I have a Swiss bank account and you don’t. Nah nah nah nah nah.

The Swiss banking industry has been in the news a lot lately. We have situations such as banking giant UBS posting whopping huge losses and announcing massive layoffs, the U.S. government putting the heat on the banks to provide information on their U.S. clients, and the G20 issuing lists of banking systems that have not been “behaving” properly. Switzerland is in the middle category: having established transparency regulations but not actually implementing them–sort of a G20 purgatory. None of these developments have been very popular with the Swiss, who are very proud and protective of their banks, and of the intensive client identity and account information protection that the banks provide. The anti-elitist within me watches all of this happening and giggles. Then I remember something. I myself have a Swiss bank account.

We tend to think about Swiss bank accounts as the sole province of very rich individuals as well as marauding and pillaging dictators–and assume that the only purpose of having one is to hide wealth. But if one lives in Switzerland, it only makes sense that one will open an account at a local bank. Which just happens to be part of probably the most storied banking system in the world.

When Mr. Expat and I first began our transition from life in the U.S. to Geneva, one of our first actions was to open up an account in the bank housed in the building where Mr. Expat works. And for a while I gleefully mentioned to my friends and family that “we just opened up our Swiss Bank Account–ha ha!” After the novelty wore off, however, the account simply became a place where the money went into. And, more frequently, where the money came out of.

At some point I decided that it would make sense to do more of our in-country banking from the comfort and convenience of my own computer, so I filled out an application for on-line banking services. Some time later I received in the mail a packet containing an access card and a card reader (which functions as a nifty little calculator too). In typical fashion, the personal identification number (PIN) came under separate cover. OK, ready to begin. I read the login instructions and suddenly understood why it was that I was getting a doctorate. Not for pushing the boundaries of knowledge. For understanding how to access my account.

The login process has some serious security built into it, and all that security makes for a somewhat complex login process. I first have to insert the card into the reader and enter the PIN. Next, I have to enter my on-line agreement number on the Website login page. The Website then proceeds to generate an input number for me to type into my card reader. I type that number into the reader, which gives me another code to type onto the login page. If I have followed all of this seamlessly, I finally can access my account on line. That’s four steps as opposed to the two (account number and password) I normally use for my other accounts. 

And before you wonder, we duly report every last centime of interest from our Swiss accounts as required by law. Not that there’s much there to begin with…