J. Safra Sarasin has finalized the purchase of a 70% stake in Saxo Bank, a Denmark-based firm known for its digital trading and investment platform, in a transaction valued at roughly 1.1 billion euro (about $1.30 billion). The deal, completed on Monday, was presented by Safra’s leadership as emblematic of wealth managers’ need to prioritise technology investments as artificial intelligence introduces new competitive dynamics to the sector.
"Saxo is all about the technology architecture," J. Safra Sarasin’s chief executive Daniel Belfer said, explaining the strategic importance of the acquisition. He added that the transaction was driven by the platform’s ability to adapt: "It’s all about the agility to make changes that are coming to the market and adapting to customer demands quickly."
Executives at the Swiss private bank framed the deal as a bet on digital infrastructure and speed of innovation rather than solely on client lists. Belfer said the bank remains open to conventional acquisitions, but that technology considerations dominated the decision to buy Saxo.
Belfer also discussed the role AI will play across wealth management services, saying simply: "AI will be everywhere." He noted that human advisers will continue to play a part, but that AI tools will enable firms to deliver more granular detail to clients about their accounts: "You will still have people, but you’ll be able to give a lot more detail to the client on their account."
The deal comes as shares of wealth managers fell in February amid investor concern that emerging AI products could undercut demand for traditional financial advice. Recent moves by technology firms and startups have added to those market anxieties. For example, AI lab Anthropic unveiled new plugin capabilities designed to support business use cases, including wealth-management tasks such as portfolio analysis. Similarly, start-up Altruist introduced AI-enabled tax planning features.
Industry consultants say those developments are changing banks’ return-on-investment calculations. Christian Edelmann, a banking specialist at Oliver Wyman, said the AI transformation is pushing financial institutions toward investing in frontier technology rather than relying primarily on buying wealth managers to expand their client base. He argued that generative AI is already enabling hyper-personalised services and improving adviser productivity in higher-wealth segments while making it cheaper to serve customer groups that were previously uneconomic.
Edelmann described the direction of travel as one in which manual processes give way to automation with oversight: "We’re moving towards automated workflows with human oversight," he said. He added: "In three years, people in the workforce will no longer be doing what they are doing today."
The potential for workforce disruption is already visible in corporate announcements. American payments firm Block said last week it would reduce nearly half its workforce as part of an organisational overhaul aimed at embedding AI across operations.
Within banking, several institutions across Europe have been extending into wealth management to diversify and grow fee income. In that context, Britain’s NatWest this month announced a 2.7 billion pound agreement to acquire Evelyn Partners, underscoring continued consolidation activity in the sector even as technology reshapes strategic priorities.
Following the Saxo transaction, J. Safra Sarasin said Belfer will assume the role of CEO at Saxo as well. He will replace Kim Fournais, who will step down from the chief executive position and become chair of the Danish bank’s board of directors, the banks said on Monday.
($1 = 0.8491 euros)