From peak to plateau: banks, branches and employees since 1990

The late boom and the paradox of the 1990s

When the period covered by Part D of this book ended, the Ticino banking market was still growing. Berbenni's figure of 44 banking institutions with more than 7,000 employees in 1982 marks the end of the lira economy described in Chapter D.II and the beginning of a phase in which foreign banks, above all Italian, French and other continental groups, opened subsidiaries and branches in Lugano.¹ The 1990s brought a paradox. In Switzerland as a whole the number of banks began to fall from 1990 onwards, when the real estate crisis forced the disappearance of many regional and savings banks and the big banks absorbed their weaker competitors. In Ticino the decline of institutions began only in 2008.² For almost two decades the canton thus moved against the national trend. Domestic consolidation removed local institutions while foreign groups added new ones, attracted by the stock of Italian private wealth held in the canton, by the possibility of serving Italian clients from a Swiss booking centre in the Italian language and, after 1999, by the first effects of European monetary union, which made the lira disappear as a currency risk but not the Italian clients' distrust of their own tax system.

By 2006 the ABT grouped 33 banks as members, a figure that counts only member institutions and not every bank with a presence in the canton.³ The statistics of the Swiss National Bank as evaluated by Chopard show 75 institutions in 2007 and 77 in 2008, the highest number recorded in the published series. In 2008 foreign-controlled banks represented about 62 per cent of all banking institutions present in Ticino, and stock exchange banks, which in Swiss bank statistics are institutions specializing in securities trading, investment and asset management, made up about one fifth.⁴ The Ticino banking system of 2008 was therefore more international and more specialized than the Swiss system as a whole, which was dominated in numbers by cantonal, regional and Raiffeisen banks.

The contraction of 2009 to 2017

The contraction that followed was rapid. In 2009 the number of banks fell to 73, in 2010 to 72, in 2011 to 64 and in 2012 to 56. Employment fell from 7,619 in 2008 to 7,361 in 2009, 7,046 in 2010, 6,856 in 2011 and 6,543 in 2012.⁵ The causes are discussed in detail in Chapter E.II: the third Italian scudo fiscale of 2009, the Swiss acceptance of the OECD standard on exchange of information in March 2009, the pressure from the Italian blacklist and the presumptions introduced by Art. 12 of Decree-Law no. 78 of 1 July 2009, the failed attempt to negotiate a withholding tax agreement with Italy on the model of the "Rubik" agreements with the United Kingdom and Austria, and finally the Roadmap of 23 February 2015 that opened the way to Italian voluntary disclosure. In the words of Chopard and his co-authors, the Ticino system was hit both by the general crisis of Swiss private banking and by the specific weight of Italian clients, whose regularized assets could be repatriated or transferred to banks in Italy.⁶

By 2014 the number of banks had fallen to 50, with 6,315 employees. Foreign-owned banks then employed 2,083 persons, or 33 per cent of bank employment in Ticino.⁷ A dossier prepared for the cantonal schools sums up the result of the period in one sentence: after the end of banking secrecy the financial centre lost more than two thousand jobs.⁸ The financial portal finews.ch recalled in 2021 that the financial sector, including fiduciaries and independent asset managers, had employed about 10,000 persons until roughly a decade earlier, and placed the low point of the market in 2017, the year in which BSI disappeared as an independent bank.⁹

Notes

1. Berbenni (above), 329. ↩
2. René Chopard, "La piazza finanziaria ticinese fra discontinuità e integrazione", Dati (October 2015), https://www3.ti.ch/DFE/DR/USTAT/allegati/articolo/2123dss_2015-2_7.pdf (decline in the number of institutions in Ticino since 2008, in Switzerland since 1990). The reasons given in the text for the national decline of the 1990s (real estate crisis, regional and savings banks) are general knowledge and are not stated in this article. ↩
3. René Chopard, "Centro di Studi Bancari", Dati 3 (2006), https://www3.ti.ch/DFE/DR/USTAT/allegati/articolo/1333dss_2006-3_15.pdf ("l'Associazione Bancaria Ticinese, che raggruppa oggi 33 banche"). ↩
4. Chopard (2009, above): 75 institutions in 2007 and 77 in 2008; foreign banks 62 per cent of institutions; stock exchange banks about one fifth. ↩
5. Chopard (2009, above) for 2008; René Chopard, "Un approccio sistemico al distretto ticinese di servizi finanziari. Banche: struttura ed evoluzione", Dati 4 (2010), https://www3.ti.ch/DFE/DR/USTAT/allegati/articolo/1605dss_2010-4_10.pdf, for 2009 (73 banks, 269 branches, 7,361 bank employees); Chopard (2011, above) for 2010 (72 banks, 263 branches, 7,046 employees); Chopard (2012, above) for 2011 (64 institutions, 253 branches, 6,856 employees); Chopard (2013, above) for 2012 (56 institutions, 235 branches, 6,543 employees). ↩
6. Chopard (2011, above), which links the emerging trends of the Ticino centre to the Italian scudi fiscali and the importance of assets legally repatriated to Italy. The list of legal events in the text is developed with sources in Chapter E.II. ↩
7. Chopard (2015, above) (2014: 50 banks, 6,315 employees; foreign-owned banks 2,083 employees, 33.0 per cent). ↩
8. Repubblica e Cantone Ticino, Divisione della scuola, dossier "Le banche in Ticino", https://www2.sbt.ti.ch/dep/drt/4_banche_in_ticino.pdf ("la piazza finanziaria ha così perso oltre 2mila posti di lavoro"). ↩
9. finews.ch, "La nuova magia del denaro a Lugano" (November 2021), https://www.finews.ch/ticino/48771-la-nuova-magia-del-denaro-a-lugano. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.