SRO-affiliated financial intermediary in Switzerland

About This Company

Switzerland's Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA, SR 955.0) establishes the legal basis for non-prudentially-supervised financial intermediaries under Art. 2 para. 3. Rather than obtaining a direct licence from FINMA, Art. 14 mandates that qualifying entities affiliate with a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation. In force since 1998-04-01, the underlying statute governs domestic entities without providing cross-border passporting rights into foreign markets.

Within this framework, the authorisation covers virtual asset exchange, virtual asset transfer, and virtual asset safekeeping. It accommodates payment services and crypto brokers. Operational boundaries stop where banking begins. A firm requires a full FINMA banking licence, alongside its CHF 10 million minimum capital rule, whenever it accepts public deposits or operates pooled crypto-asset custody. Collective custody that creates a repayment claim against the company balance sheet exceeds SRO boundaries. FINMA confirms that no banking licence is required only where virtual currencies are stored separately on the blockchain for each individual customer. Ongoing SRO oversight entails periodic audits of customer identification records, beneficial-owner verifications, and transaction monitoring files. The buyer inspects technical wallet configurations to verify that client assets remain individually segregated on-chain before executing transaction documents.