Notenstein La Roche recently has had a number of departures of executives. CEO Adrian Kuenzi is determined to see through the turnaround at the Raiffeisen unit despite the increase in personnel turnover. In an interview with finews.com, he says that he now plans to add new staff to make the turnaround a success.

Adrian Kuenzi, the departure of your CFO, Basil Heeb, is the latest in a string among top managers to be leaving the bank. There’s a sense of disintegration at your company. What explanation do you have for the increase in resignations?

We take a decidedly different view. Naturally, we regret the departures of good people. At the same time, we’ve selectively added excellent new people. We are very convinced about our strategy.

Rival banks are said to be successfully hiring among your relationship managers. What are you doing to fend off these advances?

Competition on the labor market is a good thing. With the measures that we’ve initiated, we are constructing a modern private bank, perfectly fit for the future.

«We have reached our cost targets»

The new service structure and centralized portfolio management is attractive to some relationship managers – and we have hired new relationship managers as well – others we lose, because they prefer to retain the old model. We had to take this into account. But we are convinced that our approach is the right one for the future.

Notenstein La Roche has announced job cuts, with more than 100 to go – creating uncertainty. Are you done with the savings?

The expenses targets – the reduction of costs by 20 percent, the lowering of the number of personnel to 400 and cutting the cost-income-ratio – have been reached already. It has been a challenging time for our staff. I’m very proud of how we achieved this together. Having reached the cost targets, we now have to focus on boosting our revenues. That means increasing staff in some areas.

The second part of your reconstruction focuses on revenue. What do you expect to do?

With the introduction of Avaloq’s core banking platform we will reach a milestone in the third quarter. Afterwards, efficiency gains will contribute to the increase in profitability.

«Relationship managers won't manage portfolios themselves»

Our new and more attractive offering will also contribute to earnings starting in 2018.

The renewal of the IT platform had been planned for the summer of 2017.

We took the decision to replace our entire IT platform last summer. The decision, whether to migrate to the new platform in July or in October will be taken in coming days. It will in any case be a most ambitious timing – our staff and external experts are working very hard at the project.

Back to the customer: what are your demands on a relationship manager in the new revenue model?

In connection with the overhaul of our offerings structure and procedures we expanded and developed further our portfolio management. That changed the role of our relationship managers.

How so?

In future, they won’t be managing portfolios themselves, but have more time to give advice to customers. They will use this time to build a complete picture about clients’ assets, enabling them to advise them comprehensively.

Originally, the idea had been to apply a broad use of a few standard mandates in private banking – how will you implement this idea?

This is not correct. We have developed an intelligent modular offering, with certain core elements that are recurrent.

«We want to work more closely with Raiffeisen»

However, for a bank of our size it is important to offer clients numerous possibilities for individual solutions. That way we are going much further than many of our competitors.

Your owner, Raiffeisen Switzerland, has immense distribution firepower. Will you make better use of this resource in future?

Yes, it is true that we want to work more closely with Raiffeisen in future. With the restructuring, we have created the perfect basis to become more visible to the client together with Raiffeisen.

Which means?

The product structure for instance is better in tune with Raiffeisen’s. Starting in 2018, we will assume all of Raiffeisen’s wealth-management mandates. And further steps will follow.

Adrian Kuenzi has been the chief executive officer of Notenstein La Roche private bank since 2012. The company emerged from Bank Wegelin & Co. Kuenzi had been a partner and member of the executive at Wegelin. He started his banking career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt. He studied finance at the University of St. Gallen.