Swiss banks ban travel by Private Bankers outside Switzerland

In some further interesting developments for Switzerland, towards its slowing banking stature, bankers have been cautious and in some cases banned from travelling.

This has to be very bad for Swiss banks to not allow their top private bankers to travel outside Switzerland.

Private Banking, by default, is a relationship driven business where Private Bankers must meet their clients for various reasons including strengthening relationships, providing personalized services & advice and review investment portfolios among other things. With the fear of prosecutions and arrests looming heavily over private bankers, the decision by many large banks, including UBS, not to allow their top private bankers to travel abroad especially in Europe is a clear sign of distress.

The US, French and German governments in particular have aggressively pursued UBS and other Swiss banks including banks from Bahamas etc to declare all undeclared private banking accounts. According to reliable estimates, there is over USD 11 trillion lying in Swiss banks. This amount is usually undeclared in the countries of citizens to whom it belongs. There is a very fine line between Swiss legal interpretation of Swiss banking secrecy and banking secrecy as defined in other countries around the world. This line seems to be breaking down or at the very least narrowing down causing troubles in the minds of many clients around the world who were cloaked in secrecy behind the Swiss laws.

The fact that bankers are scared to travel to meet their top clients is a scary thought and in future Swiss bankers will continue to loosen their legal veil of secrecy and hence continue to lose their assets to other nations especially if the private banker is unable to travel for fear of prosecution (which essentially means that something illegal was indeed being done) and if Switzerland is same as any other country such as London, Singapore, Dubai or any other offshore tax free nation, then all other tax free nations (for non residents) will receive more client assets than they have received previously and have strong laws to protect the client with an assurance of no taxes and of course, the anonymity (of not being on the radar of US and other Governments who currently are aggressively pursuing Switzerland).

Excerpt:

"The restrictions come ahead of next week’s Group of 20 summit where a clampdown on tax havens is set to be discussed.

Under pressure from other countries, Switzerland, which is estimated to account for about a third of the world’s $11,000bn in clandestine personal wealth, agreed this month to ease its bank secrecy laws and accept international standards on tax transparency."

Swiss banks ban top executive travel

In the Financial Times
By Richard Milne in Geneva
Published: March 26 2009 19:08 | Last updated: March 26 2009 19:08