Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi

ZURICH, Reuters – Julius Baer saw a 55% jump in net profit in 2021. The bank’s strong market and increased fees from cash management for its wealthy clients enabled it to surpass the $1 billion mark for first time.

It announced Wednesday that the net profit rose to 1.083 Billion Swiss Francs ($1.18B) in 2018, up from 699 Mfrancs 2000.

The third largest bank in Switzerland proposed increasing its dividend from 1.75 Francs to 2.60 Francs per share for 2020. A new buy-back program of up to 400 millions francs was also announced.

Philipp Rickenbacher Chief Executive stated that “We are happy to report the greatest profit in our history.”

The 2020 strategic plan we established in 2020 has resulted in a change to smart, profitable asset growth, sharpening our value proposition and acceleration in our technology investments. This is how our financial performance was improved.

As a result of the coronavirus epidemic in 2020, wealth managers experienced a boom. They saw increased client activity and had lower loan losses than high-street peers.

That activity continued in the first half of 2021, when the Zurich-based wealth manager posted https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/wealth/julius-baer-reports-234-h1-net-profit-rise-2021-07-21 a 23.4% boost to six month net profit, although there was a slowdown in the second half of the year.

Baer also provided documents Wednesday showing that client inflows have slightly slowed in the second half 2021, while adjusted net profit for half the year was at 507 millions Francs. This compares to 636 million in the first six-months.

In 2021, the bank received 19.6 billion Swiss francs from new client inflows. This is a 4.5% increase over previous years. This, combined with record asset prices, helped propel the bank’s managed assets to 482 billion Swiss Swiss francs.

($1 = 0.9209 Swiss francs)