The Swiss banking landscape has been thrust into the spotlight in recent months as global jurisdictions make their case to be the wealth hubs of the future.
Credit Suisse’s collapse – and subsequent rescue by UBS – heralded a torrent of media speculation about whether Switzerland will retain the appeal it once held.
Swiss government proposals to impose even tougher capital requirements on its banks are designed to restore trust in Swiss financial institutions but have been criticised by potentially curbing the competitiveness of Swiss banks, globally.
However, the naysayers have overlooked the bold creativity of Swiss banks.
They have a rich history of serving up clever investment solutions that meet the needs of ultra-high net worth investors. The also have a solid track record of opening “satellite” operations near to where their clients are based, ensuring their international reach is broad.
When market participants think of the Swiss banking landscape they likely think of UBS, Zurich Cantonal, Lombard Odier, Julius Baer or Vontobel, but smaller Swiss challengers are rapidly rising in visibility.
Challenging the norm
Amina Bank is a relatively new brand on the Swiss landscape. Formerly known as Seba Bank, the company launched a brand new identity on 1 December 2023. Since then, the bank has wasted no time building out its global presence.
The architect behind much of this is Myles Harrison, the group’s chief product officer. Harrison spent the early years of his career in the traditional world of retail banking at Santander, working in London and the US.
Having overseen the launch of the new brand, Harrison has now been tasked with growing the bank’s customer base across all global markets, including supporting an aggressive push into the Asia Pacific region, with the group’s new operation in Hong Kong.
His challenge at Amina is very different to the origins of his career at Santander, as the group offers banking and investment services in traditional finance and crypto.
“On the traditional side, it is a hybrid of digital and event-based marketing and it can be a little easier to profile,” he explains.
“With crypto, because they are a bit more pseudonymous, it requires a different approach and more work. For digital, this means understanding where they are, so they can consume our messaging.”
Harrison says Amina’s target market includes both traditional investors and crypto natives, which the bank then segments down even further.
“Traditional investors, which we classify as high net worths, professional investors, family offices and hedge funds are a target if they are looking to diversify their portfolios,” he explains.
“On the other side we have crypto natives – individuals that have made their wealth through Web3 or crypto and crypto corporates including exchanges, software companies and crypto mining companies.
“Breaking out these two personas and working on both the product and marketing strategy, based on their needs and behaviours takes work, but it allows us to identify opportunities to introduce the brand and progress from awareness into a decision.”
Harrison says crypto natives are very sensitive to the authenticity of the messaging and this has shaped both the approach and preferred methods of distribution that the group has opted for.
“It has to feel a lot less like forced advertising. It has to be more authentic,” he says.
“Things like community forums are a great way for us to get our message across. Crypto natives often go through word of mouth and recommendations, so through marketing on these platforms, we try to create advocates.”
Juggling priorities
Balancing the regulatory requirements of a Swiss bank with the marketing approach most appreciated by crypto natives is a difficult jugging act, but the group are determined to operate at the highest possible regulatory standards, even if that sometimes curbs what is possible with their marketing outreach.
To achieve this, Harrison and his marketing colleagues frequently meet with the subject matter experts and the compliance, legal and sales teams to agree their approach.
“We start with the company objective and keep that at the forefront of the conversation,” he explains. “We use that objective to try and push our teams to find a way, even if we need to make trade-offs.
“Then, we drill it. If we do anything on social media, we can only talk about the bank in general terms. If we do paid campaigns, we can talk about products and services, but it depends on the country as to the rules we have to play by.”
Part of operating as a multi-jurisdictional marketer means being able to identify the countries that hold the most value and spending time to work with the legal and compliance teams to understand the permissible messaging in those most lucrative regions.
Moving abroad
Amina’s global push over the past year has taken it aggressively into the APAC region, with the appointment of Amy Yu as chief executive and an operating licence from the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong. Yu brought decades of experience as a career banker, with previous positions at JP Morgan, Nomura and UBS.
For Harrison, the successful first months – and subsequent onboarding of initial clients in Asia – brings a host of new challenges which need to be considered in the next wave of promotion.
He says: “We are looking to make sure we have the right expertise to support our overall global strategy, recognising that in order to be able to execute for Amina HK, we need individuals in the product and marketing team that understand the region and regional user behaviour. They must be in touch with the local market.
“Elsewhere, we have a drive to improve how our customers interact with us through our digital channels. We are investing heavily in our online and mobile banking and from a strategy perspective.”
Amina’s chief product officer gives an honest appraisal of where Amina – and its legacy brand Seba Bank – have been on their journey, but says that the marketing operation is becoming more sophisticated as it starts to expand its international reach.
“The company has historically been sales-led with a small bit of marketing, but we want to have a greater balance of being sales-led, marketing-led and product-led. We want to show how product and marketing can work together and, where appropriate, without requiring sales.”
The bank’s decision to create a chief product officer role raised eyebrows among some of his peers, Harrison explains, but says it is a logical development for a group with Amina’s aspirations.
“Old school banks don’t have chief product officers and people sometimes ask me to describe my role.
“If you use the analogy of a football team. The chief product officer is effectively the playmaker. The sales team are the strikers and your defenders are compliance and legal. Audit are the goal keeper.
“This means the chief product officer has to work with the whole of the rest of the team – the whole of the bank – to formulate a product that can be taken to market and can be successful and refined over time, that is what will help achieve the banks goals.”