Sicurezza svizzera

Perhaps you have wondered whether we have a Swiss bank account yet. Affirmative. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough money to obtain an account which requires retinal scans or fingerprinting (or guarding by goblins). Instead, we have the “UBS Welcome” package, which gives us a year of fee-free use.

Although this may seem (and is) a modest banking package, it has an impressive secure access system which makes the security on our Chase account back home seem like twist-tie. In addition to the best security award, UBS also wins the prize for sending us the most mail (at least 6 separate deliveries) to inform us of various passwords and instructions for using the account. Here is the most recent delivery of the online banking materials:



The online banking process is a bit, shall we say, complicated:

1. Insert access card (different from the bank card) into the back of the “calculator.”
2. Enter PIN number (different from bank card PIN) on the keypad.
3. Go to web site and enter agreement number (different from account number) on the login page.
4. Web site generates an “input number”
5. Enter this number back into the calculator to generate a “code”
6. Enter the code into a field on the web site.
7. Click login.

I’m sure this will eventually be convenient.