Raiffeisen was successful in 2024. The decline in profits was expected.
Autonomous driving with Raiffeisen: The cooperative flourishes – no matter who leads it
The mortgage bank has not had a permanent boss since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, it continues to grow robustly and quickly. But how much of success does Raiffeisen owe himself and how much of Switzerland?
Raiffeisen-Bank's shops are going well.
« Raiffeisen achieved a very good result in 2024. » The long -time CFO Christian Poerschke, CEO Ad Interim since the beginning of the year, shows at the balance sheet media conference that he can not only explain numbers, but also understand their quality to sell the public. This is one of the core tasks of a CEO, and Poerschke is of course a candidate for this job. Heinz Huber had hung it up completely unexpectedly and abruptly in December to hire as president at the Graubündner Kantonalbank in July.
Poerschke would like to do it
Poerschke indicates the necessary reluctance that he would like the position as CEO. He has been with Raiffeisen for twenty years, including Huber's deputy for three years. He loves to work for Raiffeisen. It remains to be seen whether the board of directors can be convinced of the implicit motivation letter. The cooperative with its 218 legally independent banks has been strongly democratized again since the times of overwhelming Pierin Vincenz as head of the St. Gallen headquarters. The hand behind the hand is mentioned as candidates for the CEO job because of a striking number of names of local princes from the regions.
Which profile a head of the Raiffeisen group must have is not clear at least for outsiders. Pierin Vincenz was the charismatic leadership type, Heinz Huber was more of a quiet. Obviously, Raiffeisen can thrive under both types. With its 12,678 employees last year, the group remained 13 percent behind the recorder result of the previous year with a profit of CHF 1.2 billion. But this decline does not surprisingly come against the background of the interest reversal initiated by the National Bank in spring 2024.
The SNB reduced the key interest rate from 1.75 percent to currently 0.5 percent and thus ensured a decline in interest income for all classic loan banks. Raiffeisen partially compensated for this decline by increasing the loan volume by almost 4.7 percent to CHF 233 billion. Around 95 percent of this is due to mortgage -covered demands. The market share of Raiffeisen in the Swiss mortgage business rose from 17.8 percent to 18.1 percent in the reporting year.
The company confirms that the downfall of Credit Suisse also brought Raiffeisen many new customers and additional growth is confirmed by the company and can also be seen from the published figures. Almost 2.1 million cooperators – 1.8 percent more than in the previous year, a market share (15.1 percent) increasing in the customer deposits and 5,000 new corporate customers. The numbers speak for themselves and the trend should continue for a while.
Who inherits the CSX customers?
In Switzerland, Credit-Suisse customers are still facing integration into the UBS. Of the more than 300,000 CS customers who had used the free range CSX tailored to simple needs at the end of 2022, many could still seek the jump to another bank in the current and next year, provided that it can come up with an equivalent or even better offer.
Apparently Raiffeisen also had this audience in mind when the development of a “super app” was set. But the dream of simple, fast and inexpensive banking on the cell phone has burst at Raiffeisen for the time being. At the media conference, Poerschke did not want to say how much the bank of the approximately CHF 500 million was directed into the Super app for strategic IT investments. At least he said that it must have been a large amount.
Raiffeisen is still successful. However, the question is what proportion of this success the bank and your staff can attribute to yourself and how much you fall through through cheap, economic and demographic developments. No doubt: the persistently strong immigration is a strong driver of the mortgage business, as well as the deep interest rate level. The still robust economy, the high and stable income of many households and the strong balance sheets of companies prevent losses and value adjustments on the credit portfolio.
At the moment everything looks like that when Raiffeisen would certainly go forward without a chauffeur. However, the real possibilities of autonomous driving will probably only become visible when the system is tested in traffic by more chaos. The uncertain political and economic world situation makes the occurrence of this case more likely than in the past.
