The private bank Maerki Baumann & Co. AG and the transaction bank InCore Bank AG are among the pioneers of a new banking era. Read the joint interview to find out what digital assets are all about, why they are so important and what the CEOs of both companies expect from them.
Interviewee: Dr Stephan A. Zwahlen, CEO / Medium: Crypto Valley Journal

Almost every tangible asset can be made into an investment object accessible to investors by means of tokenization. Of course, the question arises whether it makes sense to subject fruits, for example, to this process. Our short article highlights the decisive advantages of tokenization and its possibilities for investors.

Developments at Maerki Baumann & Co. AG and the vision for digital assets. An interview with Dr Stephan A. Zwahlen in the magazine “Building Blocks” of Crypto Finance.
Interviewee: Dr Stephan A. Zwahlen / Medium: Building Blocks of Crypto Finance 

The extraordinary situation in Switzerland and the associated restrictions to mobility have spurred Maerki Baumann into accelerating the digitization of the bank’s business model. With immediate effect, prospective new clients can confirm their identity from home thanks to a straightforward – and, above all, secure – process based on digital/video identification.

They come with enticing names such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, do cryptocurrencies deliver what they promise?

The pandemic is sparking a renewed wave of consolidation but also impetus for innovation, Maerki Baumann CEO Stephan Zwahlen tells finews.ch. Business models will need to adapt.
Interviewee: Dr. Stephan A. Zwahlen / Medium: finews.ch

The pandemic is sparking a renewed wave of consolidation but also impetus for innovation, Maerki Baumann CEO Stephan Zwahlen tells finews.ch. Business models will need to adapt.
Interviewee: Dr. Stephan A. Zwahlen / Medium: finews.ch

The pandemic is sparking a renewed wave of consolidation but also impetus for innovation, Maerki Baumann CEO Stephan Zwahlen tells finews.ch. Business models will need to adapt.
Interviewee: Dr. Stephan A. Zwahlen / Medium: finews.ch

The pandemic is sparking a renewed wave of consolidation but also impetus for innovation, Maerki Baumann CEO Stephan Zwahlen tells finews.ch. Business models will need to adapt.
Interviewee: Dr. Stephan A. Zwahlen / Medium: finews.ch

Our client advisors have many years of experience in dealing with private clients and their individual needs. They are in contact with our clients on a daily basis – be it by telephone or in person. After all, trust is the foundation of any relationship stretching across generations. And we have now gone a step further: Our entire advisory process has been clearly structured, with our client advisors certified on that basis at the end of last year by the company Gsponer Management Consulting.

Quite a few younger people regard private banks as a bit fossilized. Maerki Baumann would like to prove that needn’t be the case. In addition to the mobile app that is about to be rolled out, the private bank also plans to launch a crypto offering on the market.
Interviewee: Milko Hensel / Medium: 10x10 Next Generation Invest (available in German only)

This year’s key event of the German blockchain community, the Crypto Assets Conference, took place under somewhat difficult circumstances on 9 and 10 March 2020. Professor Philipp Sandner, Director of the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, and his team succeeded in organizing an attractive event, which involved a number of talks and discussion panels. The focus of the event was regulation of the crypto ecosystem.

The advance of digitization is bringing about massive change. With their disruptive effects, innovative information technologies are among the key drivers of this transformation. Blockchain technology is one such innovative technology that has the potential to bring about a lot of change.
Author: Lukas S. Risi / Medium: Persönlich (available in German only)

On 30 January 2020 an article appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about the returns earned by investors in 2019. Zurich firm ZWEI Wealth, which brings transparency to performance, products and costs in the field of wealth management, analysed the results achieved by 85 banks and wealth managers. Maerki Baumann & Co. AG was among the companies to disclose its numbers — and scored well.

We had the pleasure to attend and speak at the incredibly well curated and organised Crypto Finance Conference, the most prestigious and private crypto finance and blockchain conference for investors, which took place in January 2020 in St. Moritz. The name of the conference did not do justice to the content, knowledge transfer and thought-leading presentations that we witnessed. The discussions would have been just as good a fit in a conference devoted to innovation, entrepreneurship, future of finance or digitisation.

As dramatic changes shake up the country’s financial activities and banks come in for hefty criticism of their business practices, Swiss private banking is finding itself under considerable pressure. Given the magnitude of the entrepreneurial challenges they face, what is perhaps most surprising is the half-hearted way in which some financial institutions are going about adapting their business models. In the midst of the mêlée, however, at least a few smaller banks have recognized the signs of the times and aligned their activities rigorously with the needs of their clients. When looking for this kind of bank, it is worth adopting a systematic approach.

No other industry has come in for such a barrage of criticism as the banking sector in recent years. Clients, regulators and bankers themselves, but also politicians, consultants and the scientific community all want to have their say in the heated debate about banks’ business practices. A ubiquitous media presence and the highly charged emotional atmosphere underscore the controversial nature of the discussion in which broad swathes of society have participated. Nor should we be surprised at the widespread feeling of discontent, given the profound uncertainty triggered by recent ructions on the financial markets.