Swissquote Group, Switzerland’s provider of online trading services, reported that its H1 revenues dropped by nearly a quarter from a year ago as clients’ interest in crypto trading stagnated.
The online bank reported its operating revenue for the 6-month period ending June 30, 2022, at 205 million Swiss francs ($217 million), down 23 percent from CHF 266 million in 2021.
The bank, based in Gland, western Switzerland, said its pre-tax profit came in at CHF 90.7 million ($96.4 million) for the half year. This figure was significantly lower from the CHF 134.6 million it reported a year earlier.
Meanwhile, net revenues amounted to CHF 200.0 million, down 24.4 percent from CHF 264.4 million in the prior year. Swissquote blames clients’ cautious trading even in higher-risk asset classes such as crypto assets. Compared with the prior-year period, net fee and commission income declined by 6.7 percent to CHF 81.3 million (CHF 87.1 million). While moving from a rally in 2021 to a sharp slump in the last semester, net crypto-assets income dipped by 69.2 percent to CHF 19.5 million from CHF 63.2 million a year ago.
Other business highlights show that net trading income also dropped by 28.0 percent to CHF 30.7 million (CHF 42.6 million) and net eForex income declined by 13.7 percent to CHF 54.3 million (CHF 63.0 million).
As of 30 June 2022, client assets reached CHF 51.8 billion, out of which CHF 9.3 billion allocated in cash. With a capital ratio of 25.7 percent, Swissquote says it is well positioned to benefit from higher market interest rates.
Swissquote expands crypto offering
Swissquote is looking to delve further into the digital-asset arena with the launch of its own cryptocurrency trading platform.
Jan De Schepper, chief sales and marketing officer at Swissquote, said month he expects the crypto exchange to be run and operational before the end of September 2022. To further sweeten the offering, Switzerland’s largest online bank plans to add stablecoins and staking services, which are currently in high demand, to the list of cryptocurrency offerings.
The new service combines Swissquote’s expertise as a provider of online trading services with digital asset security, in a bid to provide a safekeeping service for investment houses looking to gain exposure to the rapidly emerging asset class.
The brokerage firm already allows its clients to trade CFDs on 24 cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, XRP, bitcoin cash, chainlink, ethereum classic, EOS, stellar, tezos, augur, ox, cardano, uniswap, aave, cosmos, algorand, filecoin, maker, compound, year.finance, dogecoin, polkadot and solana.
Swissquote’s crypto offering is going up against local players like Dukascopy which has its own cryptocurrency, allows clients to deposit and withdraw funds in digital coins, as well as enabling free internal crypto-transfers between users of mobile banking.
