Swiss seek fintech action with laid-back licence offer
To try and attract creative fintech firms, the Swiss parliament has introduced a new licence with relaxed requirements
They were talking about this in 2016
As reported in 2016, the Swiss were talking about establishing this licence, granted by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), for institutions which are restricted to taking deposits of up to CHF 100 million ($100.2 million) and do not operate in the lending business. That was pretty much the crux of the idea.
Finally, it’s happening.
From 2019, interested parties can apply for the licence. To get it any firm – foreign or national – must have its registered office and conduct its business activities in Switzerland.
You can read the guidelines here. They’re not that complex as the document is only four pages long.
In other Swiss news, back in August, the parliament also relaxed the anti-money laundering (AML) rules for “small” fintech firms.
For the purposes of its “draft ordinance”, “small” institutions are those with gross revenues of less than CHF 1.5 million ($1.53 million).
One specific relaxation noted that small institutions, unlike banks, being exempt from the requirement to establish an independent AML unit with monitoring duties.
