Zurich’s private banks and wealth managers

The institutions

Zurich’s private banking landscape combines the global and the local in a way that few centres can match. At one end stands UBS, whose Global Wealth Management division serves clients from Zurich, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and several dozen other locations. After the acquisition of Credit Suisse in 2023, the integration of the two banks has continued through 2026. In its results for the second quarter of 2026, UBS reported group invested assets of USD 7.3 trillion and net new assets in Global Wealth Management of USD 36 billion for the quarter and USD 73 billion for the first half of the year.¹ The weight of this single institution, discussed in Part G, means that any statement about Zurich private banking must first account for UBS before it turns to the rest of the market.

The second pillar is Julius Bär. The bank traces its origins to an exchange office that Ludwig Hirschhorn and Theodor Grob opened on the Bahnhofstrasse in 1890. Julius Bär joined as a partner in 1896 and took over the business in 1901, when it also obtained the right to trade on the stock exchange. The family bank opened an office in New York in 1940, a London presence in 1968 and a Frankfurt subsidiary in 1989, having become a joint-stock company under a holding structure in 1974.² Its modern profile as a pure wealth manager dates from the first decade of the twenty-first century. In 2005 the group acquired four private banks and the asset manager GAM from UBS before separating GAM from the private bank in 2009. The acquisition of the international wealth management business of Merrill Lynch outside the United States followed in 2012.³ At the end of 2025 Julius Bär reported record assets under management of CHF 521 billion, net new money of CHF 14.4 billion and an IFRS net profit of CHF 764 million, down from CHF 1,022 million in the previous year, with 1,262 relationship managers among 7,390 full-time equivalents.⁴ The decline in profit reflected the aftermath of the losses on loans to the Signa group of René Benko, discussed below.

Vontobel represents a third type, the family-controlled listed bank that combines wealth management with institutional asset management. It was founded in 1924 as Haeberli & Cie and taken over in 1936 by Jakob Vontobel, whose name it has carried since. The Vontobel family and a family foundation hold a majority through a shareholder pooling agreement, whose fixed term the pool shareholders have extended until the end of 2036.⁵ For 2025 Vontobel reported assets under management of CHF 241 billion, net profit of CHF 280 million and net new money of CHF 4.2 billion. Its private clients business attracted CHF 5.8 billion, an annual growth rate of 5.2 per cent, while the cost-income ratio fell to 74.2 per cent.⁶

At the other end of the spectrum stands Rahn+Bodmer Co., the oldest private bank in Zurich. The Zurich merchants Caspar and Hans Conrad Schulthess founded the firm in 1750 as a silk trading house “Zum gewundenen Schwert” on the Limmatquai. The house was registered as a bank in 1805 and turned entirely to banking in 1855. Renamed Escher & Rahn in 1893 and Rahn & Bodmer in 1917, it was in 1934 among the founders of the Swiss Private Bankers Association. The bank remains unlisted and owner-managed, with partners who bear unlimited personal liability.⁷ Such partnerships, which the Banking Act still permits, preserve a form of banking that combined wealth and liability in the same persons long before regulation defined either.

Between these poles lie many further institutions with a Zurich presence. LGT, owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein, has operated a large Swiss bank from Zurich and other locations for decades. In 2025 the group reported assets under management of CHF 386.1 billion, net new money of CHF 11.4 billion and a profit of CHF 445.6 million, the best operating result since its foundation in 1921.⁸ The Geneva houses Pictet and Lombard Odier maintain large Zurich offices. The Zürcher Kantonalbank, the canton’s own bank, runs a significant private banking business for domestic and international clients. EFG International, Bank J. Safra Sarasin, several banks owned by foreign groups and a number of smaller Zurich private banks complete the picture.⁹ The density of institutions of all sizes in a small area is itself a competitive asset, because it creates a labour market for relationship managers, compliance officers and lawyers that no single bank could sustain.

The independent asset managers

Beside the banks, Zurich hosts a large share of the Swiss independent asset managers, often referred to in English practice as external asset managers. These firms manage client portfolios on the basis of a power of attorney, while the assets remain in custody at a bank chosen by or for the client. Many were founded by former relationship managers of the large banks, who took clients with them and built small, highly profitable businesses around discretionary mandates. A consultancy study of 2022 estimated that some 2,100 such firms were active in Switzerland and described them as the small and medium-sized enterprises of Swiss financial services.¹⁰ In June 2020, when the new law required existing managers to notify FINMA of their activity, 1,934 portfolio managers and 272 trustees did so, of which 1,208 came from German-speaking Switzerland, 743 from French-speaking Switzerland and 255 from Ticino.¹¹

The independent managers occupy a structural position in the Zurich market that has no exact counterpart in most other countries. A custodian bank provides account keeping, execution and reporting, while the manager takes investment decisions and maintains the client relationship. The client pays the bank for custody and transactions and the manager for management. The model allowed talented individuals to leave the large banks without leaving the industry, while giving the banks access to assets that their own relationship managers had not acquired. A study published in March 2026 estimated that about 1,500 FINMA-licensed external asset managers were active in Switzerland in January 2026, managing more than CHF 500 billion, with a further 250 to 300 single family offices managing around CHF 600 billion.¹² The figures show that independent management remains a substantial segment of the Swiss wealth market even after the licensing requirement reduced the number of firms.

Notes

1. UBS Group AG, “UBS’s second-quarter 2026 results”, media release, 29 July 2026, https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20260729-2q26-quarterly-result.html. The release also records that more than 90 per cent of the legacy Credit Suisse applications were no longer in use and cumulative gross cost savings had reached USD 12.6 billion. ↩
2. Martin Illi, “Banque Julius Bär”, Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS), version of 28 November 2002, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/041786/2002-11-28/. According to the article, the balance sheet grew from CHF 13 million in 1945 to CHF 19.9 billion in 2000. ↩
3. Julius Baer, “The history of Julius Baer”, https://www.juliusbaer.com/en/insights/company-insights/behind-the-scenes/the-history-of-julius-baer/. The page mentions the acquisition of five private banks from UBS and GAM in 2005 in a single phrase, and the precise count of the banks acquired differs between sources. ↩
4. Julius Baer Group, “Presentation of the 2025 full-year results for the Julius Baer Group”, https://www.juliusbaer.com/en/media/news-portal/presentation-of-the-2025-full-year-results-for-the-julius-baer-group/; finews.asia, “Julius Baer: Profit Drops While AUM Hits Record in 2025”, 2 February 2026, https://www.finews.asia/finance/44631-julius-baer-stefan-bollinger-financial-results-2025. The latter records strong inflows from Hong Kong, India, Singapore and Thailand. ↩
5. Wikipedia, “Vontobel”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vontobel, on the founding as Haeberli & Cie in 1924, the takeover by Jakob Vontobel in 1936 and the pooling agreement of the family and the Vontobel Foundation. The pool shareholders, who together hold 50.87 per cent of the shares, extended the fixed term of the shareholder agreement by ten years until 31 December 2036, according to the bank’s results release cited in the next note. ↩
6. Vontobel, “Vontobel achieves successful 2025”, https://www.vontobel.com/en-ch/about-vontobel/media/communications/vontobel-achieves-successful-2025/. The release also mentions the sale of the Cosmofunding platform to the Zürcher Kantonalbank and a planned Los Angeles office for Vontobel SFA, the group’s American advisory arm. ↩
7. Rahn+Bodmer Co., “History”, https://www.rahnbodmer.ch/en/history. ↩
8. finews.asia, “LGT Registers All-Time Operating Results in 2025”, https://www.finews.asia/finance/44800-lgt-private-banking-financial-results-2025. ↩
9. The list is illustrative and does not claim completeness. FINMA, “Approved Institutes”, with the current list of banks and securities firms authorised by FINMA, https://www.finma.ch/en/finma-public/authorised-institutions-individuals-and-products/. ↩
10. PwC Switzerland, “Will the licensing requirement for independent asset managers by the end of 2022 trigger the anticipated consolidation of the industry?”, market insights, July 2022, https://www.pwc.ch/en/insights/strategy/independent-asset-managers-market-insights-july-2022.html. ↩
11. FINMA, “Implementation of the FinSA/FinIA: FINMA authorises first supervisory organisations”, media release, 7 July 2020, https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2020/07/20200707-mm-ao-bewilligung/. The release records a total of 2,206 notifications received by the deadline of 30 June 2020. ↩
12. zeb.rolfes.schierenbeck.associates, zeb.EAM Study Switzerland 2026: The Rise of Custodian Banks as Key Partners, March 2026, https://zeb-consulting.com/files/media/documents/2026-03/zeb.EAM-Study-Switzerland_2026.pdf. The study is based on a survey of 34 custodian banks, 65 per cent of which are located in German-speaking Switzerland and Liechtenstein. ↩

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 September 2025.