PostFinance is the financial services unit of

Swiss Post Swiss Post (french: La Poste suisse, it, La Posta Svizzera, german: Die Schweizerische Post, rm, La Posta Svizra) is the national postal service of Switzerland. A public company owned by the Swiss Confederation, it is the country's second larg ...

which was founded in 1906. It is the fifth largest retail financial institution in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. Its main area of activity is in the national and international

payment A payment is the voluntary tender of money or its equivalent or of things of value by one party (such as a person or company) to another in exchange for goods, or services provided by them, or to fulfill a legal obligation. The party making the p ...

s and a smaller but growing part in the areas of

saving Saving is income not spent, or deferred consumption. Methods of saving include putting money aside in, for example, a deposit account, a pension account, an investment fund, or as cash. Saving also involves reducing expenditures, such as recur ...

pension A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...

s and

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...

. PostFinance is fully-owned by the Swiss government.Samuel Gerber
Postfinance: Why the End of the Ban Matters
''Finews.com'', 6 September 2018

History

In 2013, the

Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) is the Swiss government body responsible for financial regulation. This includes the supervision of banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges and securities dealers, as well as other ...

(FINMA) awarded PostFinance a bank licence. In 2015, PostFinance was declared a "

Systemically important financial institution A systemically important financial institution (SIFI) is a bank, insurance company, or other financial institution whose failure might trigger a financial crisis. They are colloquially referred to as "too big to fail". As the financial crisis o ...

" in Switzerland by the

Swiss National Bank The Swiss National Bank (SNB; german: Schweizerische Nationalbank; french: Banque nationale suisse; it, Banca nazionale svizzera; rm, Banca naziunala svizra) is the central bank of Switzerland, responsible for the nation's monetary policy an ...

, which means the bank must follow special regulations with regards to liquidity and equity. In 2016, PostFinance started to levy a 1% annual fee on deposits of above 1 million francs. In 2020, PostFinance's profits fell to 131 million Swiss francs (from 246 million in 2019 and 229 million francs in 2018) and its customers to 2.69 million (from 2.74 million in 2019). 129 jobs were cut to adjust to the revenue drop (500 jobs were also cut in 2018). In early 2021, the Swiss government was considering the privatization of the bank to allow it to act like a regular private financial institution (including granting mortgages and loans). This process would however imply changing the Postal Act and have the government back the bank's capital during a transition phase. In February 2022, the Russian oligarch and resident of Switzerland

Viktor Vekselberg Viktor Felixovich Vekselberg (russian: Виктор Феликсович Вексельберг, uk, Віктор Феліксович Вексельберг; born April 14, 1957) is a Ukrainian-born Russian–Israeli-Cyprus oligarch, billion ...

won a lawsuit against PostFinance after the bank had closed his account in 2018 following sanctions imposed on him by the US authorities.

Description

PostFinance has an AA+ credit rating from

Standard & Poor's S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is con ...

References

External links

* Banks of Switzerland Banks established in 1906 Swiss companies established in 1906 {{switzerland-stub