Saving and economic development

In the wake of 19th-century industrial­isation, Switzer­land’s economic structure changed radically. Many jobs moved from the primary sector to the secondary, mirroring a shift from a subsistence to a market economy. In a subsistence economy, households produced mainly to cover their own needs, while in a market economy the focus was increasingly on generating an income through paid labour. This gave rise to a need for savings opportunities, as people sought to preserve a share of what they earned. Cities and Protestant areas saw increasing social policy measures to enable factory workers, servants and artisans to provide for themselves financially by saving. It was against this background of bur­geoning demand that the savings bank sector grew up over the course of the 19th century, enabling large parts of the population to save as never before. Their importance grew rapidly up to the turn of the century, as can be seen in Figure 5, with the sharp increase in customer deposits compared with GDP. In parallel with this, the number of depositors also rose significantly. A further indication of the savings bank model’s spread can be seen in the number of savings banks per 10,000 inhabitants, which rose from 0.46 in 1835 to 1.84 in 1895. Put another way, this means that before the turn of the century, there were 5,434 people per savings bank, a very high density by present-day standards. By way of comparison: in 2025, the figure was 0.25, or approximately 38,461 people per bank.