There is an “enormous development impulse” within the banking industry, said Boris Collardi, chief executive of Julius Baer, the Swiss private bank.

The changes within the industry are concerned not only with banking secrecy, but also with “investor protection, licences that will be necessary in future for certain business, wages and capital requirements,” Mr Collardi told the Swiss financial news service Finews.

“One has to face the changes - and I believe that Julius Baer has recognised the mood of the time early on,” said Mr Collardi.

With regards to taxation, Mr Collardi told the publication: “Banks have never been obliged to investigate whether certain assets have been declared or not. However, I can imagine that we will have to conduct more due diligence in future.”

He added that there are some undeclared assets from the past still in accounts at the bank. However, this could change rapidly, if a few more tax amnesties were to take place over the next five years.

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There is an “enormous development impulse” within the banking industry, said Boris Collardi, chief executive of Julius Baer, the Swiss private bank.

The changes within the industry are concerned not only with banking secrecy, but also with “investor protection, licences that will be necessary in future for certain business, wages and capital requirements,” Mr Collardi told the Swiss financial news service Finews.

“One has to face the changes - and I believe that Julius Baer has recognised the mood of the time early on,” said Mr Collardi.

With regards to taxation, Mr Collardi told the publication: “Banks have never been obliged to investigate whether certain assets have been declared or not. However, I can imagine that we will have to conduct more due diligence in future.”

He added that there are some undeclared assets from the past still in accounts at the bank. However, this could change rapidly, if a few more tax amnesties were to take place over the next five years.

“In addition: the untaxed assets are substantially smaller than some think. This is already due to the fact that we have a large onshore business in Switzerland, a strong business in Asia, and that we have grown greatly in Latin America, the Gulf region and East Europe over the last years. These are markets where the tax-question is not asked in the way it is by European clients,” he told Finews.

He also spoke of “massive pressure” that has been put on Switzerland by countries that have been hit by the financial crisis. These comments came after the German government said it will pay for stolen data on alleged tax evaders using Swiss accounts (click here for more).

Last week, Julius Baer reported a fall in its operating income of 5 per cent, while operating expenses were reduced by a further 8 per cent, so that net profit increased by 7 per cent to SFr473 million ($407 million).

In particular, staff costs were reduced by 8 per cent to SFr683 million, mainly on the back of lowered performance-related compensation and a decrease in share-based payments.

Total client assets increased by a quarter to SFr241 billion. Assets under management of private clients grew by 19 per cent to SFr154 billion on the back of recovering markets and net inflows. Assets under custody rose by 37 per cent to SFr87 billion.

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