Swiss Post’s PostFinance becomes 100bn franc bank

Swiss Post’s banking arm, PostFinance, is now managing customer assets valued at more than 100bn Swiss francs for the first time in its history. The company said trust in its postal banking agency remains on a real high, with 34,000 new customers opening accounts in the first quarter of 2012 – almost double the number for the whole of 2011.

PostFinance now has 2.85m customers in all, who between them have CHF 101.9bn ($110.5bn USD) saved up in the postal bank, an increase of CHF 9.7bn ($10.5bn) on the average for 2011.

Swiss Post said PostFinance is now the third largest financial institute in the Swiss retail market.

PostFinance’s own financial operations are largely stable, with the first three months of 2012 bringing in CHF 178m ($193m USD) in profit, just a fraction shy of the CHF 181m ($196m) seen a year ago.

Swiss Post said the slight drop was from increasing its personnel expenditure, however, the bank has been facing pressure on its interest margins owing to the current difficult trading in the financial markets.

In 2012, the postal bank is expecting lower earnings than in 2011.

e-Finance

Almost half of PostFinance’s customers are now managing their finances electronically through the postal bank’s online platform, e-Finance.

Swiss Post said its 1.38m online customers meant the company was “number one” in Swiss online banking, an achievement that came thanks to various efforts to make it as simple as possible for users to manage their own finances online.

PostFinance has recently set up a personal financial tool that automatically processes customers’ income and expenses, and has more than 28,000 users, while its new “virtual piggy bank”, e-moneybox, has gained 22,000 customers in only three weeks.

The e-moneybox service rounds up any purchase made on a customer’s PostFinance card, with the rounding amount placed into a special personal savings account, to be put aside “for your small dreams or to make others happy”.