Lessons from 220 years of Banque Pictet

In the fast-paced world of finance, Pictet has stood for stability since 1805. This Geneva-based bank specialising in wealth and asset management had its archives scattered all over the world. It was against the backdrop of the Bank's 200th anniversary in 2005 that Laurent Christeller was taken on the following year. A professional archivist was needed to track down and bring together all the documents, paintings and portraits relating to the institution's history. "All this was done in parallel with a project by the Pictet Foundation to create an archive of the family that has played such an important role in the history of Geneva, " explains the archivist. So it was in 2006, when the bank's premises moved in Geneva, that the call went out internally to gather together all the documents relating to the bank's history. "We drew up a list of documents to be collected, and I went to certain offices abroad to gather them together, " he continues.

But some documents are not worth keeping. The archivist's role is not a historian, but more of a custodian of the bank. So, for example, we won't learn anything about anecdotes relating to the bank's illustrious clients, because of banking secrecy: "Not everything is kept; we are subject to Swiss legislation, which obliges us to throw certain things away. And when it comes to the identity of our clients, banking secrecy requires us to maintain total discretion, sometimes for clients who have been with us for several generations, which can of course be frustrating." However, there is no law covering a company's assets, so it can do as it pleases, without prescription. "As a result, we keep a small percentage of the company's documents, around 5%, which still represents 120 metres of archives."