FINMA Enforcement Actions

Key dates

2022

- FINMA had already proposed introducing an accountability regime to define managers’ roles and responsibilities more clearly

Summer 2023

- An expert report renewed the call for fines, clearer senior-management responsibility, and greater enforcement transparency

Spring 2024

- The Federal Council’s TBTF report again carried forward these reform themes

End of 2024

- The Parliamentary Investigation Commission report recommended strengthening enforcement effectiveness and transparency

Summer 2025

- The Federal Council set parameters for upcoming legislative reforms including these enforcement-related measures

Suggested considerations

• Review governance maps and delegations to ensure each regulated activity, key control, and approval step is assigned to a clearly identified accountable senior manager.
• Document senior-management responsibilities in a manner that would withstand a future accountability-regime review, including decision rights, escalation duties, and oversight obligations.
• Stress-test enforcement readiness by preparing for formal FINMA proceedings that may end in binding rulings, remediation orders, or publication.
• Update incident-response and remediation workflows so that suspected supervisory-law breaches are escalated, investigated, and corrected quickly and with a complete evidence trail.
• Assume greater reputational exposure in enforcement cases and review internal communications, disclosure controls, and media-response protocols accordingly.

What changed

• - FINMA is again advocating a statutory power to impose fines for serious supervisory-law breaches, which it says would strengthen deterrence and enforcement effectiveness.
• FINMA is again calling for a clearer allocation of responsibility among senior management, consistent with an accountability regime or senior managers’ regime.
• FINMA is again seeking the right to inform the public about concluded enforcement proceedings involving serious rule violations, rather than being restricted to anonymous statistics and exceptional...
• FINMA reiterates that it already uses formal enforcement proceedings to clarify facts and restore compliance, with measures concluded by a ruling.
• FINMA states that, under current law, it may generally only publish anonymous enforcement statistics and individual case disclosures only where there is a particular supervisory interest.