[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”cPSYsQfMNdCbJiWslER9GRhLDXFnL8tY”]
Swiss banks were never shy to talk to rich people. This month Credit Suisse, the second Swiss bank in terms of wealth, declared having a new specific strategy to target the ultra-rich people. Interesting as we know they are more and more in the world.
Switzerland, rich people are a common tradition.
Switzerland is also a perfect country that attracts the wealthy happy people in this world. A good example is Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA who used to live in Switzerland since 1976 and just recently went back to Sweden at the age of 87 years old.. His fortune was evaluated at 33 billion Swiss Francs. Or the example of Italian business man Ernesto Bertarelli with 10 billion Swiss francs.
Switzerland top 9 most rich people, according to Forbes magazine. They own in total 36.3 Billion CHF:
- Ernesto Bertarelli & Family – 10 Billion CHF
- Hansjorg Wyss – 6.4 Billion CHF
- Thomas Schmidheiny – 4.8 Billion CHF
- Walter Haefner – 4 Billion CHF
- Stephan Schmidheiny – 2.9 Billion CHF
- Sergio Mantegazza – 2.9 Billion CHF
- Jean-Claude Gandur – 2 Billion CHF
- Esther Grether & Family – 2 Billion CHF
- Thomas Straumann – 1.3 Billion CHF
Despite of a very low tax policy, Switzerland offers a great quality of life and a high level of infrastructure. These 2 elements being key to the choice of residence location for a very wealthy person. It is also a quite low profile country, so not many scandals and buzz around in general. People are also quite respectful about private life, so the ultra-rich can enjoy a pretty relaxing life here.
According to LeMatin.ch, St.Morritz, Gestaadt and Verbier are 3 Swiss ski stations listed on the top 20 holidays location for the ultra-rich people behind the South of France Côte d’Azur, the Caribbean or Monaco and Sardinia. Many of them buy luxury chalets in these Swiss ski resorts for their winter holidays.
There are more and more ultra-rich people in the world
An interesting fact to note is that the world has more and more multi-millionaire people. According to an annual study done by UBS/Wealth-X, the world has 2’170 people with a personal fortune over 1 Billion CHF.
If we take the category of the “Ultra-Rich”, this means people with at least 50 million CHF of personal fortune. And they are around 100’000 people in the world. This represents an increase of +10% in the past 12 month. We also call them the “Ultra High Net Worth Individuals”. Forbes magazine also explained that the top 5 most money waiste for multi-millionaires are:
- Luxury Real Estate
- Transport (private jets, flying tickets)
- Luxury sport cars
- Gambling
- Luxury goods / Shopping
Credit Suisse’s strategy is simple: Target people with big money
According to the Credit Suisse, the Ultra-rich people having an account at Credit Suisse represents around 44% of the 812 Billion CHF that the private bank is managing. Thanks to the economic health of Emerging markets, new fortunes are rising and Credit Suisse believes that they can reach an increase to 50% of this client segment. As published by the Boston Consulting Group, people with more than 100 million CHF will annually increase by 9.2% until 2017.
So in order to attract these wealthy people, Credit Suisse decided to expand lending, as credits will be a catchy product to propose. In order to build a solid lending power, Credit Suisse will put aside, from its financial result, between 15 to 20 Billion CHF. This this new strategy wants to lend billions of dollars for clients invest in movable or immovable property and complex financial products.
This is a great advertising to Switzerland that tries to open the field of possibilities to the very wealthy. This new strategy arrives only several month after the scandal of American citizens trying to escape from US taxes in Switzerland. Despite the fact this scandal was connecting to UBS, Swiss banks are at stake.
Credit Suisse also explained that the aim of the Bank is to focus more and more on their richest customers and get rid of the less interesting clients. They declared that in the past 5 years, private banking has suffered of different pressures as it became more and more popular.
This strategy is interesting because during economic crisis times, many companies tried to open more their reach and tried to target more people. In the case of Credit Suisse, they take the opposite, they target even more exclusive people. Let’s see how this is going to evolve and if Credit Suisse were right or not to bet into this elitist strategy.
Someone said – anonymous – that “ The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money. ”
Info sourced at Credit Suisse official communication, 24heures, LeMatin.ch, Swissworld.org, celebritynetworth.com, Forbes magazine and UBS-Wealth-X study. Images souces are here, here , here and here. All content is copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.
