Swissquote Review

While Swissquote is a trusted, global brand, its Swiss-based forex, and CFDs offering is a mixed bag. The best all-around forex trader experience comes through the firm’s UK entity, which is centered around MetaTrader.

Top Takeaways for 2019

After spending several hundred hours testing 28 forex brokers over six months for our third annual forex broker review, here are our top findings on Swissquote:

• Founded in 1996, Swissquote is publicly-traded (SWX: SQN) and regulated in multiple regulatory hubs, including four tier-1 jurisdictions, making it a safe broker (low-risk) to trade forex and CFDs.
• As a forex broker that also operates two banks, with over 30.5bln CHF in assets as of its 2019 half-year report, no one is more trusted than Swissquote, which won our industry award for Best Banking Services.
• Swissquote provides great customer service. The broker finished 7th (out of 23) in our national testing from locations across the United Kingdom.
• While Swissquote's Advanced Trader platform suite is user-friendly, its underlying platform technology needs an overhaul; fortunately, Swissquote offers the full MetaTrader platform suite, which also comes with better pricing.
• Swissquote offers full support for the underlying trading of crypto-assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, making it one of our top picks for cryptocurrency trading.

Overall Summary

Is Swissquote Safe?

Swissquote is considered low-risk, with an overall Trust Score of 99 out of 99. Swissquote is a publicly traded company, operates a regulated bank, and is authorised by four tier-1 regulators (high trust), one tier-2 regulator (average trust), and no tier-3 regulators (low trust). Swissquote is authorised by the following tier-1 regulators: Securities Futures Commission (SFC), Monetary Authority of Sinagpore (MAS), Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Learn more about Trust Score.

Offering of Investments

Swissquote was the first bank in the world to add the trading of underlying cryptocurrencies (non-CFDs), including bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple. Swissquote clients can trade ten cryptocurrency pairs from within the Trading account, and with support for withdrawing to external crypto wallets. It's worth noting that the Trading account supports the most extensive number of tradeable instruments except for forex - which can only be accessible from the Forex account that supports just 130 symbols.

The following table summarizes the different investment products available to Swissquote clients.

Commissions & Fees

The commissions and spreads from Swissquote’s UK entity, Swissquote Ltd, differ significantly from its Switzerland entity, Swissquote Bank Ltd. Between the two, UK based accounts provide a better deal with the trade-off being a smaller product offering.

UK entity: At Swissquote’s UK entity, if you are an active trader and deposit at least $10,000, the Elite account is available. It comes with a commission of 5 EUR (2.5 per side) per Round-Turn (RT) trade, in addition to low prevailing spreads. This pricing is comparable to other multi-asset brokers that have active trading offerings.

Account comparison: A Standard, Premium, and Prime (Elite in the UK) account are offered at both Swissquote's UK and Swiss entity. However, the spreads and required minimum deposits are lower in the UK for the same account compared to the Swiss entity, except for the standard account (Premium in the UK), which is accessible with a $1,000 deposit. The most competitive commission-free account for retail traders at Swissquote appears to be the firm's UK Premium account, which requires a $5k deposit with spreads as low as 0.6 pips.

Execution method: It’s worth noting that Swissquote’s UK entity executes trades on an agency basis, whereas the Swiss entity uses dealing-desk execution when it comes to its forex/CFD offering. No matter how you slice the data, regardless if you are a high deposit active trader or casual mini account trader, Swissquote’s Swiss entity is more expensive. That said, the one drawback to the UK account offering is a more limited offering of tradeable instruments.

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Platforms & Tools

Despite touting its proprietary platform suite, Advanced Trader (desktop and web versions), the Swissquote trading experience fails to impress and compete with industry leaders. Thankfully, the full MetaTrader suite (MT4 desktop, MT4 web, MT5) is also available at Swissquote's UK and Swiss branch.

Advanced Trader web: The web-based version of Advanced Trader requires flash, making it unsupported in most major browsers and is in desperate need of an upgrade to HTML 5. During our tests, even after enabling flash, certain features such as charts would not load, even after price data was updating.

Advanced Trader desktop: Looking at the desktop version of Advanced Trader, charts are cleanly designed and come with 49 indicators (17 overlays and 32 studies) alongside 16 drawing tools and integrated chart patterns. While the platform is Java-based, I found certain platform features were not very responsive and didn't load quickly. Resizing various modules was not as smooth as I would have liked, leaving room for improvement in the user experience in the Advanced Trader platform.

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Research

While Swissquote provides a mostly industry standard offering (streaming news headlines, economic calendar, blog commentary), the broker goes above and beyond in quality, helping to differentiate itself from competitors.

Tailored products and content: Swissquote’s quantitative research team helps structure some of its products, such as the exchange-traded certificate for crypto. The group provides analysis and market commentary and publishes a monthly magazine which I found to be of high-quality.

Third-party tools: Swissquote provides traders access to Trading Central, and AutoChartist, which are both popular providers of automated chart pattern analysis and trading signals.

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Mobile Trading

Swissquote’s Advanced Trader mobile app is easy to use and cleanly designed. However it lacks in features and overall just meets the industry standard. For traders who prefer not to use Swissquote’s mobile app, MetaTrader is available.

Research: In the Advanced Trader mobile app, research is limited to headlines streaming from the Dow Jones Newswire.

Charts: Shifting to the charting module in the Advanced Trader app, while there are six chart types and various time frames to choose, the charts do not auto-rotate when the phone is in landscape mode, which is disappointing. Also, there are no indicators or drawing tools, and no ability to zoom into chart data (only scroll), which limits the usability of the charts.

Educational content: I was glad to see that instructional videos are available in the Advanced Trader app. Adding market analysis videos would be even better as research is otherwise light in the app as noted above.

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Customer Service

To score Customer Service, ForexBrokers.com partnered with customer experience research group Customerwise to conduct phone tests from locations throughout the UK. For our 2019 Review, 229 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks.

Results

• Average Connection Time: <2 minutes
• Average Net Promoter Score: 7.1 / 10
• Average Professionalism Score: 4.7 / 10
• Overall Score: 6.7 / 10
• Ranking: 7th (23 brokers)

Final Thoughts

Headquartered in Switzerland, Swissquote is a trusted global brand that offers an extensive selection of products and services.

When taking a zoomed-in look at just the broker’s forex and CFDs offering, the company’s strong reputation does not entirely match up. For example, trading crypto is segmented away in the Trading account (along with a vast selection of tradeable markets) yet doesn't support forex trading, while in comparison, the Forex account provides a limited range of assets. Combining these offerings into one account would alleviate this problem.

Swissquote’s Advanced Trader suite is “ok,” and pricing varies dramatically depending on where your account is based. That said, the full MetaTrader suite is available as an alternative, research is competitive, and customer service is reliable.

All in all, for traders who require a multi-asset solution and are willing to pay a premium to have their brokerage account held with a Swiss bank, Swissquote bank is worth a consideration. Otherwise, the broker’s UK-based offering provides a better deal.

About Swissquote

Founded in 1996, Swissquote (SWX: SQN) became publicly-listed in 2000 on the SIX Swiss stock exchange and has since grown to be an established brokerage with nearly 340,000 client accounts across its subsidiaries that are regulated in Europe and Asia. In March of 2019, Swissquote acquired InternaxX bank, further expanding its reach and bringing its total assets under management to over 35 billion Swiss francs (CHF).

With its headquarters in Switzerland, Swissquote Bank offers traders access to over two and a half million products, including shares, ETFs, funds, bonds, warrants, futures, options, and other securities, including forex, across Advanced Trader, MetaTrader4, and MetaTrader5 platforms. The broker’s services also go beyond trading, offering wealth management and advisory services as well.

Swissquote Trading Features

Swissquote Research Features

Swissquote Mobile App Features

2019 Review Methodology

For our 2019 Forex Broker Review we assessed, rated, and ranked 28 international forex brokers over a six month time period. Each broker was graded on 81 different variables and, in total, over 60,000 words of research were produced.

While encouraged, broker participation was optional. Each broker had the opportunity to complete an in-depth data profile and provide executive time (live in person or over the web) for an annual update meeting.

All data submitted by brokers is hand-checked for accuracy. Ultimately, our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .1% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.

Forex Risk Disclaimer

"There is a very high degree of risk involved in trading securities. With respect to margin-based foreign exchange trading, off-exchange derivatives, and cryptocurrencies, there is considerable exposure to risk, including but not limited to, leverage, creditworthiness, limited regulatory protection and market volatility that may substantially affect the price, or liquidity of a currency or related instrument. It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in these products will be profitable, or that they will not result in losses." Learn more.