Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Regional and smaller customer banks continue to make inroads in Swiss banking, with cooperative bank Raiffeisen boosting its share of the Swiss mortgage market to 15 percent. Mortgages were up 9.1 percent, an increase of CHF9.2 billion.
The company’s 2009 financial results, announced Friday 5 March, show a strong inflow of new client money: CHF110.7b, an increase of 6.4 percent. The bank’s profit rose by 14.4 percent to CHF645.4 million.
Raiffeisen is the country’s third largest bank, after UBS and Credit Suisse, and it is steadily gained ground in recent years.
Swiss households' real estate assets, now more transparent
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The net worth of Swiss households fell in 2008 from an average of CHF334,000 per capita to CHF312,000. About CHF200,000 of this is real estate and claims against insurance and pension plans. The drop in assets, the first since 2002, was due to sharp falls in stock market values. It would have been worse but for higher real estate values, which provided something of a safety net. Real estate assets, CHF1,315 billion in total, accounted for 43 percent of all household assets at the end of 2008, up from 39 percent the previous year.
Real estate prices climbed in 2008
The total value of households’ real estate rose by CHF73 billion in 2008.
The figures were released by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) Friday 20 November, as part of the national financial accounts. This is the first year that assets include households’ real estate. The report notes that:
“financial assets held by households declined by CHF199 billion (10.4%) to CHF1,718 billion, while assets held in real estate increased by CHF73 billion (5.9%) to CHF1,315 billion. Liabilities rose by CHF15 billion (2.4%) to CHF629 billion. As a result of these developments, households’ net worth fell by CHF 141 billion (5.5%) to CHF2,403 billion.”
Ireland is creating what is alternately described as a creative financial undertaking or a gamble: a national bank that will spend €54 billion to pay banks for mortgages to free up lending. The country’s property prices have fallen about 50 percent in the past 20 months and defaults on home loans are rising.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Irish Times, Nama
Home sweet home
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Home loans, which account for 90 percent of bank credits in Switzerland, have grown by 5.2 percent in the first nine months of 2009, with the rate of increase up most strongly since March. And while the rate of growth of corporate loans is down, they, too, continue to grow.
”There is no credit crunch,” Manuel Jetzer, Geneva region head of Credit Suisse declared at the annual press conference of the Geneva Financial Centre 14 October. “There is no credit contraction in Switzerland.”
Much of the thanks for this goes to the home loan business, which is benefiting from historically low interest rates, with some banks offering new loans for as low as 1.65 percent*.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mortgage loans in Switzerland, 40 percent of which are new construction loans, rose by 4.6 percent in July. They had been falling but began to rise after Swiss interest rates moved lower starting in November 2008, says the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Mortgage loans constitute 80 percent of all loans.
Loans other than mortgage loans fell by 1.6 percent in July, however.
St Gallen, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Raffeisen cooperative banking group, Switzerland’s third largest bank, continues to attract new clients at a strong pace, the same rhythm as in 2008, CEO Pierin Vincenz, told Fribourg newspaper La Liberté in an interview. The bank in 2008 increased its funds under management by nearly 11 percent and gained 158,000 new clients, partly as a result of the legal and financial problems of Credit Suisse and UBS, the two largest banks, last year.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Raiffeisen Bank consolidated its position as Switzerland’s third largest bank in 2008, with 158,000 new account holders and mortgages plus client deposits of more than CHF100 billion for the first time, it said in a press release Thursday 5 March.
Basel, Switzerland (romandie/afp, Fre) – Coop Bank is reducing its interest rate on new mortgages, effective immediately, to 2.625%. Existing mortgages will benefit from the change 1 April 2009.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two big US home loan companies bailed out early in the financial crisis, say they will suspend some foreclosures, which will force people to leave their homes, until early 2009, to give people more time to work out loan deals. Reuters
Swiss National Bank, 2008
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Household wealth, measured in terms of assets, grew more slowly in 2007 than in 2006, Swiss National Bank figures released this week show. Net financial assets per capita amounted to roughly
CHF171,000.
