Swiss private banking is under pressure, but the pressure is often described in the wrong place. Almost nobody describes it as a transaction bank problem.
A private banker told me recently: “We are under pressure from both sides. From below by the neobanks. From above by you independent wealth managers.”
He is right that something is squeezing. However, I see the direction differently. The pressure comes neither from above nor from below – it sits in the middle, in the transaction bank.
Why The Squeeze From Below Still Works
The providers from below do not need to be excellent. Indeed, the neobanks offer limited service, no local depth and no personal relationship, and they still change what clients treat as normal. Moreover, that shift does not stop at a certain level of wealth, which is why moving further upmarket is no real escape.
Independent Wealth Managers Are A Mirror, Not A Threat
The pressure “from above” is not really us either. After all, we hold no balance sheet, and we run no payment rails. Instead, we are more of a mirror: once a client can compare, they notice where the experience comes from another era.
Trust, discretion and advice still count at the top end. What has changed is simpler – clients no longer accept digital friction as the price of a personal relationship. For example: onboarding that takes weeks, reporting that arrives as a PDF, data re-keyed by hand between systems. That is how it reaches the client, however strong the advice around it.
The Hardest Project In The Industry
This is not a question of willingness. In many banks, people have worked on these topics for years, against old systems and tight budgets. Furthermore, rebuilding a transaction bank remains one of the hardest projects in the industry.
We do not carry that task, because we do not own that layer. Instead, we select partners for custody, reporting and technology, and we change them when better ones appear. That is not a merit; it simply follows from our size. In addition, independence has its own price: no balance sheet, no lending, less scale. That belongs in any honest comparison.
Advice Or Infrastructure?
Which leaves one question worth asking on both sides: how much of what clients experience today is advice, and how much of it is infrastructure?
