Syz transition helps Geneva private bank to sail a steady course

Nicolas Syz talks about how today’s wealth managers can embrace family business succession, innovation and art

Nicolas Syz, head of private banking at Syz Group in Geneva and a former Swiss national bobsleigh champion, represents a new generation of financiers. In 2009, he graduated with a master's in finance and strategy from the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

Because this was during a turbulent time for the financial industry, Mr Syz asked himself the question, “What do I really want to do?”

He was presented with several options. The first was selling financial products to people who did not typically understand their technical specifications. He felt that unsuspecting consumers were often being sold inappropriate packages. The second involved working with fabric conditioners at Firmenich, the Swiss fragrances firm. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, with a background in both banking and textiles, Mr Syz decided to choose the latter and has never looked back.

Speaking from the Connaught hotel in Mayfair, surrounded by plush cushioned chairs, Mr Syz, while oozing with confidence, remains passionate about why the financial industry did not pay attention to what the consumer really wanted and needed at the time, and how he set out to change that.

Investment revolution

His father, Eric Syz, founded the bank in 1996 and was a man ahead of his time, who realised the old model of storing clandestine caches of gold and cash was on its way out.

“[Eric] was the first to give democratic access to hedge funds and new products,” says Nicolas Syz. “So I said listen, let’s take this a step further and do that on a consumer basis,” he added.

With the consumer at the heart of his thinking, Nicolas took his expertise to UBS before joining the family business in 2017.

“We started private equity, democratised access to direct investments, where we would invest with our clients, and take five to ten per cent of that,” says Mr Syz.

Crypto calling

Diversification is key for the younger Mr Syz who believes this is what the consumer wants. “We’re entering crypto now, and we said it’s going to be important.”

In 2022, the bank, which has $25.4bn in assets under management, made available custody and trading services for cryptocurrencies. In many ways, crypto has captured clients' imaginations, he believes, while feeling these investors need protection through diversification. Mr Syz is fond of his winter sports and is keen to use ice hockey analogies: “If the puck is over there, we need to start skating now, because when it arrives, and you haven’t started moving, you’re going to miss it.”

Taking the plunge into crypto was a brave move, contradicting the status quo among his more conservative Swiss rivals. “We said, ' Let's do custody. Let's explore that’,” he recalls. “We have payment tokens, and we’re exploring how we can leverage utility security tokens for our clients,” he says.

“We were the first in Europe to create a crypto hedge fund, SyzCrest, which just takes advantage of the volatility of each currency,” he says. “All of this is happening now.”

Family succession

But while he has a raft of his own ideas, Mr Syz remains keen to keep working with his father, a private banking veteran still valued by the family for his vision and the overall strategy he is able to set. Nicolas, on the other hand, is an innovator and has his eyes on the next generation. But their similarities, sharing the “same values” and the “same mindset,” have made them a strong team.

The family – his mother included - are all avid art collectors, having indulged this passion since the 1980s. The bank’s offices in Geneva have long been festooned with colourful and sometimes eccentric exhibits, much to the delight of their entrepreneurial clientele. It is a tradition which Nicolas is proud to continue.

“It takes a lot of creativity and sometimes our art is all about bigger messages, relating to how you perceive the world,” he says. “I also buy some pictures for my kids, to educate them on what our art is all about,” he says.

Rather than enjoying this art as a personal hobby, Mr Syz is keen that the expanding collection can be used to foster a vibrant workplace at Bank Syz. “We are exposing more employees to art,” he states enthusiastically. “We are creating a work environment that is very modern, very dynamic, and very colourful.”

But Mr Syz and his team have taken this concept one step further. When it comes to corporate gifts to employees, art became an option. His father, Eric, proposed that they tokenise art. So they bought a piece of art from a Swiss artist, met with lawyers, and put forward the plan to tokenise the art and present each employee with a token of part-ownership.

“The idea was just to thank them and give them a unifying gift, which makes everyone feel like we’re part of one team,” he says.

Team transition

This notion of team building and transition of management is crucial to the family’s thinking. Generational handovers have been practised for centuries in Swiss banks, many of which were founded in the late 1700s. Syz is unusual in that it is such a modern creation, but one which has already become part of Geneva’s fabric, alongside the likes of Lombard Odier and Pictet.

Observers are keen to point out that Syz’s history has been far from plain sailing along the shores of Lake Geneva. The bank survived a 60 per cent collapse in its asset base as a result of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. In 2020, it sold its Oyster retail funds range after failing to reach its desired scale.

But commentators believe the business strategy is now back on an even keel. They think the Syz transition from Eric to the next generation will work very well because they have been involved in the business for several years. Nicolas, for instance, has worked at other banks and is fluent in several languages. His brother, Marc, leads the firm’s direct investments and is a member of the executive and investment committees.

For Kim Cornwall, a veteran private banker who now runs an educational consultancy firm for wealth managers, Bank Syz’s “hiring policy” has been the key part of the bank’s success. “They hire the best,” he says. Last year, the bank recruited Gabriel Aractingi as managing partner and head of its Middle East regional office. Mr Aractingi used to work at Goldman Sachs, and Mr Cornwall believes Syz picked the “crème de la crème” to develop its business internationally.

But family support will remain crucial to the eventual transition, stresses Mr Cornwall. “If Nicolas needs some advice, he will just go around and see his father,” he says. “So it’s not like turning a light switch on and off — Eric will be in the background.”