Independent financial advisers · Bottighofen, Switzerland
Your money stays yours.The thinking is ours.
Independent financial advisers in Bottighofen, working with you directly rather than through a bank. The account stays in your name, you place every trade, and we are paid 10% of the gain.
Investing puts your capital at risk and returns are never certain. Nothing here is a claim about what any portfolio will do.
Morgen am Bodensee mit Schifflände Bottighofen · JoachimKohler-HB · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Where we areOne office, in Bottighofen
- Who holds your moneyYou do. The account is in your name
- Minimum portfolioNone
- Every adviserFinance degree and 4+ years, every adviser
Our regulatory status, who supervises us and the complaints route open to you are set out on our regulatory standing, together with the five public registers that will confirm them without you asking us anything.
Many of our clients work for
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Three questions worth asking anyone who advises you
Three of five- 01
Why am I charged when a position goes against me?
Most advice is billed as a percentage of what you hold, so the invoice arrives whether the position made you anything or not. We are paid a share of the gain instead. No gain, no share, and a loss has to be recovered before we charge again.
See the fee scale - 02
Who am I actually talking to?
Large institutions rotate relationship managers and route you through a call centre. This is one office. The person who takes your first call is the person who does the work, and every adviser here holds a degree in finance or economics and has at least four years in the profession.
About the firm - 03
Whose products am I being sold?
A bank that manufactures products has a reason to prefer its own. We sell none, take no commission from any provider, and our policy on third-party payments is written down rather than decided case by case.
Read our payment policy
What we do
Six servicesInvestment advice
What to buy, in what proportion, and when to leave it alone. We research and recommend; you place every trade yourself, from your own account.
Portfolio review
A second opinion on what you already hold: what it actually costs you, what it is really exposed to, and what you would not buy again today.
Building a first portfolio
For money that has sat in a bank account too long. What to open, what to buy, in what order, and how not to undo it in the first bad month.
Concentrated positions
Employer shares, RSUs, an inherited holding, or one winner that grew into most of your net worth. What to do about it, on a schedule rather than in a moment.
Retirement investing
Pillar 3a (Säule 3a), vested benefits and pension capital, invested rather than left in cash, and the drawdown question that follows.
Tax-aware investing
Swiss investors are taxed on wealth and on income, not usually on capital gains. Build a portfolio that ignores this and you hand over returns you never had to.
How the work runs
Sequence- 01
First call
Thirty minutes, no charge, nothing to prepare. You describe the situation; we tell you honestly whether this is work we should be doing for you, including when the answer is no and including whether we can act for someone resident where you live.
30 min - 02
Position
We look at what you already hold, what it costs and what it is exposed to, then agree in writing what this money is for and how far it could fall before you would sell.
1–2 weeks - 03
Recommendation
Named instruments, sizes and the reasoning behind each, with an entry schedule and the rule for what happens in a falling market. You react to a draft before anything is final.
2–3 weeks - 04
You execute
You place the trades from your own account. We are on the phone while you do it if that helps, but the orders are yours and so is the account.
Your pace - 05
Review
Scheduled reviews against the objective, with drift thresholds agreed in advance. Our share is calculated on the gain above the highest figure the portfolio has previously reached, so a recovery costs you nothing.
Ongoing
Asked on nearly every first call
Seven of twenty-fiveHow exactly are you paid?
A share of what your portfolio gains, and nothing else unless it is stated on the fees page. No gain, no share. If the portfolio fell first, it has to climb back past its previous high before we take a share again, so we are never paid twice for recovering the same ground.
Where is my money while you advise me?
In your own account, at your own broker or platform, in your own name, under your own login. We never hold it and never have the ability to move it. You place every trade yourself.
Does a share of the gain not push you to take risks with my money?
It is the right question, and it is why the answer is written down rather than promised. Your risk limits are agreed in advance and in writing, and we advise inside them. You also execute every trade, so nothing can happen to your portfolio that you did not personally do.
Do you take commission from the products you recommend?
Our policy on third-party payments is published in full on the fees page as a written policy, not a case-by-case matter. It is the first question worth asking anyone advising you on investments, including us.
Is there a minimum?
No. There is no size below which we will not talk to you, and that is stated on the fees page rather than discovered during a call.
Can I take money out, and does that cost me anything?
You can take money out whenever you like — it is your account and we never touch it. Taking money out does not lower the mark your fee is measured from, so climbing back to a figure you have already reached costs you nothing. Money you pay in raises the mark by the amount you paid, because your own deposit is not something we made you.
I am not Swiss and my German is poor. Is that a problem?
It is the normal case here. English is this firm’s working language, and German terms appear alongside so you can match them to the paperwork your employer, bank and pension fund send you.
Start with a call that costs you nothing but half an hour.
You describe the situation. We tell you honestly whether this is work we should be doing for you — including when the answer is no, and including whether we can act for someone resident where you live.