Thomas Gottstein, the man in charge of the domestic business at Credit Suisse, has ambitious targets to reach with his team. He now aims to concentrate on business clients while cutting back on cost-intensive high-street branches.

Credit Suisse (CS) is busy establishing the new legal framework for its domestic business, known as Swiss Universal Bank. If all goes according to plan, the bank will sell part of the unit on the stock market next year.

The new player on the Swiss banking market will be a fierce rival to competition from Raiffeisen or the various cantonal banks. Achieving appropriate growth rates in such a competitive environment won't be easy.

Thomas Gottstein, the CEO of the Swiss Universal Bank, is upbeat about the prospects of his unit: «There are many companies without business relations with Credit Suisse,» he told «Le Temps», a French-language Swiss newspaper.

Centers of Competence

CS wants to reach out to business clients, offering them a whole range of services. Regional centers will play a key role for reaching out to the company clients, where wealth management and corporate banking will be concentrated.

«The number of centers of competence will rise to 20 from a current 11 over the coming years,» according to Gottstein. Credit Suisse will add new centers in Delémont, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Sion, Lugano, Uster, Winterthur and Waedenswil. The bank will have to increase the number of company advisers to staff these centers. The number will rise to about 100 by the end of this years, from a current 60.

Gottstein won't only focus on companies though and also aims to grow in the business with rich customers, retail banking and with affluent clients, who own about 1 million francs.

Further Cost Cuts Envisaged

To reach his ambitious targets, CS will need to expand the competence centers. Gottstein has to make a pretax profit of 2.3 billion francs in two years time, 700 million more than in 2015.

An «ambitious» target, according to Gottstein, but doable as long as revenue increases by 2 percent a year and costs are cut by 3 percent every year.

To that end, CS is closing branches. Gottstein will shutter about ten high-street branches in the coming years, having already given up several of them in recent weeks. CS has 145 branches in Switzerland. Neue Aargauische Bank (NAB), a CS unit, has a further 33 branches.

At the end of 2014, CS had 214 branches still.