BASEL: Swiss private banking is doomed to grow. Every institute needs fresh capital from customers, not least because existing clients currently tend to remain passive amid turbulence in the markets.
The difficulties of private banks to remain profitable are getting increasingly evident in the publicly accessible accounts of the institutes: margins are down, while money needs to be invested in IT, digital solutions and compliance.
Remains the option to grow at all cost to achieve the economies of scale. Growth opportunities however are getting all the more difficult. And developments in the various markets aren’t helping the private banks much either – quite to the contrary.
