After the turbulent Vincenz era, Huber brought calm to the second largest Swiss banking group. However, Raiffeisen is struggling to implement its strategy.
Raiffeisen boss Heinz Huber has brought calm to Raiffeisen after the Pierin Vincenz scandals.
Heinz Huber surprised many people with his departure. The 60-year-old will step down as head of Raiffeisen Switzerland at the end of the year. He is leaving the bank and will become President of the Graubündner Kantonalbank in July 2025. The Graubünden government has elected him for a term of office until 2029.
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According to reports, Huber had been planning to withdraw from operational banking business for some time. After more than 40 years, he wants to retire to a strategic position. He led the second largest Swiss banking group for six years.
It is still unclear who will definitely succeed Huber at the top of the bank; according to a Raiffeisen spokeswoman, the search for a successor is now underway. Both internal and external candidates are eligible. CFO Christian Poerschke is temporarily heading the bank.
Huber: Too much rest
Huber’s most important achievement is that he brought calm back to the cooperative bank after the scandalous years under Pierin Vincenz and Patrik Gisel. Unlike his predecessors, he wasn’t looking for a big appearance.
After taking office in January 2019, he implemented important internal reforms at Raiffeisen. Power was redistributed between the base, the individual Raiffeisen banks in the country and the headquarters in St. Gallen. This included, among other things, Raiffeisen branches in urban areas such as Bern or Zurich being made independent and run as their own cooperatives.
In a statement on Wednesday, the bank praised its current boss. Huber expanded customer business in all business areas at Raiffeisen and presented strong figures, the bank wrote in a media release on Wednesday. Raiffeisen generated a profit of 1.4 billion francs in 2023, an increase of almost 18 percent. In its core business of real estate financing, it reports a market share of 17.9 percent in Switzerland for the summer of 2024. However, the bank benefited from rising interest rates last year.
Critics see the outgoing Raiffeisen boss as someone who only manages. He is not someone who will set Raiffeisen up for innovation and make it fit for the future. Although it has expanded its investment business in recent years and gained market share, the bank has not significantly diversified its business. The interest business still contributes more than 75 percent of earnings.
However, as a retail bank, Raiffeisen has to make greater efforts than other banks when it comes to asset management. It offers its customers management mandates starting from a comparatively low amount of 50,000 francs. This means you can earn fewer fees than with richer customers, such as those that private banks have.
IT flop: Introduction of the new app canceled
The bank is also struggling to implement its strategy. Raiffeisen wants to invest a total of 550 million francs by 2025. However, the bank has already had to cancel part of it. So your new app didn’t come out in test mode. Two months ago, Raiffeisen announced that it was not rolling out this to its approximately 3.7 million customers as planned; it was still not stable enough.
The app should replace numerous functions and, among other things, also offer digital onboarding for new customers. The bank does not disclose how much it costs to develop the app. At the same time, it closed the department that was only founded in 2022 and was responsible for implementing the strategy. Uwe Krakow, the head of the department, left the bank in October.
At the Graubündner Kantonalbank, Huber succeeds Peter A. Fanconi, who is resigning a year before the end of his regular term of office because of the state bank’s lending to the Austrian bankrupt René Benko. The cantonal bank made two loans to Benko’s Signa Group public. One in the amount of 60 million francs, as part of the syndicated loan for the Globus on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. A second one worth three million francs. The bank wrote this off completely at the end of October.
Huber has a second home in Graubünden and is therefore connected to the canton, writes the GKB in its statement. He benefits from the fact that he is familiar with state banks. Before his time at Raiffeisen, Huber ran the Thurgauer Kantonalbank.
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