The first Swedish financial institution to arrange store in Switzerland, SEB follows a raft of Norwegian rivals which are flocking to the nation within the footsteps of their wealthy countrymen, lots of whom have left their homeland following adjustments to taxes on wealth.

As a primary step, SEB will open an organization providing non-financial providers to household workplaces and enterprise households who reside in Switzerland. That entails, for instance, serving to shoppers discover a bookkeeper or lawyer or renting them assembly rooms and workplaces, the Stockholm-based lender mentioned on Thursday. 

After it wins approval from the Swiss regulator, the financial institution plans to ascertain a consultant workplace that may promote monetary providers offered by SEB’s unit in Germany to company and institutional shoppers and by its Luxembourg department to non-public wealth administration and household workplace clients.

“There are many Nordic business families residing in Switzerland and the number has increased in recent years,” William Paus, head of SEB’s Private Wealth Management & Family Office division, mentioned in a press release. “This is in line with our strategy, which is to be close to clients.”

The financial institution plans to open the service firm this autumn with two or three workers. The mannequin may very well be replicated in different markets sooner or later, he mentioned.

Norway’s largest lender, DNB Bank ASA, final month mentioned it plans to rent two Norwegian-speaking workers for a brand new consultant workplace in Zurich, with a deal with non-public banking providers. Investment financial institution Arctic Securities AS can also be increasing to the biggest Swiss metropolis, hoping to spice up its high-yield debt enterprise, and ABG Sundal Collier has established a subsidiary in Lucerne, primarily for company finance shoppers.