What Happened to Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA)?

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) serves as Switzerland's independent financial market regulator, tasked with protecting creditors, investors, and policyholders, and ensuring the proper functioning of financial markets. In recent years, FINMA's role has been significantly defined by a series of challenges, most notably the escalating crisis at Credit Suisse, which culminated in its acquisition by UBS in March 2023. FINMA played a critical role in managing the crisis, working alongside the Swiss National Bank and the Confederation to stabilize the situation and facilitate the takeover. Its subsequent report on the Credit Suisse crisis, published in December 2023, highlighted the limits of its legal powers in addressing such a systemic event and underscored the need for enhanced regulatory tools.

In response to the lessons learned from the Credit Suisse crisis and the evolving financial landscape, FINMA has outlined ambitious strategic goals for 2025-2028, approved by the Federal Council in December 2024. These goals emphasize preventive and effective supervision, continuous strengthening of financial and operational resilience, active contribution to robust financial market regulation, and increasing its own operational excellence. This strategic direction aims to build a more robust and resilient Swiss financial center capable of withstanding future shocks. The focus on 'too big to fail' regulations remains a central pillar of its efforts, with ongoing assessments of recovery and emergency plans for systemically important banks like UBS.

To enhance its supervisory capabilities, FINMA undertook a significant organizational restructuring effective April 1, 2025. This involved creating a new cross-divisional function for "Integrated Risk Expertise" to consolidate risk functions and cross-divisional topics such as liquidity, capital, stress tests, credit risks, money laundering, and sustainable finance. The restructuring also merged the "Asset Management" and "Markets" divisions to leverage synergies. These changes, coupled with an increase in personnel—reaching an average of 617 full-time positions in 2025—aim to enable more intensive and direct supervision, including a greater number of on-site supervisory reviews.

Throughout 2025 and 2026, FINMA has actively pursued several key regulatory initiatives. In May 2026, it defined its sustainable finance priorities for 2026-2028, focusing on addressing nature-related financial risks and combating greenwashing, an area where it continues to develop supervisory practices and promote transparency. Concurrently, FINMA launched a consultation on a partially revised Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance (AMLO-FINMA) in May 2026, aiming to implement stricter federal laws, reinforce beneficial ownership identification, and address criticisms from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in preparation for Switzerland's fifth evaluation round in 2027. Furthermore, FINMA published new ordinances on risk diversification (RDO-FINMA) and liquidity (LiqO-FINMA) for banks and securities firms in May and July 2026, respectively, which are set to enter into force on January 1, 2027.

FINMA's enforcement activities have also seen a significant uptick, with 55 enforcement proceedings concluded in 2025, compared to 38 in 2024. These actions cover a range of misconduct, including breaches of anti-money laundering laws and rules of conduct in financial services, as exemplified by the long-term industry bans imposed in June 2026 against individuals from Wendelspiess Partners AG. The authority continues to increase transparency through its database of anonymized enforcement decisions. As of August 2026, FINMA remains a vigilant and evolving regulator, adapting its structure, strategy, and regulatory tools to safeguard the stability and integrity of the Swiss financial market in an increasingly complex and interconnected global economy.