The transitional period for licensing portfolio managers and trustees comes to an end in December 2022. In its guidance, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) provides a first insight into the measures that have been taken against portfolio managers and trustees.

FINMA recommended that all institutions submit their complete licence application to a supervisory organisation (SO) by 30 June 2022. Applicants that submitted their application on time to the SO are well prepared for the challenges of the licensing process.

Institutions that have not yet submitted their application to an SO must accept that they may miss the end of the transitional period through their own fault. As a consequence, these institutions will generally not be entitled to any deadline extension.

FINMA has already conducted various investigations and several charges have been filed on grounds of unauthorised activities. FINMA imposes sanctions for breaches of financial market law and will also do so in the case of portfolio managers and trustees who miss the end of the transitional period on 31 December 2022.

Portfolio managers and trustees who commenced their professional activity within a year of the FinIA entering into force had to contact FINMA immediately and meet the licensing requirements from the point of commencing their activity. They were obliged to affiliate to an SO and had to submit their licence application to FINMA by 6 July 2021.

A total of 118 institutions notified FINMA that they had commenced their activity in the year 2020. However, only a third of these institutions met their duty to submit a licence application to FINMA. A further 76 institutions gave contradictory information concerning the applicable transitional period in their communication with FINMA. The regulator has opened investigations on grounds of possible unauthorised activity at all these institutions.

Up to 31 July 2022 FINMA had filed criminal charges with the FDF in 18 suspicious cases and had placed 127 institutions on its public warning list.