The Swiss bank is realigning its leadership team and processes to accelerate organic growth and provide a more client-centric approach in anticipation of the growing demand for professional investment solutions and for individually tailored expert investment advice across all client groups.

Vontobel has announced a change in its operating model, which will be launched by the end of the year and will be implemented by the end of the first quarter of 2020. Under the new model, advisory expertise will be bundled within specialized client units.

At the same time, Vontobel intends to make targeted use of technology solutions to profit from the significant changes that are occurring in the way clients select and interact with financial services providers. These measures will allow Vontobel to generate new growth potential.

Investment and advisory competencies will be combined within ‘Centers of Excellence’ - a flat management structure and a performance evaluation system focused on ‘the achievement of shared success for clients’.

Technology and data

Wealth Management will continue to be headed by Georg Schubiger, head of wealth management at Vontobel. Wealth management services will be provided via technology-driven, digital models. External asset managers (EAMs) and other intermediaries will be offered Vontobel products and services by the Platforms & Services unit. In this area, Vontobel is seeking to become ‘the leading partner in Switzerland, Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore’.

The Swiss bank’s ‘Digital Investing’ hub is ‘an explicit challenger unit whose competencies can be offered to broader client groups either directly or via ecosystems’, stated the bank. This unit will also focus on the end-client business with structured products and complement it with a broader investment perspective.

Platforms such as deritrade or EAMnet and proprietary robo technology will continue to operate in these areas, ‘placing an emphasis on client needs’. Both of these units will report directly to Zeno Staub.

Client and investment experts will be supported by the bank’s specialists at the new ‘Technology & Services Center’ headed by Felix Lenhard. This area will provide access globally to an infrastructure that is geared towards client-centric, end-to-end processes. At the same time, the ‘Marketing & Analytics Center’ headed by Patrick Farinato will support organic growth across all client groups. Client services will be managed by Brian Fischer.

Structuring expertise

Production expertise in the field of structured products will be combined within the ‘Structured Products Center’.

Markus Pfister, former chief operating officer (COO) at Vontobel’s structured products business, will take over the management of the structured products unit at the start of 2020. The structured products unit will also be responsible for the further development of ‘cosmofunding’ - one of the leading Swiss ecosystems for financing.

As part of its efforts to focus on the investment business, Vontobel will exit its pure capital markets business. Zürcher Kantonalbank is in talks with Vontobel to fully acquire the equity brokerage activities, with the corresponding employees of Bank Vontobel Europe AG in London. The parties have reached an agreement on key aspects of the acquisition. The completion of the transaction is planned for the fourth quarter of 2020.

Advisory

The Swiss bank is also seeking to attract more UHNWIs with a new advisory philosophy targeting entrepreneurs and decision-makers from the SME segment..

Asset Management, which is headed by Axel Schwarzer, will continue to focus primarily on institutional clients such as pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds, as well as third-party banks in the wholesale fund business.

The bank’s additional regional growth ambitions are targeted at the US, Japan and selected European markets such as France. The provision of services to the ‘Global Banks’ client group will be coordinated globally to address the significant growth potential in this area.

As Vontobel prepares to transition to the new model, Roger Studer, head of investment banking, will focus on non-operational duties from 2020.

After around 12 years as head of investment banking and a member of the executive board, Studer has taken the realignment of Vontobel as an opportunity to relinquish his operational responsibilities in order to assume a non-operational role. Studer will retain his ties to the bank through his role as a member of the supervisory board of Bank Vontobel Europe AG, which is headquartered in Munich. He will also continue as vice president of the European Structured Investment Products Association (Eusipa).

Studer, who began his career at Vontobel in 1984, and his team are primarily known in the public arena due to the success of the structured products business. Under Studer’s tenor, the Swiss bank became a leading provider of structured products in its Swiss home market and its international markets, and developed Deritrade and Cosmofunding as successful digital platform solutions. The business was expanded selectively in recent years, with its debut in European and Asian markets.

2019 activity

Vontobel reported a 30% increase in the volume of structured products and debt instruments outstanding (excluding leverage products) in the first half of 2019 to CHF10.3 billion (US$10.4 billion) compared to the end of 2018.

In January 2019, the bank debuted a range of leverage products in the Danish market and in Hong Kong – the world’s largest derivatives market – it achieved a market share of 1.3% in 1H2019 from 441 structured warrants. In the first half of 2019, Vontobel Investment Banking introduced an ESG label for structured products that designates sustainable underlyings that have been evaluated according to environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.

“With his expertise and entrepreneurial spirit, Roger Studer made a significant contribution to Vontobel’s success in recent years. He helped to write an important chapter in Vontobel’s history. On behalf of my colleagues and the Board of Directors, I wish to express my considerable thanks to Roger Studer. We wish him all the very best and every success with his future plans and we are pleased that he will continue to be associated with the company,” stated Zeno Staub (pictured), CEO of Vontobel.