FinTech dossier
Innovation is an important part of maintaining competitiveness in the Swiss financial centre. SFMA pays close attention to the challenges arising from FinTech regarding licensing requirements, supervision and regulation. This page provides key information on this topic.
At a glance: list of crypto services
A list of the crypto services that have appeared on the market to date. In terms of supervisory law, the focus is on the risk-adequate treatment of these services. It is always important to achieve the right balance between openness to innovation and the protection the financial market and investors.
Development of digitalisation in the financial sector (2024)
SFMA is increasingly using technology-supported and data-driven applications in its supervisory activities and is increasing its efficiency by digitalising processes. It actively addresses new developments in the financial market and assesses innovative business models in a risk-based and technology-neutral manner.
Efficient processing of FinTech authorisation enquiries
SFMA processes a large number of enquiries on the topics of distributed ledger technology and blockchain every year. Between 2021 and 2024, it was able to reduce the average number of days it took to respond to an enquiry from 141 to 25 - a reduction of 82%.
Digitalisation in the financial sector
The Swiss financial centre has maintained a high level of innovation activity. Numerous enquiries both from supervised firms with innovative expansions to their business models and from new players wishing to enter the market are evidence of this. SFMA once again responded swiftly and professionally to enquiries in this connection in 2023.
Artificial intelligence: SFMA sets out its supervisory expectations
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being steadily adopted in the financial market, particularly to support internal processes, but also in risk management, pricing, and customer interaction. The autonomy and complexity of AI systems entail various risks.
Artificial intelligence in the Swiss financial market (2023)
The importance of artificial intelligence (AI) has grown rapidly in all areas of life, including the financial market, in recent years. In accordance with its strategic objectives for the years 2021 to 2024, SFMA supports innovation in the Swiss financial centre and monitors the associated risks.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) 2022
Applications in decentralized finance, or DiFi for short, have attracted much attention in recent years. The initiators of such projects take the view that DeFi can structurally and fundamentally change the financial market.
Innovation 2021
Technological innovation is also opening up a wide range of opportunities for new and enhanced processes and business models in the financial markets. SFMA actively monitored these innovations in 2021 in order to offer financial institutions modern regulatory conditions adapted to the technological possibilities.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Many projects submitted enquiries to SFMA from the emerging area of “decentralised finance” in the year under review. This term describes a new form of openly accessible financial services.
Artificial intelligence in the Swiss financial market
The area of “artificial intelligence” (AI) and especially “machine learning” has seen spectacular progress in the last decade.
Innovation 2020
The potential for technological innovation in financial markets is significant. SFMA actively contributed to shaping the regulatory conditions for innovative technologies, particularly distributed ledger technology, in the year under review.
FinTech: progress and status report 2020
In the past few years, a key priority for SFMA has been dealing with enquiries in connection with FinTech-based business models. In 2020 alone it conducted around 100 preliminary investigations in this context. A substantial driver for this was the large number of initial coin offerings (ICOs) in Switzerland.
Innovation and supervision 2019
SFMA responded to the numerous enquiries concerning "stable coins" projects with a supplement to its initial coin offerings guidelines. The FinTech licence has meanwhile also been attracting interest.
Developments in FinTech
SFMA received a large number of FinTech queries during the reporting year. The guidelines for initial coin offerings (ICOs) published on 16 February 2018 were very well received on a national and international level.
Financial technology and digitalisation (2017)
Blockchain was the dominant topic in 2017 and the subject of a SFMA roundtable discussion in May. Two events of regulatory significance were the introduction of a sandbox and the expost review of SFMA Circular 2016/7 "Video and online identification".
Financial technology and digitalisation (2016)
Since 2013, SFMA has been paying close attention to the challenges arising from new technological developments in finance (FinTech) regarding licensing requirements, supervision and regulation. SFMA revised one circular and issued another to enable video and online identification and the digital conclusion of asset management agreements.
Financial technology and digitalisation (2015)
SFMA is helping improve conditions promoting innovation in financial technology and digitalisation. It is taking steps to lower barriers to competition and promote technology-neutral regulation. It is also creating centralised access to information for start-ups.
Additional documents
The related information for this topic is set out in the following section.
Charts and visual information
