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REYL's New Digital Arm Stakes Out Big Ambitions

Tom Burroughes

9 March 2021

The chief executive of – says that many affluent and high net worth individuals who have been using retail banking find the switch to a top-level offering a big and costly jolt. Alpian's offering is designed to be a more natural progression for such clients. 

In May last year Alpian was launched, targeting the SFr660 billion ($705.8 billion) Swiss mass-affluent client segment. Target clients will typically have investable assets ranging from SFr100,000 ($109,190) to SFr1.0 million, a field covering more than 2.6 million people in the jurisdiction. 

“We’re always trying to elevate services and give people more…we ask mass-affluent people what bank they are in and some of them are using the same one as when they were five years old!”  Schuyler Weiss, Alpian CEO, told this news service. “What’s happened is that people have got so accustomed to what a bank does that they have overlooked what it can or should be doing for them.”

Alpian aims to fill this space, harnessing the kind of digital tools that continue to spread in the wealth management and banking world in Switzerland and abroad. In all too many cases, Weiss said, private banks have shed clients they don’t think are profitable to serve and there are not enough providers seeking to capture these stranded or underserved clients. An opportunity is being missed, he said. 

“We see banks raising their minimums group - agreed to buy more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of REYL. ISP PB will be merged with REYL, creating a private bank holding more than SFr18 billion ($19.7 billion) of assets under management and almost 400 staff. Besides Switzerland, the bank will be present in the European Union, Latin America, the Middle East and Far East. Financial terms were not disclosed.