Our purpose

We recognize the power of purpose to enable our strategy, engage our employees, and deliver for our clients and stakeholders. On December 15, 2020, we announced our inaugural bank-wide purpose statement: “We build lasting value by serving our clients with care and entrepreneurial spirit.” This announcement was the culmination of a year-long effort by our employees to capture the true essence of what energizes our teams every day and motivates them in their work. With it, we capture the essence of “why” we exist as an organization. While many of the elements of our purpose have been part of how we operate since the bank’s foundation in 1856, this is the first time we have adopted and published a bank-wide purpose statement. In 2020, the importance of being clear with our stakeholders about our purpose became a priority.

As a bank, we provide capital, manage and protect wealth, participate in markets and facilitate infrastructure development. These activities allow us to contribute to sustainable economic growth. Clients want to do business with an organization that has a purpose they believe in, employees choose to work for an organization where the purpose motivates them and, finally, regulators are beginning to question the direction of banks in general that lack a clearly articulated purpose. For all these reasons and in view of the positive impact that clarity of purpose has on performance, our purpose statement is a critical pillar of our revised culture strategy.

Credit Suisse has been in business for more than 160 years. We have evolved from our creation as a Swiss bank financing the national railway system to a truly global bank operating in around 50 countries. Over this time, we have learned that our success and the success of our clients and shareholders goes hand-in-hand with the success of those around us – the communities we operate in. We believe that focusing on serving our clients and building lasting value for them will naturally lead to the broader delivery on our role as a bank. Lasting value for our clients will also have a positive impact on other important stakeholders, through investments in growth, protection of wealth and financing of business.

Putting our clients at the center of our purpose is authentic to how we operate at Credit Suisse. Serving them with care and entrepreneurial spirit expresses the committed and diligent way we go about our business and the sustainability of the results we want to achieve for our clients. We are focused on long-term success and the wellbeing of our communities.