Banking
Contributors
A new piece of regulation: the entry into force of the FinSA and FinIA
While the financial regulation landscape, inclusive of compliance, has kept evolving and increasing in the past 20 years, the architectural skeleton of the Swiss regulation landscape in this industry was entirely reviewed with the entry into force of two new bills of law on 1 January 2020. As of that date, both the Financial Services Act (FinSA) and the Financial Institutions Act (FinIA) constitute the two main pillars which anchor the main duties of the financial service providers performing a business activity on Swiss soil. The FinIA governs the requirements for acting as a financial institution and provides for statutory rules on the liability of financial institutions in case the latter delegate the performance of a task. The FinSA sets forth the requirements to be complied with within the context of the offering of financial services. Both bills aim at (i) strengthening the attractivity of Switzerland as a financial center as well as (ii) reinforcing the investor protection. As to the liability of financial institutions and their bodies, the FinIA refers to the provisions of the Swiss Code of Obligations (SCO). These two pieces of regulation have set a new landscape in the financial industry encompassing new significant duties, such as the duty to get an authorisation for some actors that were so far exempted (see infra) as well as new duties – entailing a new ground of liability – within the context of public offering of financial products with the duty to issue an offering memorandum complying with specific requirements (see infra). Besides, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms have been strengthened with the duty of financial service providers to inform their clients about the mediation possibility but also to submit to the same in case the client calls for such a mechanism to apply (see infra).
