Revolut wants to drive growth in Switzerland
Published: Tuesday, Oct 29th 2024, 07:10
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The British fintech Revolut wants to accelerate its growth in Switzerland and has set itself ambitious goals. The accounts of Swiss customers are also gradually being transferred from the British Revolut unit to the European Revolut Bank UAB based in Lithuania.
An "important milestone" is the new offering of a "broad range of investment products" on the Swiss market, the financial company announced on Tuesday. However, the offering initially only includes EU and US equities as well as European fund products. However, the product portfolio is to be successively supplemented with further offerings, it said.
250,000 new customers annually
Revolut, which has been operating in Switzerland since 2017, says it already has "well over 900,000 private customers" and more than 10,000 corporate customers in this country. This puts the British fintech well ahead of its domestic "neobank" competitors: the financial app "Yuh", for example, has over 250,000 users and "Neon" over 200,000.
Switzerland is an "important and strategic market" for Revolut, Julian Biegmann, General Manager for Revolut in Switzerland, told the news agency AWP. "Our goal is to acquire at least 250,000 new customers per year." The financial app is already registering around 500 to 600 new users every day.
Active recruitment
The rapid growth in Switzerland in recent years was achieved through "word-of-mouth" advertising. Revolut Bank UAB has now had an "official representative office" in Switzerland since the middle of this year. The representative office in Zurich is to be expanded to ten employees by next year.
Thanks to a Finma license as a local "representative office", Revolut (Switzerland) can now do what the Swiss supervisory authority had previously prohibited the British fintech from doing: namely actively recruiting customers.
Increasingly becoming the main bank
In principle, most users in Germany are likely to use the Revolut offering as a supplement to their main bank's offering. With the expansion of its product range, Revolut wants to increasingly become the main bank instead of just being a second or third bank for customers, says Biegmann.
The newly launched investment products can initially only be used by new Swiss customers who have already been admitted to the Lithuanian Revolut Bank UAB. Existing customers, on the other hand, will have to move their accounts from the British unit to the EU-regulated bank in the coming months. However, no one should be pressured into switching in the short term.
Revolut, which was founded in 2015, has experienced rapid growth not only in Switzerland but also internationally. As at mid-2024, the financial company had 45 million customers in 38 countries. In 2023, income climbed by a good 95 percent to 1.8 billion pounds (2.03 billion Swiss francs) - not least thanks to the favorable interest rate environment - and net profit amounted to 344 million pounds.
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