Julius Baer will open wealth management bank in Portugal in mid-2025

The second largest Swiss bank specializing in wealth management, Julius Baer, will open in Lisbon in mid 2025, after in 2019 a team of Portuguese, from the former Credit Suisse, went to Madrid to follow the Portuguese marketfrom the capital of the neighboring country It is is in the process of obtaining regulatory approvals.

This same team led by José Maria Cazal-Ribeiro and Gonçalo Maleitas Correia returns to Portugal to monitor the Portuguese wealth management market from Lisbon. “Bloomberg” reported that the Julius Baer plans to open an office in Lisbon to attract Portugal’s richestciting sources and Jornal Económico (JE) confirmed.

“The objective is an innovative and unique value proposition in the Portuguese market to, through a team approach with diversified skills, serve clients with high net worth in a global way, not only in terms of financial investments, but in relation to all their needs and asset management objectives, in contrast with the approach mainly focused on the individual relationship with a single manager”, he tells Económico, a bank source.

The segment that Julius Baer seeks to cover, as the same source revealed to JE, holders of fortunes in excess of one million euros, known as High-Net-Worth Individual (HNWI) and Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individual (UHNWI). This is to manage the fortunes of clients who have €30 million or more in net assets to manage.

The bank aims to be a reference in wealth management in Portugal, competing with other Swiss banks, such as, for example, with EFG Bank, which is already in Portugal.

O primary objective of the team that will open the branch in Portugal is to serve customers PPortuguese, but also foreign millionaires residing in Portugal.

Bloomberg reports that Portugal has in recent years become a hotspot for wealthy foreigners as the country offered attractive tax incentives and a golden visa program that granted residency to non-European citizens. And isalthough the Gprevious year eliminated some of the incentives last year, many of non-habitual residents people from countries like the USA and Brazil still take advantage of these policies.

Under the non-habitual residents program, the Gwinter offersia a flat income tax rate of 20% and a 10% pension rate for 10 years, but stopped accepting new applications this year. However Those who applied before 2024 will have these benefits until the 10-year period ends.

With the end of RResidents’ regime Nto the Hhabitual and Golden Visa restrictions the millionaires foreigners residing in Portugal tend to be each time fewer.

Joseph Cazal-Ribeiro and Gonçalo Maleitas Correia were part of a group of private bankers who left Credit Suisse in Portugal in 2019 to join Julius Baer in Madrid. Just as Jornal Económico advanced first-hand at the time.

The objective was to “develop and grow” the market in Portugal on a “cross-border basis”, as said by Julius Baer in a statement in the same year. Once this objective has been achieved, the bank will now open a branch in Portugal to be “even closer to customers”, said a bank source.