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Survey: Swiss prefer savings accounts to stocks

Swiss banknotes and coins.
Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

The Swiss do not take many risks when investing. According to a survey, they prefer to deposit their money in savings accounts instead of stocks. 

According to a survey by the Migros Bank, 61% of Swiss adults put aside up to CHF1,000 ($1,175) per month. Almost 80% of those surveyed put their money in a savings account.

Around half would like to rely more on this form of investment in the future. Those surveyed say they would like to use the so-called third pillar/private pension plan (38%) or a private savings account (29%) more frequently.

+ How did the Swiss become so rich?

Riskier investments such as Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies were favoured by only 4% of respondents. In a similar survey carried out in 2019, 12% said were interested in cryptocurrencies.

+ Despite declining wealth, the Swiss remain the richest people

The most frequent savings goal is the desire to build a financial buffer in the event of financial claims or unexpected payments. This is followed by saving for retirement and home ownership. Only 15% of those surveyed put money aside without a specific savings goal.

+ Are most Swiss residents rich?

In general, women are less willing to take financial risks than men, the survey found: only 4% of women accept risk in order to gain high profits, while the figure for men was 11%.

Men are more likely than women to invest in real estate, stocks or investment funds, the poll found.

Meanwhile, a majority of female respondents (60%) said their specialist knowledge of investments was “not good at all”, compared to 34% for men.

The survey was conducted in October 2023 by the market research institute Intervista on behalf of Migros Bank among over 1,500 people aged 18 and over from across Switzerland.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

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