Credit Suisse wealth growth initiatives may need to be 'tempered'

ZURICH (Reuters) -Credit Suisse's ambitions to redeploy some 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.14 billion) in capital towards its wealth management division by 2024 could be "tempered" due to a more challenging market environment that has emerged since the strategy was set in November, executives said on Tuesday.

"Clearly, the rate at which you see some of the initiatives being deployed has to be tempered given the market environment," Wealth management head Francescso De Ferrari told investors and analysts during an investor presentation, adding the long-term strategy remained unchanged.

The bank on Tuesday said it was sticking to a strategy overhaul laid out in November despite challenges created by market turmoil, while extending the savings it hopes to achieve through technology.

Asked whether those plans still included redeploying some 3 billion francs towards its wealth management division by 2024, Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein said significant client deleveraging over recent quarters could impact its plans.

"We had a significant amount of deleveraging going on (in the last quarters), probably more so than we had expected in November," Gottstein said.

"In principle, our plan continues to be to grow our lending book in wealth management and directionally go towards the 3 billion. But given what happened in terms of the last couple of quarters, it's clearly a slightly different basis from where to go."

($1 = 0.9551 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi, Editing by Louise Heavens and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)