For professional investors, gold is an important building block in a diversified portfolio. Precious metals dealer Philoro is now working more closely with banks and financial institutions in Switzerland.
Precious metals dealer Philoro is now serving banks, asset managers, and other institutions such as family offices in Switzerland. «To be quite honest, the pressure to build up this business segment came more from the outside,» Philoro Switzerland CEO Christian Brenner tells finews.com.
In particular, asset managers and smaller banks increasingly have approached the company in Switzerland, he said. «We feel an increasing demand for this service in Switzerland and now want to position ourselves in the institutional sector with similar success as in retail trading,» the Vienna native explains.
Building a Team
To this end, Gold Group has set up an «Institutional Clients» division in Switzerland. The four-person team is headed by Marco Fiorini, who joined Philoro in June. «He is an accomplished industry expert and already brings with him numerous contacts with institutional investors,» says Brenner.
Fiorini has over 20 years of experience in sales and business development in the Swiss financial and asset management industry. Among other things, he was a long-standing managing director and member of the board of directors at the firm Carmignac Switzerland. Before that, he worked for Clariden Leu Asset Management and Julius Baer Investment Funds Services.
Banks Lose Knowledge
In Switzerland, Philoro wants to «approach the business with institutional investors more proactively» in the future and «grow profitably.» Brenner is focusing on organic growth and is convinced that more financial companies will approach Philoro. «Many banks are outsourcing gold trading,» he says, resulting in lost know-how to some extent in the banking industry which is why lending houses are increasingly looking for partners in the precious metals sector, he adds. Philoro also supports financial institutions with industry-specific training.
«For banks, the gold trading business segment has perhaps become somewhat unattractive because margins are in the two to three percent range,» Brenner explains. As a specialized precious metals trader, Philoro can add value for its partners by allowing the group to operate more cheaply in physical trading. «A smaller Swiss bank has already completely outsourced gold trading to us,» and such a model could set a precedent, he says.
Austrian Role Model
Particularly in Austria, institutional investor business has been established for some time. More than 50 banks rely on Philoro's service in all aspects of precious metals trading.
«Wholesale accounts for about one-third of total sales in Austria,» Brenner notes. «Our wholesale platform is very successful in our home market, and we now want to transfer this business model to Switzerland as well.»
