Dutch bankers overtake Swiss in international banking

Swiss drop to eight place

BASLE, Switzerland - The Netherlands now ranks seventh worldwide in international banking and has overtaken Switzerland. This is the conclusion in a report released by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

BIS, which regulates international money traffic between central banks, assesses the international positions of all banks in the world's 43 biggest economies each month. It surveys all cross-border transactions and positions of Dutch banks with other countries and of foreign banks to and from the Netherlands.

International banking has contracted less dramatically for the Netherlands since 2007 than it has for other countries such as the UK, Ireland, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The global market share of the Netherlands decreased only slightly from 4.2 percent in 2007 to 4.05 percent this year. It pushed the Netherlands from its eighth to a seventh place in the BIS index.

Dutch financial institutions sustained fewer hits from the economic crisis. Additionally, a number of foreign banking giants such as Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank have significantly expanded their activities and invested substantially in the Netherlands over the past three years. There are now nearly 5,000 people working at these banks in the Netherlands.