In every respect, the pandemic in 2020 challenged us, gave us food for thought and showed that a good dose of humility, persistence and solidarity go a long way in times of crisis. We would therefore like to start this year’s foreword to the 111th annual report of Bank CIC with two big thank-yous:
Thank you to our valued clients, who placed their trust in us again in 2020 and impressively underscored this with a rise in business volume of CHF 3 billion and a new asset growth of over CHF 2 billion. Our clients are at the heart of what we do and motivate us to offer security and reliability in these challenging times.
We would also like to thank our employees, whose tireless commitment, presence and tailored solutions achieved extraordinary things in an extraordinary year, earning and justifying the trust of our clients. Our employees are the essential part of our bank; they make us special and allow us to develop in partnership with our clients.
The pandemic pushed our society to its limits in 2020. Bank CIC acted like an entrepreneur, and devoted its attention to existing clients and their issues. We made coronavirus bridging loans available to our clients literally overnight – that is our flexibility. We have been there for our clients unreservedly and without interruption – that is our commitment. We were the first bank to introduce multibanking with payment transactions – that is digital transformation and innovation. We have significantly expanded our social and cultural commitments in order to support in particular those individuals who have been severely affected by the pandemic – that is long-term partnership. This focus slowed down our growth in client numbers, but cooperation with clients became even more intensive and there was a sharp rise in volumes per client.
Total assets rose to CHF 11.6 billion and interest, commission and trading income were up between 2% and 25%. At the same time we pursued our digitalisation strategy, which bore fruit amongst other things in our omnichannel approach and the smooth switch to 70% working from home. Personnel costs and material costs were up again accordingly, but income increased far more strongly. Overall we boosted operating profit considerably to CHF 48.9 million, with net profit up slightly to CHF 34.2 million.
The operating progress is pleasing, but 2020 highlighted the risks in our globalised world. That’s why it is crucial for us that our bank has stood on solid foundations for over 100 years, and we further strengthened these in 2020. Hence we maintained our prudent risk policy, quadrupling our risk provisioning and also increasing the reserves for general banking risks to CHF 57.5 million. Our shareholder Crédit Mutuel Group, one of the best capitalised banking groups in Europe, also invested a further CHF 30 million in our bank; we therefore strengthened our total capital by almost CHF 70 million in 2020.
Marie Curie once said,
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
We do not want to rest on past successes and challenges overcome. We want to learn from them and tackle the future. The future always involves uncertainty and it is our job to avoid risks and seize opportunities by pursuing a prudent business policy and providing skilled support to our clients. Along the way, let us not forget virtues like appreciating nature and the environment, deliberately keeping up social contacts and taking pleasure in small things - let’s keep them up. The only way to successfully shape the future is to see social developments and regulatory changes as an opportunity and combine them with clear values.
We are still here for our clients in 2021. We want to understand our clients, offer them individual and customised solutions that fit the circumstances, minimise risks and maximise opportunities; that is our promise for the future. We are confident that the threatening dark clouds of the pandemic and economic performance will clear away and we look forward to accompanying you along a sustainable path in the future.