The veteran of Credit Suisse tells finews.com how she wants to kickstart the private bank of Zurich's cantonal bank – and talks career prospects.
Florence Schnydrig Moser, after more than 20 years at Credit Suisse, what's the biggest difference you identify to working in a cantonal bank?
Let me start with what they have in common: Zuercher Kantonalbank is a universal bank with a highly professional similar offering and setup. A major difference is that ZKB is a Swiss bank, in Swiss ownership, and not publicly listed.
Can you describe what this Swissness means?
Swiss values like reliability, punctuality, honesty, and transparency are important. People – be they employees or clients – are our focus.
You've considered a management talent in Swiss finance, but ZKB has just named someone else as their new CEO. How are you coping with that?
Pretty well. Urs has a lot of experience in finance and banking and will continue ZKB's success story.
«I didn't apply for the CEO job»
I'm looking forward to working with him – especially in sustainability, a key topic for our clients, and where Zuercher Kantonalbank has a lot to offer.
Did you apply for the CEO job?
No. I started my current job in May and I want to spend the next few years developing ZKB's private banking activities and generating an impact for the bank with them.
At Credit Suisse, you were a product specialist. What's it like turning into a private banker?
I've come full circle in a way: as part of my product responsibilities, I frequently met with private clients along with their relationship managers. I can understand the things that clients need in terms of product strategy from another perspective – and thus better steer them.
Where does ZKB want to grow in wealth management?
The area is broad: it begins at 100,000 Swiss francs [$109,000] and goes up from there. That means retail, affluent, private banking, and ultra-high net worth clients are all served in the same unit.
«We're going to centralize leadership in Zurich»
Plus additionally external wealth managers as well. The biggest growth is in the ultra-high net worth space, with external asset managers, and private banking clients.
How do you reconcile these disparate areas?
We're going to centralize advice a bit more by unifying private bankers and ultra-high net worth advisers under a single leadership in Zurich. However, the advisory itself will still take place wherever the clients want it.
What do you hope to achieve by doing so?
Clients can be covered in a more team-based approach as opposed to an individual client adviser. A team might have investment expertise or someone who can advise on mortgages or credit. We can realize more growth with this approach.
What are your financial targets for private banking?
We're reevaluating those in connection with the focus I mentioned. We'll define next year how much growth, revenue, and market share we want to achieve.
How does ZKB's offering distinguish itself from the competition?
Our value proposition starts a lot earlier than at $50 million. We also have very rapid decision-making processes: we're not that large, we're close to each other, and work closely in teams.
«Roughly one-third of assets in private and corporate»
If a client adviser needs a major credit facility approved, that reaches my desk pretty quickly, I'm able to reach CEO Martin Scholl just as fast, and in turn he can reach the supervisory board.
What's the strategic significance of private banking for ZKB?
With roughly one-third of assets under management, corporate and private clients are hugely relevant for the bank. The private client business is a key pillar of revenue. It is diversified in terms of interest and investment income, which is important to the diversification of the entire bank.
How do you want to win clients outside of the canton of Zurich?
Absolutely not with physical branches. We can reach them primarily with digital channels and a relationship network in the economic area and beyond. Our corporate client business operates across Switzerland.
«Executives are potential clients for our private bank»
There are many executives there who are potential private clients for us. The pension app Frankly is another example of how ZKB can grow in wider Switzerland.
You were one of several female executives at Credit Suisse, now you are the only woman in top management. How are you cultivating a network here?
We're not where we want to be with this in the first and second line of leadership, but we're working on it. I've given this my strong backing and I think I can say for myself that I know the bank's top female talents. We support each other – this may not be visible from the outside.
What do you advise young women looking at a career in banking?
Switzerland is very proud of the possibility of part-time work. I would challenge younger women to imagine a professional athlete who wants to make it to the Olympics. Will a part-time training plan be enough, if your competitors are training full-time?
A rhetorical question. So you see part-time work as a hindrance to career development?
I would like to raise awareness of the fact that part-time jobs don't always work, and that we can't keep making new demands of companies in this respect.
«The more women advance in our careers, the more authority we win over our schedules»
If women work part-time too frequently and too long, they are losing work experience in the most relevant time of their careers – when both men and women are advancing.
What is the solution if Switzerland is lacking in affordable child-care?
I tell women: think hard about how long, how much, and precisely why you – and not your partner – want to work part-time. Why not four days per week for both? We often forget that the more we advance in our careers, the more authority we win over our schedules.
ZKB CEO Martin Scholl is not known as a fan of flexible work models.
ZKB offered work-from-home programs and flexible working hours even before the pandemic. Nevertheless, our opinion is that our culture demands we be close to individuals – clients as well as employees.
What is the standing of ZKB's foreign subsidiaries for you?
Even if the private banking branches in Austria – Vienna and Salzburg – make for a small portion of our overall business, they are meaningful.
«A cantonal bank cannot enter into any risks abroad»
It is important to me that we as a cantonal bank don't enter into any risk abroad. We also benefit from the expertise there, and it gives us market access to Germany – the most relevant and fastest-growing foreign market for ZKB.
Where do you see ZKB needing to catch up to the wider industry in digitization?
Today, a lot of information is stored in the brains of our client advisers. I'd like to work in a more data-based, client-oriented way, meaning that we offer the right product to the right client at the appropriate time for them. We need good data management to do that – this is something we're working on.
Florence Schnydrig Moser was named head of Zuercher Kantonalbank's private banking unit in May, after joining the state-backed lender at the start of the year. The 49-year-old Swiss banker was previously CEO of Swisscard, a credit card subsidiary of Credit Suisse. She worked for the Swiss bank in various functions in Zurich, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Melbourne from 2000, after earning a degree in mathematics from the prestigious École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL. Schnydrig Moser passed the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) examination and is vice-chair of women's Swiss business network Advance.
