Prospective Swiss home-owners increasingly apply for their mortgages online, a survey has shown. But not all online services are truly digital.
Glarner Kantonalbank, a small regional bank, in 2012 started offering mortgages over the Internet. A number of other financial service companies have launched similar products since.
With 19 providers today, the volume of mortgages sold online has increased strongly since those early days, a survey by IFZ institute and e-foresight (study in German) showed.
Yet to Take Off
Swiss customers signed mortgages for an estimated 4 billion Swiss francs over the Internet in 2017, up from 2.45 billion in 2016 (see table in German below).
The study said that despite this growth, there was no exponential increase to be detected yet. Only some 2.6 percent of all mortgages are sold entirely or partially by using a digital channel. The fully digital contracts make up 1.3 percent of the total mortgage volume.
