Strategic orientation of VP Bank

Un­til the end of 2014, the pre­vi­ously es­tab­lished medium-term goals re­mained un­changed: a tier 1 ra­tio of at least 16 per cent, a cost/​in­come ra­tio of 65 per cent and net new money in­flows av­er­ag­ing 5 per cent per year. A re­view of these goals re­vealed that they needed to be ad­justed.

At the end of 2014, the legally pre­scribed core cap­i­tal ra­tio stood at 8 per cent; the tier 1 ra­tio at VP Bank was at least twice that amount. As VP Bank is deemed to be sys­tem-rel­e­vant, the new core cap­i­tal re­quire­ment un­der the Basel III di­rec­tive (CRD IV) has been raised to 13 per cent with ef­fect as of Feb­ru­ary 2015. There­fore, a medium-term goal of at least 16 per cent rep­re­sents no added value for in­vestors and clients; at the same time, an in­crease of this cur­rent tar­get would se­verely con­strain the Bank’s fi­nan­cial room for ma­noeu­vre – for ex­am­ple, in terms of ac­qui­si­tions.

Es­pe­cially in light of the new reg­u­la­tory re­quire­ments, the Board of Di­rec­tors has de­cided to re­assess VP Bank’s medium-term goals. The find­ings of the as­sess­ment will be an­nounced in con­nec­tion with the pub­li­ca­tion of the 2015 semi-an­nual re­sults in late Au­gust.

The fi­nan­cial re­port­ing of VP Bank Group ad­dresses three dis­tinct seg­ments; the ul­ti­mate re­spon­sibil­ity for each seg­ment is as­signed to a re­spec­tive mem­ber of Group Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment (GEM). As a con­crete re­sponse to the changed reg­u­la­tory and mar­ket con­di­tions, the Board of Di­rec­tors has re­in­forced the client ori­en­ta­tion of the en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion. At the out­set of 2014, the units that deal di­rectly with clients were com­bined to cre­ate a new or­gan­i­sa­tional unit, “Client Busi­ness”. The new struc­ture thus now con­sists of three – in­stead of the pre­vi­ous four – or­gan­i­sa­tional units. 

With this stream­lined set-up, the rel­e­vant processes and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are sim­pli­fied and bet­ter co­or­di­nated, while re­ac­tion times are op­ti­mised. The elim­i­na­tion of ex­ist­ing re­dun­dan­cies is an­other sig­nif­i­cant di­men­sion of this new or­gan­i­sa­tional struc­ture. Client fo­cus will be in­ten­si­fied even more through greater Group-wide col­lab­o­ra­tion and the bundling of com­pe­ten­cies. 

VP Bank’s pri­mary strate­gic goal is to achieve prof­itable growth as a Group from its ac­tiv­i­ties in the de­fined tar­get mar­kets and tar­get seg­ments, thereby pre­serv­ing the Bank’s in­de­pen­dence. Cost con­scious­ness re­mains an im­por­tant topic. Through rev­enue and thus earn­ings growth, com­bined with a lower-than-av­er­age in­crease in costs, a sus­tain­able in­crease in prof­its is be­ing strived for. A sig­nif­i­cant role will be played in this re­gard by the satel­lite lo­ca­tions of VP Bank, which con­tribute to the growth of the Group.

In the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try, a con­sol­i­da­tion phase is still un­der­way, and tak­ing ad­van­tage of promis­ing, well-suited op­por­tu­ni­ties re­mains a cen­tral el­e­ment in VP Bank’s quest to achieve its growth ob­jec­tives. Var­i­ous pro­jects were there­fore ex­am­ined in 2014; how­ever, these need to fit ide­ally with the strat­egy and cul­ture of VP Bank Group. Through the merger with Cen­trum Bank in Liecht­en­stein, VP Bank demon­strated yet again its proac­tive, tar­geted ap­proach to tak­ing ad­van­tage of these at­trac­tive mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties as a means of gen­er­at­ing growth. In con­se­quence, VP Bank has gained a con­sid­er­ably stronger po­si­tion in the Liecht­en­stein bank­ing sec­tor, and the ca­pac­ity of its book­ing plat­form can be bet­ter utilised through the in­creased trans­ac­tion vol­ume. More­over, this means that an­other re­li­able, long-term-ori­ented Liecht­en­stein fam­ily has be­come an an­chor share­holder of VP Bank. Both banks cul­ti­vate the same tar­get mar­kets and client seg­ments. Hence, con­sid­er­able syn­er­gies are to be had, es­pe­cially in the area of back­of­fice pro­cess­ing. In fu­ture, VP Bank will con­tinue to con­sider suit­able ac­qui­si­tion pro­jects at its book­ing lo­ca­tions.

The Bank’s medium-term plan­ning en­vis­ages both or­ganic growth and growth via ac­qui­si­tions. The aim here is to achieve an av­er­age an­nual 5 per cent in­crease in net new money on the ba­sis of client as­sets un­der man­age­ment. VP Bank Group was un­able to reach that tar­get in 2014. The ac­qui­si­tion ef­forts have met with ex­pec­ta­tions, but the out­flows in 2014, es­pe­cially from Eu­ro­pean clients, re­mained at a rel­a­tively high level. This was at­trib­ut­able in par­tic­u­lar to the many is­sues sur­round­ing the tax trans­parency process which VP Bank Group is res­olutely im­ple­ment­ing. 

For VP Bank, growth means win­ning new clients in its tar­get mar­kets and press­ing fur­ther ahead with the qual­i­ta­tive growth of client as­sets un­der man­age­ment. To this end, mar­kets, client seg­ments, as well as prod­ucts and ser­vices are be­ing sub­jected to close analy­sis at all of the Bank’s lo­ca­tions.

In this re­gard, a pru­dent ap­proach to deal­ing with risk is a core prin­ci­ple of VP Bank. The Bank’s in­ter­nal con­trol sys­tem (ICS) helps to man­age op­er­a­tional risks ef­fi­ciently and is be­ing con­tin­u­ously ex­panded. Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion in this re­gard can be found in the “Risk management of VP Bank Group” sec­tion of this an­nual re­port .

In con­nec­tion with its re­ori­en­ta­tion to­wards clearly de­mar­cated seg­ments and mar­kets, VP Bank has de­vel­oped spe­cific ser­vice mod­els for each client group.

In the pri­vate bank­ing area, the of­fer for ex­ist­ing clients is be­ing suc­ces­sively broad­ened with an op­ti­mised range of prod­ucts and ser­vices as well as in­no­v­a­tive forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion; this, of course, in com­bi­na­tion with VP Bank’s decades of in­vest­ment com­pe­tence. 

The in­ter­me­di­aries busi­ness of­fers promis­ing growth op­por­tu­ni­ties. VP Bank is in­creas­ing the num­ber of part­ner­ships it has with this tar­get group and mak­ing new mod­els avail­able for their use – for ex­am­ple, ex­panded plat­forms that pro­vide bank­ing ser­vices, train­ing courses, re­search, cross­bor­der and com­pli­ance know-how, as well as in­vest­ment con­trol­ling, all of which are al­ready avail­able in-house and are now be­ing of­fered to a broader cir­cle of in­ter­me­di­aries. Ef­fi­cient ser­vice mod­els for fidu­cia­ries and ex­ter­nal as­set man­agers, the per­sonal nur­tur­ing of re­la­tion­ships and the es­tab­lish­ment of strate­gic part­ner­ships are ev­i­dence of VP Bank’s in­ten­si­fied client ori­en­ta­tion, op­ti­mal de­ploy­ment of re­sources and height­ened ser­vice qual­ity. Through “Key Ac­count Man­age­ment”, a new and more com­pre­hen­sive ad­vi­sory ap­proach, mid- and large-sized fidu­ciary clients are of­fered these ser­vices in a tai­lored, suit­able man­ner. 

Liecht­en­stein is home to VP Bank Group’s main of­fices. Founded in 1956, the Bank of­fers – in Vaduz as well as at all other lo­ca­tions of VP Bank Group – a wide range of ser­vices to pri­vate bank­ing and fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­ary clients. In Liecht­en­stein and the neigh­bour­ing re­gion, this of­fer is sup­ple­mented with re­tail bank­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, while in­sti­tu­tional and re­gional cor­po­rate clients take ad­van­tage of VP Bank’s in­vest­ment and work­ing cap­i­tal fi­nance fa­cil­i­ties. All of the ser­vices ren­dered by the cen­tral staff of­fices as well as back-of­fice op­er­a­tions are han­dled ex­clu­sively at the Bank’s head­quar­ters in Liecht­en­stein.

The Asia-Pa­cific re­gion re­mains a mar­ket where tremen­dous growth op­por­tu­ni­ties lie for VP Bank. VP Bank has had lo­cal of­fices in Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore since 2006 and 2008, re­spec­tively. These branches are de­voted to ad­vanc­ing the lo­cal Asian busi­ness. Here, VP Bank places spe­cial em­pha­sis on the or­ganic growth of the in­ter­me­di­aries busi­ness. In 2014, ad­di­tional teams were hired and the re­dou­bled mar­ket­ing ef­forts have al­ready re­sulted in ini­tial suc­cesses.

VP Bank also views Cen­tral and East­ern Eu­rope as a re­gion where growth can be gen­er­ated. In 2014, these mar­kets were more ag­gres­sively cul­ti­vated by the Bank’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of­fice in Moscow (opened in 2005) as well as by com­pe­tent spe­cial­ist teams at the Zurich and Vaduz lo­ca­tions. Since mid-Oc­to­ber 2014, a sea­soned in­dus­try pro­fes­sional has been in charge of the Moscow Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Of­fice. Here, too, the in­ten­si­fied mar­ket­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have led to ac­qui­si­tion suc­cesses. 

Lux­em­bourg is a fi­nan­cial cen­tre for in­ter­na­tional in­vestors. The Grand Duchy has been spe­cialised for years in the pan-Eu­ro­pean fund dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness and is the world’s sec­ond-largest fund cen­tre be­hind the US. VP Bank has had of­fices there since 1988 and is the only Liecht­en­stein-based bank to be pre­sent in both the Lux­em­bourg and Liecht­en­stein fund cen­tres. The Bank has lever­aged this strate­gic ad­van­tage through the pre­vi­ously re­ported as­set deal with HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt (In­ter­na­tional) SA, a move aimed at grow­ing the lo­ca­tion’s pri­vate bank­ing busi­ness and broad­en­ing its com­pe­tence in the in­vest­ment fund area. 2014 was marked by the suc­cess­ful in­te­gra­tion of the Trinkaus & Burkhardt team. 2015 will see a closer tie es­tab­lished be­tween this Lux­em­bourg sub­sidiary and the par­ent bank in Liecht­en­stein, with the ob­jec­tive of ben­e­fit­ing from syn­ergy ef­fects.

The fund busi­ness rep­re­sents an es­pe­cially at­trac­tive growth seg­ment for VP Bank Group. With the ar­rival of a new gen­eral man­ager as of 1 Jan­u­ary 2015, re­spon­si­bil­ity for the en­tire Lux­em­bourg and Liecht­en­stein fund busi­ness will be cen­trally con­sol­i­dated. Group-wide lead­er­ship of this strate­gi­cally im­por­tant busi­ness will now be han­dled out of Lux­em­bourg.

In Oc­to­ber 2014, VP Bank Group ini­ti­ated a pro­ject aimed at sim­pli­fy­ing the busi­ness processes at the Lux­em­bourg lo­ca­tion and bring­ing them in line with the Group stan­dards. The goal of this ef­fort is to op­ti­mise the re­sources and avoid trans-lo­ca­tion re­dun­dan­cies.

VP Bank (Switzer­land) Ltd also rep­re­sents a long-term main­stay of the Group. VP Bank has been pre­sent in Zurich with a sub­sidiary ever since 1988. In 2014, a wide ar­ray of per­son­nel and or­gan­isa­tional mea­sures were taken at the Zurich branch in or­der to en­hance the ef­fi­ciency of mar­ket cul­ti­va­tion ac­tiv­i­ties and fur­ther de­velop the client base. The suc­cess of these mea­sures is al­ready be­com­ing ev­i­dent.

For years, Ger­many has been a tar­get mar­ket for VP Bank. Of pri­mary im­por­tance are long-term re­la­tion­ships with clients who at­tach the great­est value to cap­i­tal preser­va­tion. In Switzer­land, VP Bank takes ad­van­tage of the pos­si­bil­i­ties af­forded by the “EU pass­port”: af­ter com­plet­ing a min­i­mum of for­mal­i­ties, the Eu­ro­pean Union per­mits the cross-bor­der and sim­pli­fied dis­tri­b­u­tion of cer­tain fi­nan­cial prod­ucts through­out the EEA by Swiss-based banks. In 2014, Ger­many’s Fed­eral Fi­nan­cial Su­per­vi­sory Au­thor­ity (BaFin) ap­proved a re­quest for ex­emp­tion by VP Bank (Switzer­land) Ltd. This ex­emp­tion en­ables VP Bank (Switzer­land) Ltd, via re­fer­ral from the Head Of­fice in Liecht­en­stein, to ac­tively ac­quire clients in Ger­many and sub­se­quently ser­vice them on a cross­bor­der ba­sis. 

Dur­ing the course of 2014, the ser­vice team for Ger­man clients at the Zurich lo­ca­tion was ex­panded sig­nif­i­cantly. Un­der its new mar­ket head, Zurich will now be in charge of co­or­di­nat­ing the Group-wide sell­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in the Ger­man mar­ket. Among other things, this co­or­di­na­tion will in­volve the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mar­ket-spe­cific strat­egy, a mar­ket-con­sis­tent ar­ray of prod­ucts and ser­vices, as well as the as­sur­ance and su­per­vi­sion of com­pli­ance with the ap­plic­a­ble reg­u­la­tory re­quire­ments in col­lab­o­ra­tion with all re­spon­si­ble or­gan­i­sa­tional units of VP Bank Group. 

In late 2013, VP Bank (Switzer­land) Ltd de­cided as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure to par­tic­i­pate in Cat­e­gory 2 of the US pro­gramme aimed at set­tling the tax dis­pute be­tween Swiss banks and the United States. Ex­haus­tive in­ter­nal clar­i­fi­ca­tions and third-party ex­pert opin­ions sub­se­quently re­vealed that there was no ra­tio­nale for fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion in the US pro­gramme. In con­se­quence, VP Bank (Switzer­land) Ltd with­drew from the US pro­gramme in mid-2014.

VP Bank has been pre­sent with a sub­sidiary com­pany on the British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVI) since 1995. VP Bank (BVI) Ltd of­fers tra­di­tional bank­ing ser­vices as well as credit and mort­gage-based fi­nanc­ing. 2014 was marked by VP Bank Group’s com­plete takeover of VP Bank (BVI) Ltd from All­ge­meines Treu­un­ternehmen (ATU) and the ces­sion of other jointly held fi­nan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tions to ATU as a means of struc­tural ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion. In the au­tumn of 2014, a new Ex­ec­u­tive Board was in­stalled and, in Feb­ru­ary 2015, VP Bank (BVI) Ltd cel­e­brated its 20th an­niver­sary and re­lo­ca­tion to a new of­fice build­ing.

The fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try has been con­fronted for years with the prob­lem of higher cost struc­tures and nar­rower mar­gins. In­creas­ing reg­u­la­tory re­quire­ments have also re­sulted in ad­di­tional costs. VP Bank is there­fore highly cost-con­scious. 

Over the past three years, the process of iden­ti­fy­ing po­ten­tial ar­eas for cost sav­ings was suc­cess­fully con­ducted. The mea­sures as­so­ci­ated with var­i­ous pro­jects were largely im­ple­mented. The re­lated find­ings have flowed into what is now a dis­ci­plined, on­go­ing cost-man­age­ment process.

In ad­di­tion to these mea­sures, VP Bank ini­ti­ated the “Apollo” pro­ject in 2014. Apart from the pre­vi­ously dis­cussed clear po­si­tion­ing in pri­vate bank­ing and the in­ter­me­di­aries busi­ness, the pro­ject is fo­cused on iden­ti­fy­ing and ex­ploit­ing po­ten­tial ar­eas for sav­ings through­out the Group as well as op­ti­mis­ing the prod­uct and ser­vice range. Dur­ing the past year, em­ploy­ees of VP Bank Group worked at full speed on the var­i­ous sub­pro­jects, all of the nec­es­sary in­ter­nal switches were set, and the pro­ject it­self has been suc­cess­fully com­pleted to the great­est ex­tent. As of 2015, the changes will also be­come no­tice­able for the Group’s ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers.

In re­cent years, a fo­cal point for the ef­fi­ciency-en­hance­ment mea­sures has been the area of IT and Group Op­er­a­tions. With the “Avaloq” core bank­ing soft­ware sys­tem, VP Bank Group has mod­ern, sta­ble and re­li­able IT in­fra­struc­ture at all of its book­ing lo­ca­tions. It cov­ers the en­tire spec­trum of client needs. The task is now to gain the great­est pos­si­ble ef­fi­ciency and ben­e­fit for the en­tire Group from these in­vest­ments and all IT-based ser­vices. 

At the Lux­em­bourg lo­ca­tion, VP Bank ini­ti­ated a pro­ject in Oc­to­ber 2014 aimed at align­ing the lo­cal busi­ness processes with the Group’s stan­dard as well as avoid­ing trans-lo­ca­tion ser­vice re­dun­dan­cies. In this con­nec­tion, it is nec­es­sary to in­tro­duce Group-wide stan­dards that meet all reg­u­la­tory re­quire­ments. With a solid, sys­tem­a­tised foun­da­tion of processes and pro­ce­dures that take into ac­count coun­try-spe­cific rules and reg­u­la­tions, VP Bank is form­ing the ba­sis for the full re­al­i­sa­tion of this pro­jec­t’s goals and hence for sus­tain­able growth.

Ef­fi­ciency is also be­ing dri­ven for­ward at the top man­age­ment level: “on­line board­rooms” have been the or­der of the day at VP Bank since 2014. A new tool un­der­pins the con­cept that con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments no longer need to be dis­patched phys­i­cally by post or elec­tron­i­cally via e-mail, but in­stead made avail­able to all au­tho­rised par­ties by means of se­cure In­ter­net ac­cess to a cen­tralised vir­tual room. The of­fi­cial bod­ies of VP Bank Group (Board of Di­rec­tors, GEM and var­i­ous com­mit­tees) can use iPads to ob­tain all rel­e­vant doc­u­ments elec­tron­i­cally and re­gard­less of the lo­cal time. Meet­ings can there­fore be con­ducted on a pa­per-free and lo­ca­tion-in­de­pen­dent ba­sis, while par­tic­i­pants have ac­cess to the lat­est ver­sions at all times. The means of doc­u­ment man­age­ment also con­tributes to en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with re­quire­ments re­lat­ing to in­ter­nal di­rec­tives on doc­u­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion and com­pli­ance.

Via part­ner­ships, VP Bank also strives to ex­ploit in­ter­com­pany syn­er­gies. Es­pe­cially in the Liecht­en­stein fi­nan­cial cen­tre, co­op­er­a­tive ven­tures af­ford a way of coun­ter­ing in­creas­ing costs. They al­low for the es­tab­lish­ment of al­liance-based busi­ness mod­els. To that end, VP Bank main­tains a pol­icy of best-prac­tice shar­ing with other banks in or­der to jointly utilise and op­ti­mise avail­able re­sources. In the age of glob­al­i­sa­tion, a rec­i­p­ro­cal trans­fer of know-how is ad­van­ta­geous for all par­ties in­volved. 

Strate­gic part­ner­ships are there­fore an im­por­tant el­e­ment of VP Bank Group’s busi­ness model. VP Bank co­op­er­ates with Liecht­en­steinis­che Lan­des­bank (LLB) in the area of print­ing and ship­ment as well as via a joint pro­cure­ment com­pany. VP Bank also leases one floor of the new LLB data pro­cess­ing cen­tre, where it took up oc­cu­pancy in 2013. The build­ing was con­ceived and con­structed specif­i­cally as an en­ergy-ef­fi­cient data pro­cess­ing cen­tre. In this col­lab­o­ra­tion, the lat­est IT so­lu­tions and ef­fi­cient data man­age­ment are the main mo­ti­va­tion for both part­ners. 

In the years ahead, VP Bank will con­tinue to ex­am­ine the vi­a­bil­ity of part­ner­ships and joint un­der­tak­ings. As part of the merger with Cen­trum Bank, the Marxer group will work to­gether with VP Bank as a “pre­ferred part­ner”.

The cen­tral­i­sa­tion of rou­tine tasks and the au­toma­tion of cer­tain pro­ce­dures lead to en­hanced qual­ity and fa­cil­i­tate the pre­cise analy­sis of all of the com­pa­ny’s processes. 

For that rea­son, VP Bank is build­ing a Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment (BPM) plat­form with which processes can be con­ducted elec­tron­i­cally. Many ex­ist­ing processes are pa­per-based, i.e. forms are filled out and dis­trib­uted to the var­i­ous re­cip­i­ents by means of in­ter­nal post. The BPM plat­form is a strate­gic tool for sim­pli­fy­ing these Group-wide processes and re­duc­ing the man­ual work. 

Processes that are highly stan­dard­ised and/​or re­quire con­sid­er­able au­toma­tion are repli­cated on the BPM plat­form. The plat­form is also in­tended to be­come a tool for use by client ad­vi­sors as they at­tend to their many tasks. At the end of 2014, VP Bank in­tro­duced a new, com­pre­hen­sive soft­ware so­lu­tion that en­ables seam­less in­te­gra­tion with the ex­ist­ing Avaloq bank­ing ap­pli­ca­tion. It forms the ba­sis for sav­ings and makes it pos­si­ble for the ad­vi­sors to con­duct uni­form processes for each client. This way, best prac­tices can be ap­plied com­pre­hen­sively to the ben­e­fit of the en­tire VP Bank Group. 

Thanks to its au­to­mated busi­ness processes, VP Bank can en­hance its ef­fi­ciency through­out the en­tire client life cy­cle, whilst re­li­ably ful­fill­ing the ap­plic­a­ble com­pli­ance re­quire­ments and achiev­ing the com­plete digi­ti­sa­tion of client records. Clients ben­e­fit from the shorter through­put times af­forded by these au­to­mated processes. The ac­count-open­ing process is just the first in a se­ries of processes that will be­come no­tice­able for clients in 2015. And with this, VP Bank is also set­ting the stage for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the OECD di­rec­tive on the au­to­matic ex­change of in­for­ma­tion (AEI), which Liecht­en­stein com­mit­ted to in 2014 and will take ef­fect as of 2016.

The pri­vate bank­ing in­dus­try is still in a state of flux. The ren­der­ing of fi­nan­cial ad­vice is dif­fer­ent to­day than it was just sev­eral years ago. Clients are bet­ter in­formed, more mo­bile and more de­mand­ing. Ad­di­tional chal­lenges are posed by the stricter reg­u­la­tions and an in­creas­ing need for trans­parency. And due to those client de­mands, the re­quire­ments pro­file for client ad­vi­sors has also changed. For ex­cel­lent, com­pre­hen­sive client care, a greater level of com­pe­tence is re­quired. As­set man­age­ment ex­per­tise must be com­bined with in­sight into cross­bor­der tax law and in­ter­na­tional fi­nance. 

In this en­vi­ron­ment, VP Bank is in the process of ex­pand­ing its client base. More and more, the tax trans­parency and con­for­mity is­sue is tak­ing cen­tre stage. In or­der to ad­vise clients even more com­pe­tently, the Bank is re­dou­bling its ef­forts in the area of pro­fes­sional train­ing. 

As a re­sult of these vast changes, the ques­tion is also be­ing asked in­ter­nally within VP Bank as to which cul­ture is best suited to meet­ing the new re­quire­ments. At a team work­shop for first- and sec­ond-level man­agers in late 2014, Group Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment in­tro­duced guide­lines re­quir­ing that each man­ager as­sume greater self-re­spon­si­bil­ity and also take de­ci­sions on their own. In an ef­fort to fos­ter a re­sults-ori­ented per­for­mance cul­ture, var­i­ous me­thod­i­cal ap­proaches and work pri­or­i­ties were de­fined in a pre­sen­ta­tion en­ti­tled “Cul­ture and lead­er­ship”. In 2015, spe­cial at­ten­tion will be paid to the or­gan­i­sa­tional de­vel­op­ment and cul­tural change in Lux­em­bourg as well as to the in­te­gra­tion of Cen­trum Bank.

Out­stand­ing ad­vi­sory ser­vices and tai­lored so­lu­tions are of tremen­dous im­por­tance to the mar­ket­ing ef­fort. As a part of this, is­sues re­lat­ing to en­hanced ef­fi­ciency and qual­ity, re­sources and processes, in­no­v­a­tive ser­vices and prod­ucts, as well as the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of per­son­nel are of cen­tral im­por­tance. In con­nec­tion with the “Apollo” pro­ject, VP Bank ini­ti­ated mea­sures in 2014 aimed at en­hanc­ing the Bank’s mar­ket­ing ex­cel­lence. Client dis­cus­sions are now adapted to the given client seg­ment and struc­tured uni­formly, while the over­all con­tact fre­quency has also been in­creased.

For the newly de­fined seg­ments and the as­so­ci­ated client needs, VP Bank has de­vel­oped spe­cific client-care con­cepts which ad­dress, for ex­am­ple, the fol­low­ing top­ics:

• Seg­ment-spe­cific po­si­tion­ing
• A cus­tomised client-care model 
• The palette of ser­vices 

In pur­suit of mar­ket­ing ex­cel­lence, VP Bank man­agers will in fu­ture in­vest more time in the coach­ing of their staff. Re­lated work­shops were held in 2014. Apart from fos­ter­ing a shared un­der­stand­ing of lead­er­ship, the ses­sions de­fined and adopted bind­ing man­age­ment processes and in­stru­ments (ac­qui­si­tion/​sales plan­ning, sales meet­ings, etc.).

VP Bank’s tra­di­tional range of of­fers is reg­u­larly ex­am­ined for its suit­abil­ity for the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment and is sup­ple­mented, where re­quired, with need-ori­ented ser­vices and prod­ucts. In con­nec­tion with the “Apollo” pro­ject, the ser­vice range was adapted to re­flect the new seg­ments and chang­ing client re­quire­ments. 

Since mid-2014, VP Bank has made avail­able a free Wi-Fi net­work at its fa­cil­i­ties in Liecht­en­stein and in Zurich that clients may use for busi­ness pur­poses. 

Also in 2014, the ATMs in Liecht­en­stein were re­placed by the lat­est gen­er­a­tion of cash ma­chines. Clients of VP Bank ben­e­fit from the en­hanced user-friend­li­ness af­forded by a touch screen, a sense of se­cu­rity thanks to sur­veil­lance cam­eras and new func­tion­al­i­ties for ac­count de­posits and with­drawals. 

The prod­uct of­fer for ex­ist­ing clients is be­ing broad­ened through the grad­ual in­tro­duc­tion of in­no­v­a­tive forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For in­stance, VP Bank has long had a state-of-the-art e-bank­ing plat­form. A new ver­sion of “e-bank­ing mo­bile” was al­ready im­ple­mented back in 2013: it turns a smart­phone into a mo­bile bank and en­ables the en­vi­ron­men­tally friendly trans­mis­sion and re­ceipt of e-Post. Clients have the pos­si­bil­ity with a smart­phone to query their ac­count and safe­keep­ing bal­ances as well as to ad­min­is­ter or­ders for se­cu­ri­ties and pay­ment trans­ac­tions. In ad­di­tion, pay­ment slips can be scanned in us­ing the smart­phone’s in­built cam­era. 

In the au­tumn of 2014, VP Bank suc­cess­fully in­tro­duced a new means of client in­ter­ac­tion: the “e-bank­ing mo­bile push func­tion”. Clients can be no­ti­fied when a mes­sage from their client ad­vi­sor or the VP Bank hot­line awaits them, when pay­ment or se­cu­ri­ties or­ders re­quire their au­tho­ri­sa­tion or when a new e-Post con­fir­ma­tion has been re­ceived. Fur­ther en­hance­ments are planned. 

These new tech­nolo­gies have been warmly re­ceived by clients. The use of e-bank­ing mo­bile in­creased in 2014 by 56 per cent com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. 

In De­cem­ber 2014, VP Bank mod­ernised its www.vp­bank.com web­site, bring­ing it in line with the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal stan­dards. Thanks to “re­spon­sive de­sign”, the por­tal ac­com­mo­dates the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the spe­cific user de­vice on which it is dis­played. While the ba­sic de­sign re­mains the same, the im­age adapts au­to­mat­i­cally to the size of the user’s dis­play. Thus the site can be nav­i­gated just as eas­ily with a smart­phone as it can with a large com­puter mon­i­tor. 

VP Bank’s new ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign, which was launched in 2014, high­lights the di­ver­sity of the Bank’s wide ar­ray of prod­ucts and ser­vices.

The ef­fects of VP Bank’s re­aligned fo­cus on tar­get mar­kets and client seg­ments in to­day’s tax- trans­par­ent en­vi­ron­ment, as well as the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of trends, chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties, marked the lift-off of the pre­vi­ously men­tioned “Apollo” pro­ject, which was suc­cess­fully com­- pleted at the end of 2014. This vi­sion­ary pro­ject will con­tinue to shape the de­vel­op­ment of VP Bank far be­yond 2014.

For 2015, VP Bank has de­fined four key ar­eas of ac­tion:

• The in­te­gra­tion of Cen­trum Bank into VP Bank
• VP Bank (Lux­em­bourg) SA – sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and align­ment of the busi­ness processes; op­ti­mi­sa­tion of re­sources and avoid­ance of re­dun­dan­cies; and cen­tral­i­sa­tion of un­dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing back-of­fice ser­vices at the Vaduz lo­ca­tion
• The bundling and uni­form co­or­di­na­tion of VP Bank Group’s in­vest­ment fund ex­per­tise
• The con­tin­u­a­tion and broad­en­ing of the scope of the mea­sures adopted in con­nec­tion with the “Apollo” pro­ject and aimed at the ex­ploita­tion of po­ten­tial sources of sav­ings and syn­er­gies through­out VP Bank Group

Yet again in 2015, VP Bank will res­olutely pur­sue its growth strat­egy and ex­pects a fur­ther in­crease in the sig­nif­i­cance of digi­ti­sa­tion and reg­u­la­tory mea­sures in the fi­nan­cial in­dus­try.