have cut down social benefits, salaries, and bonuses.

This is how we got acquainted with BSI Bank and met again a banker who speaks excellent Russian and understands Russian mentality, whom we had long known since she worked at the Moscow representative office of a major foreign bank and from whom we could expect an individual approach and some departure (for the better) from the classic Swiss banking standards.

In July 2014, the bank changed hands: Italian insurance company Generalli sold its shares in BSI to BTG Pactual, a Brazilian financial group