VP Bank’s clients

VP Bank pur­sues a clearly de­fined busi­ness strat­egy, the most im­por­tant el­e­ment of which is close­ness to the client. Only those who are re­ally in touch with their clients and know their needs pre­cisely are in a po­si­tion to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ately to the lat­est mar­ket de­vel­op­ments. Again in 2013, VP Bank in­vested con­sid­er­able sums in di­rect client con­tact.

A clear spec­i­fi­ca­tion of the roles in­volved in client ser­vice reg­u­lates the in­ter­play be­tween re­la­tion­ship man­agers and spe­cial­ists for in­vest­ment prod­ucts and ser­vices, tax mat­ters, cred­its, funds and foun­da­tions. Within the frame­work of a holis­tic ad­vi­sory ap­proach, each team draws upon compe­ten­cies at Group level in or­der to de­vise in­di­vid­u­alised so­lu­tions that meet all re­quire­ments.

The ad­vi­sory con­cept en­com­passes each and every phase of a clien­t’s life­cy­cle. This dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion makes it pos­si­ble to pro­vide a tai­lored range of prod­ucts and ser­vices. VP Bank Group of­fers cus­tomised port­fo­lio man­age­ment ser­vices and in­vest­ment ad­vice to pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als and fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­aries. Thanks to the abid­ing phi­los­o­phy of open ar­chi­tec­ture, clients ben­e­fit from un­bi­ased ad­vice. In­cluded in the rec­om­men­da­tions are prod­ucts and ser­vices of other lead­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions as well as the Bank’s own in­vest­ment so­lu­tions. 

VP Bank fo­cuses squarely on client sat­is­fac­tion and ser­vice qual­ity. For that rea­son, the Bank car­ries out client feed­back man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ties that in­volve sur­veys of client satis­fac­tion and reg­u­lar re­port­ing. Open feed­back paths, pro­fes­sional com­plaint man­age­ment and a con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue with clients are ev­i­dence of this res­olute client ori­en­ta­tion.

 

Business units and client segments

Through its Pri­vate Bank­ing and In­ter­me­di­aries busi­ness units, VP Bank ad­dresses a de­fined and lim­ited num­ber of tar­get mar­kets and client seg­ments. Pri­vate bank­ing ser­vices and the in­ter­me­di­aries busi­ness are per­formed at all VP Bank lo­ca­tions. In Liecht­en­stein and the sur­round­ing re­gion, this range is sup­ple­mented with re­tail bank­ing ser­vices that in­clude client-ori­ented pack­aged so­lu­tions.

Also pri­mar­ily in Liecht­en­stein, as well as in east­ern Switzer­land, VP Bank caters to in­sti­tu­tional clients and re­gional com­pa­nies in need of in­vest­ment and op­er­at­ing fi­nance. The younger tar­get groups are ad­dressed in par­tic­u­lar by means of e-Chan­nel ini­tia­tives. Youth pack­ages for stu­dents and trainees round out the range of ser­vices on of­fer.

In terms of pri­vate bank­ing, VP Bank’s fo­cus is on the mid-range seg­ment – in other words, in­di­vid­u­als with to­tal as­sets of be­tween CHF 1 mil­lion and 25 mil­lion. Seg­men­ta­tion is made ac­cord­ing to the util­i­sa­tion pref­er­ences of clients, with cor­re­spond­ingly tar­geted of­fers. 

 

New challenges

The world of pri­vate bank­ing is in tran­si­tion. Where the pri­mary em­pha­sis in the past was on in­vest­ment ad­vice and port­fo­lio man­age­ment, to­day, in­creas­ing fo­cus is be­ing placed on reg­u­la­tory is­sues (Mi­Fid, FATCA, tax com­pli­ance, etc.). The ad­vi­sory process is tak­ing place within the tug of war be­tween an ar­ray of new reg­u­la­tory de­crees and the in­di­vid­ual in­vest­ment and wealth ob­jec­tives of clients.

VP Bank has risen to this chal­lenge. In ad­di­tion to com­pre­hen­sive train­ing ses­sions for client ad­vi­sors, the Bank’s clients are also be­ing coun­selled by teams of spe­cial­ists who, for ex­am­ple, con­tribute their vast know-how in tax mat­ters to the dis­cus­sion, thereby demon­strat­ing the over­all com­pe­tence of VP Bank. In­vest­ing in the IT sys­tems and adding per­son­nel to the “Le­gal, Com­pli­ance & Tax” team also rep­re­sent mea­sures VP Bank is tak­ing to op­ti­mise client ser­vice.

 

Crossborder banking

The le­gal and rep­u­ta­tional risks in­volved in the cross­bor­der fi­nan­cial ser­vices busi­ness have in­creased markedly in the re­cent past. For­eign su­per­vi­sory au­thor­i­ties are keep­ing a keen eye on the le­gal con­for­mity of for­eign banks’ cross­bor­der busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties, which in­clude client ac­qui­si­tion, ad­vice and ser­vice.

As VP Bank Group ren­ders cross­bor­der ser­vices, the Bank has reg­u­lated those ac­tiv­i­ties in a bind­ing “Cross­bor­der Pol­icy”. This di­rec­tive serves as an ad­e­quate in­stru­ment for recog­nis­ing, man­ag­ing and con­trol­ling the re­lated le­gal and com­pli­ance risks. It also lays down the prin­ci­ples as well as the ways and means by which the cross­bor­der ser­vices and prod­ucts of the Bank are to be of­fered. 

For each of its tar­get coun­tries, VP Bank pro­vides its client ad­vi­sors with coun­try man­u­als which de­scribe the lo­cal be­hav­ioural dos and don’ts from a le­gal stand­point.

 

Advisory process

For op­ti­mal client care, VP Bank con­ducts a five-stage ad­vi­sory process.

1. Win the client

The pre­req­ui­sites for suc­cess­ful client ac­qui­si­tion are sys­tem­atic plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion and ex­e­cu­tion, whereas VP Bank wins most of its new clients as a re­sult of rec­om­men­da­tions by ex­ist­ing clients. 

2. Understand the client

Un­der­stand­ing the client rep­re­sents the ba­sis for pro­vid­ing pro­fes­sional ad­vice. The qual­ity and quan­tity of in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from the client through di­rect ques­tion­ing or in writ­ten form are de­ci­sive fac­tors in the abil­ity to iden­tify the clien­t’s needs and to de­velop fine-tuned so­lu­tions.

3. Advise the client

Once the needs of the client have been de­ter­mined, the task is to pre­sent so­lu­tions. In ar­riv­ing at those so­lu­tions, al­ter­na­tives are al­ways borne in mind. The client is not only shown the so­lu­tions that are “the clos­est fit”, but also sen­si­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties in a broader con­text. VP Bank at­taches great value to a team ap­proach in de­vis­ing so­lu­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, spe­cial­ists as well as other sources of know-how are in­cluded in this process.

4. Implement the client’s wishes

If the client agrees with the prof­fered so­lu­tion, im­ple­men­tation is the next step. The time taken for trans­lat­ing so­lu­tions into re­al­ity un­der­scores VP Bank’s per­for­mance ca­pa­bil­i­ties and de­vo­tion to achiev­ing the ex­cep­tional. VP Bank con­sid­ers it ex­tremely im­por­tant that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of so­lu­tions is con­ducted in a timely man­ner or in keep­ing with agreed mile­stones that ful­fil the ex­pec­ta­tions of the client.

5. Accompany the client

The ad­vi­sory process does not merely end upon re­al­i­sa­tion of an agreed so­lu­tion. A client pro­file changes steadily and is aug­mented to re­flect new de­vel­op­ments. By pe­riod­ically com­par­ing the client pro­file with the ef­fects and per­for­mance of a pre­vi­ously agreed so­lu­tion, gen­uine added value is gen­er­ated for the client.

 

Investment recommendations

In its an­nual out­look for 2013, VP Bank rec­om­mended that its clients in­vest in riskier as­set classes, de­spite the only mod­er­ate rate of eco­nomic growth. The ra­tio­nale: due to their at­trac­tive val­u­a­tions, those po­si­tions should ul­ti­mately ben­e­fit from a more sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment. 

This prophecy has es­sen­tially come true. Al­though lit­tle im­pe­tus was pro­vided from the eco­nomic side, the re­duc­tion of ex­treme po­lit­i­cal and fi­nan­cial risks spurred the mar­kets. Shares in par­tic­u­lar recorded im­pres­sive gains in 2013, while se­cure gov­ern­ment bonds had their dif­fi­cul­ties. How­ever, not all risky in­vest­ments and re­gions ex­pe­ri­enced an up­swing. The bull mar­kets wit­nessed in the in­dus­tri­alised na­tions failed to ma­te­ri­alise in the emerg­ing mar­kets. Nonethe­less, those who chose to ac­cept risk in 2013 were richly re­warded.

 

Client assets

As at 31 De­cem­ber 2013, VP Bank held client as­sets un­der man­age­ment to­talling CHF 30.6 bil­lion (7.4 per cent more than in the pre­vi­ous year). An ad­di­tional CHF 9.0 bil­lion took the form of as­sets held in cus­tody. Thus, to­tal client as­sets on that date amounted to CHF 39.6 bil­lion. In to­tal, VP Bank Group recorded a net new money in­flow of CHF 965 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 192 mil­lion out­flow). 

 

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