In the Corona year 2020, online bank Swissquote benefited from the volatile development on the stock market and investors' eagerness to speculate. The company has set itself ambitious targets for the coming few years.
The year 2020 in many respects was exceptional for online bank Swissquote. The bank achieved strong growth rates and has achieved more than 400,000 accounts for the first time, according to a statement released on Thursday.
Client assets rose to a record 39.8 billion Swiss francs ($42.8 billion) thanks to an organic net new money inflow of 5.3 billion francs. Profitability remained at a high level, with a pretax profit margin of 33.3 percent. Not only did the bank exceed the revised forecast for 2020 significantly, but it also achieved the medium-term targets for 2022 by the end of the year.
Revised Forecast
Swissquote aims to go further, with its sight set for significant growth in the coming years. In 2021, Swissquote expects to increase revenues by more than 15 percent and pretax profit by 23 percent.
Last year, the cryptocurrency business increased by more than 150 percent to 16 million francs (previous year: 6.3 million francs). Custody assets in cryptocurrencies now amount to 1 billion francs.
Net profit doubled year-on-year to 91 million francs (previous year: 44.7 million francs) and exceeded expectations. This is attributable to strong organic growth and the increase in average client assets, which enabled Swissquote to demonstrate its operational strengths. At the end of 2020, 805 employees (plus 11.5 percent) worked for the bank.
Ambitions in Europe
The total number of accounts grew by 50,636 (plus 14.1 percent) to 410,248, which divided into 338,330 trading accounts (plus 20.1 percent), 19,037 savings accounts (minus 3.4 percent), 4,540 robo-advisory accounts (plus 35 percent) and 48,341 forex accounts (minus 11.7 percent).
Internaxx Bank, which Swissquote bought in 2019, was renamed into Swissquote Bank Europe following the migration of clients to the Swissquote platform. Since then, the expansion of its product offering has positioned Swissquote as the partner of choice for European clients. The migration introduced online trading for new exchanges and new products. Since the end of February this year, Swissquote Bank Europe has also been among the first banks in the eurozone to make cryptocurrency trading available to its clients.
Doubling of Profit
For 2021, Swissquote expects revenue growth of around 15 percent and pretax profit growth of 23 percent, thanks to strong net new money inflows and positive trading activity since the beginning of the year.
This growth momentum is expected to continue in the coming years thanks to an ambitious expansion strategy. Having already exceeded its medium-term targets for 2022 two years in advance, Swissquote is now aiming for record growth in 2024 with a revenue target of 500 million (2020: 321.8 million) and a pretax profit target of 200 million.
