Strategy
VP Bank Group Sets Targets, To Recruit In Home Markets, Asia
Liechtenstein-headquartered VP Bank has issued a statement setting out its medium-term financial goals and warning of continuing high cost/income ratios for the current year.
The goals are net new money inflows of 5 per cent per year based on client assets under management, a cost/income ratio of 65 per cent and a Tier 1 ratio of 16 per cent.
The group says it will achieve these goals as a result of its client-oriented organisational structure, presence in key financial centres throughout the world and strict cost management. But it says that changed regulatory conditions and the evolving needs of clients mean it must strengthen its core competency, client advice, in particular in the area of international tax law.
The bank claims its managers and the customer-servicing units have been granted more entrepreneurial leeway to look for efficiency gains, cost reductions and increased revenues to pay for the strengthening.
The bank says it is intensifying its activities in its home market - the Principality of Liechtenstein and surrounding regions - where it offers the entire spectrum of banking services. Simultaneously, business with private clients and financial intermediaries in Switzerland is being expanded even further. The priority here is organic growth: client advisory units will be reinforced through the targeted recruitment of additional financial consulting professionals, the firm said.
Internationally, the bank sees Asia as a market that, in the future, will record the highest growth rates for private banking. It will, it says, increase the number of its client advisors in Singapore and Hong Kong and is recruiting a new head of private banking for the Asia-Pacific region.
Another growth market is Eastern Europe and Russia, which are primarily being cultivated by its existing operations in Zurich and Liechtenstein.
The statement finishes with a warning that the current year “remains challenging” as client uncertainties about the economic and regulatory conditions continue to have an influence on its business activities, in particular that “due to the investments required for future growth, the cost/income ratio of VP Bank Group will remain high in the coming months.”
