What is FINMA tasked with?
In 2009, Switzerland realised that as well as strengthening the regulatory authority’s effectiveness in fulfilling its mandates, there are huge synergies and cost savings to be gained from integrated financial supervision. As such, the Federal Council set out in its dispatch on the Financial Market Supervision Act (2006) (in German) that if Switzerland wants to be able to assert itself in the international environment, it needs strong and independent financial market supervision, which is able to make optimal use of its specialist skills and thereby enjoy the benefits of pooling resources and knowledge.
FINMA’s high levels of efficiency are based on a number of things, including consistently scaled infrastructure and IT, and an integrated overview of the risks of the whole financial system, which was further improved in April 2025 by the creation of the cross-divisional function ‘Integrated Risk Expertise’. This keeps FINMA in a position to carry out its broad mandate with relatively modest resources compared to foreign authorities. Even the IMF (link to study) states that FINMA’s resources are lean relative to its mandate and the size of the Swiss financial centre.
In most of the other jurisdictions, supervision of the financial market is not integrated into one regulatory authority and the supervisory activities are carried out by up to four separate authorities, most of which are individually larger than FINMA in its entirety.
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Resilience of the supervised institutions
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FINMA is working towards financial institutions operating in the financial markets in a manner which is as resilient as possible to stress factors, so they can support a stable financial system and sustainable growth. This is crucial in all areas of supervision.
The risk landscape that is pertinent to the Swiss financial market has become more pronounced in recent times. FINMA identified nine key risks for the financial market in its Risk Monitor 2025. Most notably, risks in the areas of cyber and information technology are continuing to increase in number. In recent months, geopolitical fissures have also regained importance (the war in the Middle East, ongoing tariff disputes, etc.) and it remains to be seen whether more risk or higher volatility will feature heavily in the emerging world order.
Resilience against these and other risks is essential for our supervised institutions. Banks play a fundamental role in a thriving economy through maturity transformation, i.e. the acceptance of deposits (e.g. savings) and the granting of loans. Sometimes, this can lead to issues such as a rapid outflow of deposits, known as a bank run, because the clients lose trust in the bank (or group of banks).
If the bank is so significant that its failure would cause considerable damage to the Swiss economy and the Swiss financial system, this creates systemic risks. These can also occur if the outflow of deposits affects multiple small or medium-sized institutions at the same time, or the institutions ‘infect’ one another. It is therefore vitally important to the prosperity of a country that banks are as well-managed as possible and that they are also supervised.
As well as banks, a functioning capital market is also essential for a country’s economic prosperity, i.e. companies must be able to rely on a stable and well-run financial market infrastructure if they want to raise funds on the market. In Switzerland, FINMA safeguards this with its effective supervision of the Swiss stock exchanges.
Insurance companies are not exposed to the inherent instability caused by the maturity transformation of deposits, but they offer other critical services for the economy, and should these fail, it could have a serious impact on growth and prosperity.
Mangers of collective assets, i.e. investment funds or social security institutions and asset managers manage the company’s assets (including pension fund money), and their resilience is critical to the protection of investors and our country’s prosperity.
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Client protection
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Clients entrust their assets to banks, insurance companies, investment funds and asset managers and receive important services designed to safeguard their financial freedom and long-term security.
FINMA must ensure that service providers are qualified to give advice to clients; that the investment funds and their documentation conform to the regulatory requirements; that the risks of some financial products are explained at point of sale; that the financial service providers are complying with their due diligence obligations; and that conflicts of interest are disclosed and addressed.
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Market integrity
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For markets such as securities trading to function and do so efficiently, clients need to be certain that they will not be defrauded and prices will not be manipulated.
In this regard, FINMA plays a critical role in building trust through its supervisory activities, either directly with market participants or by supervising self-regulatory organisations. Without this trust in the integrity of the Swiss financial markets, domestic and foreign companies and clients would carry out their transactions and investments elsewhere.
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Combating money laundering
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The Swiss financial centre is a leading global cross-border wealth management hub for private clients. This makes it particularly exposed to money-laundering risks. The current geopolitical developments and conflicts hold further potential for new global flows of money, looking for access to a safe haven in the Swiss financial institutions. The risk of money laundering remains correspondingly high. Breaches of due diligence and reporting obligations can result in legal consequences and reputational damage for financial institutions both in Switzerland and abroad. They can also harm the reputation of the Swiss financial centre.
