Swiss Post Group CEO relies on Postfinance for growth
Keystone-SDA
Swiss Post CEO Pascal Grieder wants the group’s financial arm, Postfinance, to contribute a greater share of income to compensate for falling postal revenues.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
Swiss Post is losing around CHF85 million in revenue every year.
In an interview with the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, Grieder blamed declining income from traditional letter and newspaper business for the poor finances.
To compensate for the losses, the company, which is owned by the Swiss state, is increasingly focusing on additional business. A key lever is better utilisation of the high customer frequency, said Grieder, who has been in office since November.
Around 250,000 people visit the more than 700 post offices every day. This frequency should be utilised more effectively for additional services.
In particular, Swiss Post wants to expand its collaboration with Postfinance, for example by increasing the visibility and integration of financial services in the branches.
Digital letters, which have been part of the basic postal service since the beginning of the month, are also gaining in importance. According to Grieder, it is recording growth rates in the triple-digit percentage range.
Profitability is crucial
Grieder emphasised that the future of post offices will depend more on their profitability. Falling letter volumes significantly increase the costs per consignment. Processing a letter in a post office branch is more expensive than the price of the stamp, he said.
In future, branches will have to achieve a certain level of profitability in order to survive in the long term, said Grieder. This will largely determine the number of Swiss Post locations after 2028.
Grieder also reiterated earlier statements about the need for price increases, without giving specific details on the extent or timing.
In view of the high fixed costs in the public service sector, adjustments to tariffs are “unavoidable” in order to ensure financial equilibrium. Swiss Post is in talks with the price watchdog about this.
Adapted from German by AI/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
