Swissquote has attracted a fair number of new customers last year and increased its profit substantially. The company aims to become Switzerland's largest digital bank by 2020.

Swissquote, a Swiss online bank, had net income of 20.8 million francs in 2016, up from 2.1 million a year earlier. Profit in 2015 was negatively affected by an extraordinary provision following the lifting of the fixed level of the euro to the franc by the Swiss central bank, a decision that online trading banks struggled to cope with.

Pretax profit declined 5.4 percent to 23.2 million francs in 2016, the company said in a statement today. Swissquote spent more money on marketing and the provision of financial information content.

The negative interest rates also affected the company’s profits. Swissquote was forced to pay 4.1 million francs to the central bank last year.

«Latent Reluctance to Trade»

Swissquote cited a «latently discernible reluctance to trade on the part of clients» in its report, reason for which it had issued a profit warning in November 2016. Net fee and commission income still increased 4.4 percent to 69.5 million francs. The positive result was driven by the accounts transferred by PostFinance, the growing significance of ePrivate Banking and successful trading in derivative products via Swiss Dots.

The online bank had a good year not least due to an increase in customers, with the number of accounts rising 31 percent to 302,775. Total client asset increased 55 percent to 18.6 billion francs, mainly due to the transfer of PostFinance accounts.

Unchanged Dividend

Swissquote has taken a major step forward in 2016 thanks to the cooperation with PostFinance, the finance unit of the Swiss post corporation. In coming years, Swissquote aims to drive further organic growth by offering a technology and broker function for selected partners. At the same time, the development of digital solutions taps into the current trend toward digitization.

The bank wants to open 100,000 new client accounts by 2020 to make it Switzerland’s largest digital bank.

Swissquote proposes to make an unchanged distribution of 0.60 francs per share for 2016.