In the past financial year, Liechtenstein’s VP Bank significantly increased the net inflow of funds as its recruitment policy paid off. Profit rose 13 percent.
VP Bank, based in Vaduz, reported a net new money inflow of almost 1.9 billion Swiss francs in 2017. In the previous year it had been only 7 million francs, the bank said in a press release on Tuesday. This growth was due to an intensified market development push as well as a recruiting offensive of senior customer advisers, VP said.
Net income increased to 65.8 million francs, up from 58 million a year earlier, boosted by higher revenues across the business. The board proposes to increase the dividend to 5.50 francs per registered share A, up from 4.50 francs a year ago. The registered share B will get 0.55 franc.
Asian Play
As part of this recruiting offensive, 24 new customer advisers were hired in the past year. Overall, the number of employees rose from to 800 from 738.
The recruitment of new customer advisers will continue in 2018. VP Bank plans to hire a total of 75 client advisers in the intermediaries and private banking segments by the end of 2019, about half of them in Asia.
Stock Market Driver
Assets under management increased by 13 percent to 40.4 billion francs. This increase was mainly attributable to the rise in stock market prices and the rise in the euro in the second half of 2017 together with the appreciation of client assets under management in foreign currencies. The performance-related increase in assets amounted to 2.7 billion francs.
Compared to the previous year, the bank increased operating income by 9.8 percent to 300 million francs. Both trading, interest, commission and services improved.
