Do young Swiss still want to become bankers?

Amato Pace, 18, is a trainee banker at a vocational school in Olten in northern Switzerland. swissinfo.ch

Swiss banking has undergone a radical shake-up over the past few years. The financial industry needs a young workforce in order to remain strong in the future. But what does the next generation think of banks as employers?

Amato Pace, an apprentice from canton Solothurn in northwest Switzerland, wears a suit to work. Three times a week, he goes to PostFinance’s headquarters in the Swiss capital Bern. His team is located in the finance department on the fourth floor with a spectacular view of the Alps as a backdrop. The 18-year-old is currently working on the company’s cryptocurrency project.

“From about the age of 12, I knew I wanted to be a banker,” Pace says. He is very talented at maths and wants to use this skill professionally. So he decided to work in banking and started an apprenticeship as soon as he had completed his compulsory-school education in order to gain as much practical experience as possible. He is not writing off any future opportunities, because in Switzerland it is easy to return to further education at a later stage.

Banks offer apprenticeships to young people directly after their compulsory education as well as to those who have completed a university degree. Like Pace, most bank employees complete a commercial apprenticeship. But in addition to this very popular option, many banks offer a wide range of other apprenticeships too. All of these are held in high regard in Switzerland. Even Sergio Ermotti, the CEO of UBS, started his career with a commercial apprenticeship at the age of 15.

Pace’s father is a mechanic and his mother a housewife; no one he knows is a banker. Pace had imagined the world of Swiss banking to resemble the film The Wolf of Wall Street. Of course, he realised that this was an exaggerated portrayal of a banker. But as he had expected, life as an apprentice banker is never boring.

Negative image

The Swiss banking sector is facing major challenges. The secrecy that long characterised Swiss banks collapsed in the 2010s. The reputation of Swiss banking as an international safe haven for the wealthy was further challenged by sanctions against Russia. As a result, Singapore and Hong Kong are catching up with Switzerland when it comes to wealth management.

In March 2023, the second-largest bank, Credit Suisse, plunged into a crisis and merged with UBS. The managers who had caused the crisis were heavily criticised and thousands of redundancies are expected worldwide.

This has tarnished the financial industry’s image. The International Institute for Management Development (IMD), a business school with a campus in Lausanne, recently published a report analysing the Swiss financial sector’s image on social media. The report reveals its image has changed from positive to negative following the takeover of Credit Suisse.

In this environment, is it still attractive for young professionals to pursue a career in banking? In a SWI swissinfo.ch debate on the attractiveness of the profession, negative opinions prevailed. “Central banks are developing digital central bank money. If people are smart, they will realise that banks will no longer be needed,” said one German-speaking reader, for example.

An English-language reader commented: “Being a Swiss banker has not only become an unattractive job, but also increasingly a socialist tax collector’s job that is so extremely regulated by law that only a lawyer can become a ‘banker’ these days.” The European Union, the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have all stepped up action against Swiss banks, according to the reader.

As in many other professions, advances in artificial intelligence pose an additional threat to the traditional job profile of bankers. Back in 2017, the Zurich University of Applied Sciences predicted that employment in the financial sector, including fintech and related industries, will halve by 2030 if Switzerland lags behind in technological innovation. Even if technological innovation progresses, a decline of 5-15% is expected.

Banking careers remain popular

Nevertheless, banking careers still appear to be popular with young people in the country. According to the annual survey conducted by Universum, an international specialist in employer branding, UBS ranked second behind Google in terms of popularity as an employer among Swiss business and management students in 2023, as it has in previous years.

Credit Suisse, which was still in third place in 2022, plummeted to 13th place in the survey, which was conducted before the takeover. The private bank Julius Baer was in 30th place in the mid-2010s, but has recently moved up to 15th place. Foreign banks such as the US banks JP Morgan (6th place) and Goldman Sachs (9th place) are also enjoying a resurgence in popularity.

Looking at the industry as a whole, the number of students who see the banking sector as their preferred industry increased between 2021 and 2023. It is more popular on the job market in Switzerland than in global financial centres like the US, the United Kingdom and Singapore.

“The banking sector nurtures a wide range of highly qualified employment opportunities […] from apprenticeships to global executive roles,” Universum writes. “Its influence on society and the economy is both direct and indirect. The concept of ‘too big to fail’ has triggered a compliance revolution over the past decade, consolidating the strength of many banking players despite the Credit Suisse acquisition. Notably UBS and Julius Baer have reinforced their position as leading wealth-management banks during the last years. This has been well noticed by Swiss young and professional talent, as both employers kept a very attractive profile in Switzerland amongst talent, shown in the Universum Most Attractive Employer Rankings.”

“Students’ interest in the banking sector remains high,” says Rafael Giobbi, the head of education services at the Swiss Bankers Association. All banking apprenticeship positions in the current year have been filled.

Anita Sigg, the deputy head of the Institute of Wealth and Asset Management at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, explains why.

“Although the unique standing of the Swiss banking sector as an employer has declined, its attractiveness has not,” Sigg says. But while in the past, banking was the archetypal high-salary career, Google and other companies in the tech sector are also now attracting talented people with high salaries. Furthermore, following the Credit Suisse takeover, there is now only one major international bank in Switzerland: UBS. This reduces the opportunities in the banking sector for young people who want to work internationally.

As AI develops further, the administrative skills of bank employees will become less important. But, Sigg says, “companies and private households don’t want to waste time on wealth management, and clients’ needs, for example in the area of inheritance or pensions, are becoming more complex and individual.” She says it is very exciting to work in the banking sector and to find financial solutions for customers: “AI can’t replace that. ChatGPT can’t read between the lines.”

Edited by Reto Gysi von Wartburg. Translated from German by Catherine Hickley