The big two Swiss banks have taken strong measures to protect staff from the new coronavirus. Credit Suisse seems much tougher in its approach at this stage, finews.com can reveal. 

«Split work» is the concept applied by Credit Suisse as it bids to protect its operations: all teams that are key to the normal functioning of the bank have been split up and spread out, which reduces the risk of a partial shut-down of the bank due to coronavirus.

In Switzerland, more than a thousand employees have been affected by the measures, the company told finews.com. «Split work» was adopted for compliance, IT and trading operations. Staff have been moved to separate offices and will take weekly turn to work from home.

Two Banks – Two Strategies

With these measures, the Swiss unit of Credit Suisse took a similar approach as the Singapore office a little while ago, when it moved staff out of their existing offices and spread them out across various office blocks.

UBS isn’t yet going quite that far. At both companies, bankers who return from affected regions such as China, Singapore or Northern Italy are confined to working from home for two weeks. The banks have told staff to reduce their travel to the bare minimum.

A Sense of Normality Prevails

While UBS insists that home office in principal is possible for most of its staff, it hasn’t yet issued an order to do so. The normal working practices have been maintained for the time being, apart from the restrictions on travel.

UBS has a protocol to follow such procedures and has already introduced it at offices in China. But the bank evidently doesn’t yet judge the situation in Switzerland to be quite as bad to warrant such tough measures.

Preventing Confusion

With its approach, the bank is preventing the emergence of confusion among staff. At Credit Suisse, the various units initially responded in different ways to the new challenge. This seems to have caused some confusion at an early stage.

Both banks emphasized in their official statements that the protection of staff remained their top priority.