Cards and Consumer Finance in Switzerland 2008

Lafferty Cards & Consumer Finance in Switzerland 2008

Introduction

Lafferty Cards & Consumer Finance in Switzerland 2008 is the most comprehensive research available on consumer finance and credit cards in the market. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods is used by a dedicated team of in-house researchers and analysts to produce accurate and unbiased data. It comprises of 11 sections: key facts, demographics, the economy, consumer credit market, cards market, credit cards profit pool, pricing and enhancements, networks, credit cards issuers, merchant acquiring & processing and other cards market information. The report is reader friendly through the use of a bullet point format and graphs, pie charts and tables to help illustrate key data. Industry experts are always on hand to talk you through any data queries.

Highlights

Switzerland has a small consumer finance market relative to its GDP and compared to other Western European countries.

The household lending market is dominated by mortgages. Borrowing remains at low levels and credit cards are not popular.

The highly regulated nature of the Swiss banking sector, and high interest rates in the credit card sector, have resulted in a lack of development of the credit card as a borrowing vehicle.

Although the Swiss credit cards market still holds significant growth potential and the youth population demonstrates a clear propensity to borrow, overcoming the general lack of consumer adoption of credit cards for borrowing and everyday purchases remains a fundamental barrier to long-term growth.
The increase in the countrys credit cards portfolio over the last two years has mainly stemmed from the development of co-branded products, which, although primarily focusing on loyalty programmes, have slowly begun to incorporate some price-led features (such as low interest rates or low annual fees).