Swissquote Ltd (Swissquote), the British subsidiary of retail brokerage Swissquote Bank, released its financial results for 2018 this Wednesday.
The broker saw a dramatic decline in its revenues last year, reporting a total turnover of £3.61 million ($4.71 million).
That was a 39 percent decrease on 2017’s total revenue of £5.96 million ($7.78 million).
The firm directly attributed that decline to the product intervention measures introduced by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA ) last August.
“The implemented [ESMA regulations] had an impact on trading volume which has fallen sharply since August 2018,” said the broker in its report.
“The number of new clients and trading volumes has decreased which also had a negative impact on the company’s overall revenue in 2018.”
Marketing costs soar
Swissquote’s decline in revenues was also partly due to an increase in operational expenses.
Those grew from £3.09 million ($4.03 million) in 2017 to £3.45 million ($4.50 million) last year.
A large part of that increase was due to an uptick in marketing costs.
For 2017, the UK broker reported marketing expenses of £537,519 ($701,546). Last year, that figure grew, by 39 percent, to £749,125 ($977,724).
Wednesday’s results come as something of a surprise given Swissquote’s parent company’s financial results for last year.
As Finance Magnates reported in March, Swissquote Bank had a record-breaking year in 2018. The Swiss firm brought in CHF 214.5 million ($210.8 million) of revenue last year, the first time it had ever surpassed CHF 200 million in revenue.
