Swissquote Group, Switzerland’s provider of online trading services, more than doubled its net profit in 2021 thanks to the largely positive market environment.
The online bank reported its operating revenue for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2021, at 472 million Swiss francs ($518 million), up nearly 50 percent from CHF 317.3 million in 2020.
The bank, based in Gland, western Switzerland, said its pre-tax profit came in at a record CHF 223 million ($245 million) for the year. This figure was significantly higher from CHF 105.6 million it reported a year earlier.
Swissquote said it had surpassed its initial forecasts, which were already raised in August to 465 million francs in revenue from 365 million. The bank also upgraded its pre-tax profit target to 210 million francs from initial estimates of 130 million.
FX and CFD brokers must go multi asset: Join free webinar from TraderEvolution to learn how
Swissquote expands crypto offering
Fuelled by strong client and asset growth as well as a favorable market environment, the bank said trading volumes were strong in all business areas and asset classes in 2021. These results were also driven by higher organic net new money inflow of CHF 9.6 billion. Client assets also rose above CHF 55 billion.
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 last month he expects the crypto exchange to be run and operational before June 2002. 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.
