[chrido]

That's not so surprising, the base rate is negative since more than a year. Because of fear in EUR, many people instead of buying Gold, people bought CHF. One of my friends said: its a beautiful country and has a lot of assets, so there is not much of a difference. The SNB [1] fixed the EUR/CHF to 1.20 for quite long time until it was dropped suddenly at 15.1.2015. From one day to another all goods in the EU cost ~20% less for the Swiss people. As I live near the Austrian/Swiss boarder, there were many Swiss people coming over to Austria that time, buying as much stuff they could get and importing to Swiss. Main problem for the Swiss economy is that suddenly goods from Swiss companies are ~20% more expensive than competitors outside of Swiss. Or employees in Swiss are suddenly 20% more expensive if your main currency is EUR or USD. That's bad for the economy.

On the 15.1.2015 they also changed the policy from fixed EUR/CHF exchange rate to negative interest rates to reduce the influx of money. Currently the rate at which the SNB borrows to the banks is -0.81% [2]. A friend of mine pays a premium of 0.75% on the base rate for his loan on the house, so the currently borrows from the bank at -0.06%.

So what else could you do with your CHF? Buy Swiss Confederation bonds, the current yield is also negative, -0.28% [2]. Or buy EUR, more risky but more interest? Put under your pillow, too risky? Exchange to gold, pay for insurance or to keep it safe? Bonds of a country nearby? Only 0.46% for 10 years in Germany [3] and in EUR.

[1] http://www.snb.ch/en/iabout/stat/statpub/zidea/id/current_in... [2] http://www.snb.ch/en/iabout/stat/statpub/zidea/id/current_in... [3] http://www.deutsche-finanzagentur.de/de/factsheet/sheet-deta...