If FINMA notices that the financial market legislation has been breached, its first priority is to ensure that legal standards are restored. FINMA only initiates administrative proceedings to investigate the extent to which individuals are responsible for irregularities in supervision if there are specific grounds to do so: for instance, if the person concerned intends taking up a position subject to the requirement for assurance of proper business conduct. If it sees no reason to clarify compliance with this requirement, FINMA nonetheless gathers any evidence of potential malpractice submitted in its Watch List data collection. Such action depends on whether the persons involved may apply for an influential management position at institutions under FINMA supervision. If it is the case that administrative proceedings have to be initiated to investigate whether the person concerned respected the requirement for assurance of proper business conduct, the evidence collected will also be examined during the proceedings.
The Watch List serves to provide information on persons holding influential management positions at institutions under FINMA supervision or who are actively involved in supervised institutions that must comply with the requirement for assurance of proper business conduct under the financial market legislation. To this end, only data are incorporated into the data collection which are relevant for evaluating compliance with the proper business conduct requirement, e.g. personal details, extracts from the commercial, debt enforcement and bankruptcy registers, sentences passed by civil, criminal and administrative courts, reports made by audit firms and by institutions under FINMA supervision. Article 23 para. 1 of the Financial Market Supervision Act (FINMASA;
SR 956.1) and the Ordinance of the Financial Market Supervision Authority on Data Processing (Ordinance on Data-FINMA;
SR 956.124) provide the legal framework for the Watch List data collection.