PostFinance: Higher profit and increase in customer assets

Last year, the profit or PostFinance (EBT) compared to the previous year increased by 16 to 591 billion francs (+ 2.8 percent). 116,000 new customers gave the financial institution their trust and opened 257,000 new accounts. The total number of accounts at the end of December therefore was 4.34 million (+ 6.3 percent). The associated inflow of new money of about 8.2 billion francs increased the customer assets to 92.2 billion francs (+ 9.6 percent). The main reasons for the good result were cost discipline and the performance of interest business. Interest performance after value adjustment remained at nearly the previous year's level (1,044 million francs), reaching 1,024 million francs in spite of the difficult situation at the financial markets.

PostFinance important for the national economy
In a situation difficult for the industry, PostFinance once again created 157 new full-time jobs last year (+ 4.8 percent). The financial institution now employs 3,917 throughout the country, equivalent to 3,422 full-time jobs. The number of employees has increased continually for years. In 1998 – one year after PostFinance was founded – the company had 1610 full-time jobs. Since then 139 new full-time jobs have been created per year on average, so that the number has now more than doubled. Last year PostFinance processed 907 million transactions, which corresponds to an average of 2.48 million each day, 103,523 each hour, 1,725 each minute or 29 each second. This shows that PostFinance is important for the economy; about half of all transactions performed in Switzerland take a yellow payment channel.

Towards being subject to FINMA’s controllership
The parliament passed a new post organisation law on 17 December 2010. Among other things, it stipulates that PostFinance is to be turned into a public company and subject to the controllership of FINMA. Preparations for the new legal form and subjection are currently underway. PostFinance will receive an board of directors and internal auditing. PostFinance AG will have equity according to the requirements of financial market law. The amount and time of provision will be determined by FINMA. The independent provision of credit will continue to be denied to PostFinance according to the parliamental decision.


Contact: Die Schweizerische Post Viktoriastrasse 21 3030 Bern Telefon: 0848 888 888 Fax: 0844 888 888 E-Mail: kundendienst@post.ch

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