Despite a large, established financial centre and top marks in global innovation scoreboards, the Swiss lag behind in a creative sector that promises to bring jobs and wealth creation.
Swiss fintech
There are several reasons to be cheerful about Switzerland’s fledgling fintech scene. According to Swisscom, there are currently 185 start-ups offering a wide variety of services, from robo-advising (such as InvestGlass), insurance (Knip), software (Temenos) and payment services (Twint/Paymit).
Switzerland’s strong data protection laws, corporate tax regime and political neutrality have attracted such overseas companies as Ethereum, Xapo and Blackphone.
UBS and Credit Suisse banks, insurer SwissRe, state telecoms company Swisscom and the Swiss stock exchange SIX are among the established financial and infrastructure companies to get heavily involved in the fintech scene. Several start-up accelerators have sprung up in the last couple of years, including one from consultancy nexussquared that has the ambition to turn Switzerland into a global fintech hub.
Source: Swiss fintech faces uphill struggle for toehold – SWI swissinfo.ch