There can hardly be a more mundane institution than the Swiss Post Office. So when its financial services arm talks about launching a “radically new” digital banking strategy, people tend to sit up and take notice. Fresh on the heels on its somewhat cryptic “Banking & Beyond” announcement last month, PostFinance has started to give out details. The first nugget of information is that it will collaborate with digital trading platform Swissquote on this new project. Swissquote has enjoyed considerable success with digital finance in the last few years and has a banking license. This last point is important. PostFinance also has a banking license, but it’s more a “license with strings”. Because the entity is state-owned (hence subsidised) it cannot grant loans or mortgages on its own balance sheet. It needs partners to offer these services. This is a problem for the “bank” that has 2.7 million customers and CHF120 billion in client assets, making it a “too big to fail” financial...
