Cornèrtrader

Cornèrtrader prices by deposit tier, and the single most important sentence on the pricing page is this one: if no alternative agreement is in place, the highest price category listed in the table applies. In practice that means most retail clients trade on CONSISTENCY, the entry tier from CHF 1,000, which is the most expensive column.

Equities and ETFs (the same table covers shares, ETFs, ETPs, ETCs and ETNs) at the entry tier:

Regional German venues such as Börse Stuttgart and Börse München are much dearer, starting around 0.30% with a EUR 40 minimum. The SIX exchange fee of 0.01% is already baked into the quoted rate; Swiss federal stamp duty and other third-party exchange fees are not.

Derivatives are flat per unit: futures and micro futures at 4.0 per lot and listed options at 4.0 per contract at the entry tier, both expressed in the instrument's own currency, falling to 2.5 at ENERGY. FX spot is a commission of 12 per standard lot of 100,000 nominal at the entry tier, dropping to 3 at ENERGY, with gold at 1.5 per ounce and silver at 1.8 per 100 ounces. Index CFDs are quoted as minimum spreads in index points — 0.75 on US 500, 0.625 on US Tech 100, 1.375 on DAX 40, 1.75 on the SMI at the entry tier — and Cornèrtrader is explicit that these widen when the underlying futures spread widens.

There is a running promotion of 0.08% (min CHF 6) on Swiss shares, 0.08% (min USD 9) on US shares and 0.10% (min EUR 8) on European shares, but it required opening a trading account by 17 June 2026 and only runs on purchases until 31 December 2026. As of August 2026 that window has closed to new applicants.

Cornèrtrader is not a standalone broker: it is a trading brand of Cornèr Bank Ltd (Cornèr Banca SA), a Swiss bank established in Lugano in 1952 with branches in Chiasso, Locarno, Geneva and Zurich. The bank is supervised by FINMA and holds a full Swiss banking licence. Cornèrtrader itself launched in 2012, so the platform has a fourteen-year track record inside a seventy-four-year-old institution.

The group's own headline safety claim is capital adequacy: Cornèr Bank was ranked second in Switzerland for capital strength by The Banker's Top 1000 World Banks 2026, and it describes itself as a private, fully independent Swiss banking group. Beyond Cornèrtrader, the group runs Cornèrcard — it was the first bank to issue Visa cards in Switzerland in 1975 and a Mastercard issuer since 1998 — Cornèr Bank (Overseas) in Nassau, and Cornèr Europe AG in Vaduz. Annual and semi-annual reports are published on the Cornèr Group site.

Two protection mechanisms apply, and they are the standard Swiss pair:

• Cash is covered by esisuisse deposit insurance up to CHF 100,000 per client and bank
• Securities are segregated client assets under Swiss law and are separated out of the bankruptcy estate, which is not capped at CHF 100,000

The honest caveats: Cornèr Bank is privately held, so there is no listed share price acting as a continuous market check on the institution, and disclosure is periodic rather than quarterly. Leveraged products carry their own risks entirely separate from counterparty risk — Cornèrtrader publishes a risk warning on leveraged products and a separate risk disclosure for forex and CFD transactions, and both are worth reading before enabling those instruments. None of this makes any account guaranteed safe; it describes a strong Swiss counterparty, which is a narrower claim.

The platform is the reason to consider Cornèrtrader over a plain Swiss bank custody account. It is a multi-asset trading terminal available in the browser, as a desktop client and through the iCornèr App, and it handles instruments that most Swiss retail banks simply do not offer: listed stock options, contract options, futures and micro futures, FX spot, FX options, and CFDs on indices, single stocks, commodities, bonds and forex, all alongside cash equities, ETFs, bonds and mutual funds.

Feature-wise the terminal offers multiple charts on a single screen, integrated technical analysis, dedicated options tools, trade boards, market depth, advanced order types and integrated financial news. It is a professional-grade environment rather than a simplified investing app, and it demands a corresponding amount of learning.

The iCornèr App is the part that ties trading to banking. It gives platform access, push notifications on order fills and margin calls, debit card management, payments and transfers, and premium financial research including fundamentals, analysis and investment signals. Because the trading account and the bank account are the same relationship, profits are available to spend or withdraw without an inter-institution transfer.

Cornèrtrader does not publish API or FIX connectivity for retail clients on its public pages, and there is no documented third-party platform integration such as MetaTrader or TradingView order routing. High-volume traders are pointed instead at a Direct Market Access offering negotiated individually.

The free demo platform deserves emphasis. It requires no account and no deposit, which means you can evaluate the terminal properly before committing CHF 1,000 and going through Swiss bank onboarding. Very few bank-owned Swiss brokers allow that.

Cornèrtrader advertises more than 40,000 financial instruments, split between investment products and leveraged products.

Investment products:

• Shares on SIX, BX, Xetra, the regional German exchanges, Euronext Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Dublin, Vienna, Nasdaq Helsinki and Copenhagen, the LSE, NYSE, NASDAQ, NYSE Arca, AMEX and TSX/TSX Venture
• ETFs, ETPs, ETNs and ETCs, including Swisscanto ETFs and Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto ETFs
• Bonds and mutual funds
• Securities lending as an optional yield overlay on an existing equity portfolio

Leveraged products:

• FX spot on standard lots of 100,000 nominal, with fractions from 0.25 lots, plus gold and silver
• FX options and CFX
• Futures and micro futures
• Listed stock options and contract options
• CFDs on indices, single stocks, commodities, bonds, forex and options

The notable gap is spot cryptocurrency. Cornèrtrader lists crypto ETFs on Bitcoin and Ethereum but no spot coin trading and no wallet, so anyone wanting to hold actual coins needs a separate provider. Structured products and warrants are not part of the Cornèrtrader shelf either, even though the parent bank has issued structured products since 2015.

Research is a genuine strength and is bundled rather than metered. Cornèrtrader advertises more than 10,000 financial research items spanning technical, fundamental and momentum analysis, together with market analyses, financial news and investment signals delivered through the app. Platform features, financial news, account statements, portfolio reports, technical support, trading support, events and webinars are all listed as included at every tier, including the entry one — a fairer arrangement than brokers that gate research behind volume.

Opening a Cornèrtrader account means opening a Swiss bank account, with the identity verification, source-of-funds questions and documentation that implies. The minimum to reach the entry CONSISTENCY tier is CHF 1,000. Cornèrtrader's site states that access is prohibited to persons subject to restrictions by nationality, domicile or place of business, and it does not publish a list of accepted countries of residence — we have recorded Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the markets the site is built for, and anyone elsewhere should confirm eligibility directly before applying.

The detail that catches small accounts out is the multi-currency limit. Account currencies are rationed by tier: CONSISTENCY gets one, SOLIDITY five, OPPORTUNITY ten and ENERGY unlimited. A CHF-based entry-tier client buying US or German shares therefore cannot hold the proceeds in dollars or euros; every purchase and every sale runs through a currency conversion. Each of those conversions costs 0.5% over the FX spot mid-price. For a cross-border portfolio this can easily exceed the commission itself, and it is the single strongest argument for either reaching SOLIDITY or looking elsewhere.

Three more frictions worth knowing:

• Incoming securities transfers require a minimum accepted amount of CHF 30,000 at every tier except ENERGY, so you cannot consolidate a small existing portfolio into the account
• Outgoing securities transfers cost CHF 65 per position, plus any charges from the third-party bank and 8.1% VAT where applicable
• Phone orders cost CHF 50 at the two lower tiers and CHF 30 at the two higher ones

Cornèrtrader also reserves the right to review a client's fee profile and apply other conditions, without notice, if trading or financing requirements are no longer met. Read that as: the tier you are quoted on day one is not permanent, in either direction.

On tax, Cornèr Bank is a Swiss paying agent. Swiss withholding tax of 35% is deducted at source on Swiss-source income and reclaimed through a Swiss return, and the bank issues Swiss tax documentation. The yearly tax statement is not free: CHF 20 per tax year for clients domiciled in Switzerland and CHF 75 for the generic statement that every client domiciled elsewhere receives, Liechtenstein included, plus 8.1% VAT where applicable. It is charged automatically every year, whatever the balance or trading activity, and lapses only when the account is closed. The bank does not settle German Abgeltungsteuer or Austrian KESt, so a German or Austrian resident who did manage to open an account would have to declare investment income themselves rather than have it withheld at source.

Support is structured the way a private bank structures it rather than the way an app does. There are separate technical support and trading support desks — the first for platform and login problems, the second for order enquiries, investigations and execution questions — plus Relationship Managers who handle personalised advice and, explicitly, negotiate better price categories for clients whose volumes justify them. Contact runs through +41 58 880 80 80, info@cornertrader.ch and the app, in Italian, German, French and English, on Swiss business hours. There is no 24/5 or 24/7 desk.

Education comes through the Cornèrtrader Academy, with events and webinars, trading seminars and workshops both online and in person available at every tier, and occasional advanced workshops with external speakers. VIP events are reserved for the top tiers. The material is aimed at people who already trade and want to trade better, not at complete beginners deciding whether to buy their first ETF.

That points at the honest summary of who Cornèrtrader suits. It is a strong fit for a Swiss-based investor with a six-figure portfolio who wants options, futures, FX and CFDs alongside cash equities inside a FINMA-regulated Swiss bank, and who values the banking integration — one account, one debit card, one relationship manager. At CHF 100,000 and above, the SOLIDITY and OPPORTUNITY tiers make the commissions competitive by Swiss standards and unlock five to ten account currencies.

It is a poor fit for someone starting with CHF 5,000 and a monthly ETF purchase. At that size you pay the top commission column, you are stuck with one account currency, you cannot transfer an existing portfolio in below CHF 30,000, and the platform's derivatives capability is capability you will never use. The demo is free; use it to decide which of those two descriptions is you.