Banking in Switzerland began in the early 18th century through Switzerland's merchant trade and has, over the centuries, grown into a complex, regulated, and international industry. Along with the Swiss Alps, chocolate, watchmaking and mountaineering, banking is seen as emblematic of Switzerland. Switzerland has a long, kindred history of banking secrecy and client confidentiality reaching back to the early 1700s. Started as a way to protect wealthy European banking interests, Swiss banking secrecy was codified in 1934 with the passage of the landmark federal law, the Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks.
Controversial protection of foreign accounts and assets during World War II sparked a series of proposed financial regulations seeking to temper bank secrecy to little success. Switzerland, considered the "grandfather of bank secrecy", has been one of the largest offshore financial centers and tax havens in the world since the mid-20th century. Despite an international push to meaningfully roll back banking secrecy laws in the country, Swiss social and political forces have minimized and reverted much of proposed roll backs. Disclosing client information has been considered a serious social and criminal offence since the early 1900s. Employees working in Switzerland and abroad at Swiss banks "have long adhered to an unwritten code similar to that observed by doctors or priests". The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) estimated in 2018 that Swiss banks held US$6.5 trillion in assets or 25% of all global cross-border assets. Switzerland's main lingual hubs, Geneva (for French), Lugano (for Italian), and Zürich (for German) service the different geographical markets. It consistently ranks in the top three states on the Financial Secrecy Index and was named first many times, most recently in 2018.
The three largest banks-UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Bär-are all regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), and the Swiss National Bank (NSB) which derives its authority from a series of federal statutes. Banking in Switzerland has historically played, and still continues to play, a dominant role in the Swiss economy and society. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), total banking assets amount to 467% of total gross domestic product. Banking in Switzerland has been portrayed, to varying degrees of accuracy, in overall popular culture, books, movies, and television shows.
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History
During the 18th century, Swiss mercenaries brought home funds from their contracts that helped Swiss banks begin. Banking began in the eighteenth century by way of the riches of merchants. Wegelin & Co., established in 1741, was the oldest bank in Switzerland until it restructured into a new legal entity in 2013. Hy Hentsch & Co. bank and Lombard Odier, were both founded in 1796 in Geneva as private banks, and The Pictet Group was established in 1805 as a merchant bank. Hentsch & Cie was a founding member of the Swiss National bank during 1852.
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Swiss economy
Switzerland is a prosperous nation with a per capita gross domestic product higher than that of most Western European nations. In addition, the value of the Swiss franc (CHF) has been relatively stable compared with that of other currencies. Swiss neutrality and national sovereignty, long recognized by foreign nations, have fostered a stable environment in which the banking sector was able to develop and thrive. Switzerland has maintained neutrality through both World Wars, is not a member of the European Union, and was not a member of the United Nations until 2002. The Bank of International Settlements, an organization that facilitates cooperation among the world's central banks, is headquartered in the city of Basel. Founded in 1930, the BIS chose to locate in Switzerland because of the country's neutrality, which was important to an organization founded by countries that had been on both sides of World War I.
Banking in Switzerland has historically played, and still continues to play, a dominant role in the Swiss economy. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), total banking assets amount to 467% of total gross domestic product.
Regulation
The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) is a public law institution that supervises most banking-related activities as well as securities markets and investment funds. Regulatory authority is derived from the Swiss Financial Market Supervision Act (FINMASA) and Article 98 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. The office of the Swiss Banking Ombudsman, founded in 1993, is sponsored by the Swiss Banking Ombudsman Foundation, which was established by the Swiss Bankers Association. The ombudsman's services, which are offered free of charge, include mediation and assistance to persons searching for dormant assets. The ombudsman handles about 1,500 complaints raised against banks yearly.
Banking secrecy
History
The first renditions of banking secrecy in the Swiss region reaches back to the early 1700s. The Great Council of Geneva outlawed the disclosure information relating to the European upper class, mostly of French origin, in 1713. As a way of avoiding the Protestant banking system, Catholic French Kings deposited their holdings in Geneva accounts. During the 1780s, Swiss bank accounts began insuring deposits which contributed to a wide spread reputation for financial security. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna formally established Switzerland's international neutrality which led to a large capital influx. The wealthy of Switzerland, landlocked, saw banking secrecy as a way to build an empire similar to that of France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Swiss historian Sébastian Guex notes in The Origins of Secret Swiss Bank Accounts:
This is what the Swiss bourgeoisie are thinking: 'That's our future. We will play on the contradictions between the European powers and, protected by the shield of our neutrality, our arm will be industry and finance.'
After a small scale civil war in the 1840s between the Swiss cantons, the Swiss Federation was founded in 1848. The formation of the state, through a direct democracy, contributed to the political stability needed for banking secrecy. The mountainous terrain of Switzerland also provided a natural environment to store gold and diamonds underground and in mountains. During the 1910s, Swiss bankers traveled to France to advertise its banking secrecy during World War I. The war's contribution to political and economic instability, sparked a rapid capital movement into Switzerland. As European countries began to increase taxes to finance the war, wealthy clients moved their holdings into Swiss accounts to avoid taxation. The French banked in Geneva, the Italians in Lugano, and the Germans in Zurich. While disclosing client information was a civil offence in Switzerland for centuries, the Swiss Federal Assembly made it a federal criminal offence in 1934 with the passage of the landmark legislation, the Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks. Colloquially known as the "Banking Law of 1934" or the "Swiss Banking Law of 1934", it codified banking secrecy in the eyes of Swiss law. The Federal Assembly enacted the law to quell controversy over the alleged tax evasion of wealthy French businessmen, military generals, and Catholic bishops. An additional provision of the law, Article 47(b), was drafted before its ratification to protect Jewish assets against Nazi forces during World War II.
Along with protecting German Jewish assets, Swiss banks collaborated with Nazi Germany and their allies by storing their gold and cash balances in underground vaults. It is estimated that Adolf Hitler maintained an account at the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) worth 1.1 billion Reichsmarks. After the United States formally asked the bank to transfer the money in the 1990s, UBS wired US$400 to 700 million worth of Reichsmarks to U.S. authorities. Banking regulations in Switzerland places a limit on the amount of orphaned assets allowed to leave a bank's custody. UBS, with consent from the Swiss government, placed the remainder of Hitler's assets underground, indefinitely froze the account, and clipped the Reichsmarks, stripping the currency of value. During World War II, UBS also maintained accounts for hundreds of German Jewish businesspeople and households. After the Banking Law of 1934 was passed, the bank aggressively protected assets of the "enemies of Nazi Germany". When Hitler announced his invasion of Switzerland in 1940, UBS contracted the Swiss Armed Forces to blockade their retail banks and transport Jewish assets to underground military bunkers. Other Swiss banks, namely the Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) and Credit Suisse, did likewise and along with UBS, were fined hundreds of millions of dollars in reparations for their dealings with Nazi Germany. All throughout the 1980s and 1990s, numerous international proposals for bank secrecy rollbacks were proposed by foreign states to little success.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Switzerland signed the European Union Savings Tax Directive (EUSTD) which obliges Swiss banks to report to 43 European countries non-identifying annual tax statistics. On December 3, 2008, the Federal Assembly increased the prison sentence for violations of banking secrecy from a maximum of six months to a maximum of five years. In late 2008, after an international, multi-state investigation into Switzerland's role in U.S. tax evasion, the Swiss government entered into a limited, Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with the U.S. Department of Justice. The agreement saw to the controversial Birkenfeld Disclosure, a release of information on more than 4,000 clients, a landmark disclosure.
In another step toward loosening banking secrecy, Switzerland signed the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), after rejecting it twice in parliament. The FACTA requires Swiss banks to disclose non-identifying U.S. client information to the Internal Revenue Service, annually. This agreement, however, does not guarantee Swiss cooperation, merely semi-automatic information transfers, at the discretion of Swiss authorities. If a client does not consent to having their information shared with the IRS, Swiss banking secrecy laws prohibit the disclosure of client information to the IRS. If a client does consent, Swiss bank are allowed to send the IRS tax-related information about the account holder but are prohibited from disclosing identities pursuant to Article 47 of the Banking Law of 1934. The 2018 Financial Secrecy Index stated: "this [does] not mean that Swiss banking secrecy was finished, as some excitable news reports suggest... the breach was a partial [dent]".
In March 2015, the Swiss government entered into bilateral "Rubik Agreements" with Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom allowing foreign holders of Swiss bank accounts to retain the anonymity in exchange for paying predetermined back taxes. Switzerland formally adopted the International Convention on the Automatic Exchange of Banking Information (AEOI) in 2017, agreeing to automatically release limited financial information to a limited amount of certain countries for the sole purpose of tax auditing. This agreement includes the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) which obliges Swiss banks to automatically send foreign tax authorities the following information: a client's name, address, domicile, tax number, date of birth, account number, account balance at years end, and the gross investment income. The CRS can not, however, override the Swiss Banking Law of 1934, so what clients spend their money on (e.g. their withdrawals) and what they invest in are not disclosed to tax authorities. In other words, tax authorities can not "go fishing" for tax evaders, they must directly establish a link between a financial crime and a client account. Furthermore, the disclosed information can only be used for tax auditing and Swiss authorities can stop disclosing whenever and if ever they wish.
In December 2017, the Swiss parliament launched a standing initiative and expressed an interest in formally embedding banking secrecy within the Swiss Constitution making it a federally-protected constitutional right. In January, 2018, a U.S. district court ruled that Swiss bankers "[have] nothing to do with the choice that an American taxpayer makes to not declare offshore assets", later clarifying they should not be seen as facilitating tax evasion but rather providing a legal service that is made illegal by the client. The Swiss Justice Ministry announced in March 2018 that anyone who disclosed client information in a pending court case involving a Swiss bank is subject to federal espionage and extortion charges in addition to charges relating to the violation of banking secrecy laws.
Modern secrecy
Switzerland, considered the "grandfather of bank secrecy", has been one of the largest offshore financial centers and tax havens in the world since the mid-20th century. Despite an international push to meaningfully roll back banking secrecy laws in the country, Swiss social and political forces have minimized and reverted much of the proposed roll backs. Disclosing client information has been considered a serious social and criminal offense since the early 1900s. Whistleblowers, despite legal protections, have been treated with hostility from the public and often face professional set backs in Switzerland. Swiss bankers who maintain offices exclusively in Switzerland are shielded from a foreign state's lawsuits, extradition requests, and criminal charges, as long as they remain within the country's legal jurisdiction. In spite of minor adjustments to bank secrecy, bankers working in Switzerland and abroad at Swiss banks "have long adhered to an unwritten code similar to that observed by doctors or priests". Switzerland's main lingual hubs, Geneva (for French), Lugano (for Italian), and Zürich (for German) service the different geographical markets. It consistently ranks in the top three states on the Financial Secrecy Index and was named first many times, most recently in 2018. The Swiss Bankers Association estimated in 2018 that Swiss banks held US$6.5 trillion in assets or 25% of all global cross-border assets.
Bank vaults and bunkers
A handful of larger Swiss banks operate undisclosed or otherwise secretive bank vaults, storage facilities or underground bunkers for gold bars, diamonds, or other valuable physical assets. Most of these underground bunkers are located near or at the foothills of the mountainous regions of the Swiss Alps. These facilitates are not subject to the same banking regulations as banks in Switzerland and do not have to report holdings to regulatory agencies. The Swiss defense department estimates that of the ten former military bunkers available for sale, six of them were sold to Swiss banks to house assets during the 1980s and 1990s. Storage in these underground bunkers and bank vaults is typically reserved for clients that pass a multi-stage security clearance. Some of these bunkers are not accessible by road or foot and require aircraft transportation.
Numbered bank accounts
Many banks in Switzerland offer clients numbered bank accounts, accounts where the identity of the holder is replaced with a multi-digit number known only to the client and select private bankers. Although these accounts do add another layer of banking secrecy, they are not completely anonymous as the name of the client is still recorded by the bank and subject to limited, warranted disclosure. Some Swiss banks supplement the number with a code name such as "Cardinal", "Octopussy" or "Cello" that identifies the client, alternatively. However, to open this type of account in Switzerland, clients must pass a multi-stage clearance procedure and prove to the bank the lawful origins of their assets.
Taxation evasion
Many sovereign states do not legally require private bankers to confirm whether or not a client has or has not paid their taxes, in any capacity. On top of this, Switzerland's banking secrecy laws prohibit the disclosure of client information under a variety of federal, cantonal, and civil policies. Many foreign nationals open Swiss bank accounts to take advantage of these laws and tax distinctions. While citizens of Switzerland retain the full force of banking secrecy protections, foreign clients are afforded some of the most stringent bank-client confidentiality protections in the world. In exchange for banking services, the Swiss government charges "a low, lump-sum option on the money they bank", after which Swiss tax authorities consider client tax burdens "settled". After the Banking Law of 1934 was passed, Swiss bankers traveled across Europe to advertise its banking secrecy during World War II. As European countries began to increase taxes to finance the war, wealthy clients moved their holdings into Swiss accounts to avoid taxation.
According to the 2018 Financial Secrecy Index, Switzerland's banking secrecy laws have rendered it a premier tax haven since the 1900s. One of the most prominent attractions to the disclosure protection laws is the distinction between tax evasion (non-reporting of income) and tax fraud (active deception). Akin to the distinction between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion in the U.S., the non-reporting of income is only a civil offense in Switzerland while tax fraud is a financial crime. When foreign clients deposit holdings into a Swiss bank account, the bank is legally prohibited from disclosing balances or client information to tax authorities. This prohibition can only be waved if the client has produced a written statement of consent or a financial crime has been directly linked to the bank account. More often than not, clients don't consent to foreign tax authorities which leaves only the latter circumstance available. Many client services available in Switzerland (e.g. numbered bank accounts) are used to shield client data from tax authorities.
Breaches of banking secrecy laws in Switzerland are automatically processed pursuant to Article 47 of the Banking Law of 1934: those who disclose client information are subject to a maximum of five years imprisonment and 250,000 francs (EUR215,000 or US$250,000) in fines. Whistleblowers and leakers of client information often face hostility from the public and sustain professional set backs. Denounced as a criminal in Switzerland, a federal arrest warrant has been in place for Bradley Birkenfeld since 2008, after he disclosed UBS client information to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in 2007. After the 2008 financial crisis, the Swiss Parliament initiated a series of international tax treaties that rolled back banking secrecy protections for foreign clients in response to pressure from the European Union, United States, and United Kingdom. Despite implementing nearly 50 information transfer agreements and numerous limitations to banking secrecy protections for foreign clients, Switzerland has been ranked among the top three tax havens in the world every single year since the financial crisis, most recently in 2018.
Major banks
As of 2018, there are more than 400 securities dealers and banking instituons in Switzerland, ranging from the "Two Big Banks" down to small banks serving the needs of a single community or a few special clients. The largest and second largest Swiss banks are UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG, respectively. They account for over 50% of all deposits in Switzerland; each has extensive branch networks throughout the country and most international centers. Due to their size and complexity, UBS and Credit Suisse are subject to an extra degree of supervision from the Federal Banking Commission.
UBS
UBS Group AG came into existence in June 1998, when Union Bank of Switzerland, founded in 1862, and Swiss Bank Corporation, founded in 1872, merged. Headquartered in Zurich and Basel, it is Switzerland's largest bank. It maintains seven main offices around the world (four in the United States and one each in London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong) and branches on five continents.
Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse Group is the second-largest Swiss bank. Based in Zurich and founded in 1856, Credit Suisse offers private banking, investment banking and asset management services. It acquired the First Boston Corporation in 1988 and merged with the Winterthur insurance company in 1997; the latter was sold to AXA in 2006. The asset management services were sold to Aberdeen Asset Management during the 2008 financial crisis.
Other banks
Central Bank
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) serves as the country's central bank. Founded by the Federal Act on the Swiss National Bank (16 January 1906), it began conducting business on 20 June 1907. Its shares are publicly traded, and are held by the cantons, cantonal banks, and individual investors; the federal government does not hold any shares. Although a central bank often has regulatory authority over the country's banking system, the SNB does not; regulation is solely the role of the Federal Banking Commission.
Raiffeisen Banks "assumes the role of central bank" in providing treasury services, and is the third largest group consisting of 328 banks in 2011, 390 in 2012 with 1,155 branches. During February 2012, P. Vincenz was chief executive. During January, an announcement was made that the non-U.S. businesses of Wegelin & Co, the oldest Swiss bank, would be bought by the Raiffeisen group. The group has 3 million plus clients within Switzerland.
Private banks
The term private bank refers to a bank that offers private banking services and in its legal form is a partnership. The first private banks were created in St. Gallen in the mid-18th century and in Geneva in the late 18th century as partnerships, and some are still in the hands of the original families such as Hottinger and Mirabaud. In Switzerland, such private banks are called private bankers (a protected term) to distinguish them from the other private banks which are typically shared corporations. Historically in Switzerland a minimum of CHF1 million was required to open an account, however, over the last years many private banks have lowered their entry hurdles to CHF250,000 for private investors.
Cantonal banks
There are, as of 2006, 24 cantonal banks; these banks are state-guaranteed semi-governmental organizations controlled by one of Switzerland's 26 cantons that engage in all banking businesses. The largest cantonal bank, the Zurich Cantonal Bank, had a 2005 net income of CHF810 million.
In popular culture
Banking in Switzerland, in particular Swiss banking secrecy practices, has been detailed in global popular culture to varying degrees of accuracy. According to official statements from the Swiss National Film Archives, inaccurate or exaggerated portrayals negatively impact Switzerland by reducing bankers to unflattering "caricatures" that are "ever disposed to accept funds from questionable sources". In 2014, Sindy Schmiegel, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) stressed that financial regulation in Switzerland is dramatically more strict than portrayed fictionally. The Economic Times noted that popular culture portrays Swiss bank accounts as "completely anonymous" later adding "this is simply not true."
Swiss banking was prominently featured in the following films and television shows:
- The Great Spy Chase (1964): Francis Lagneau (Lino Ventura) engages with a Swiss banker to open a bank account containing patents to powerful weapons. This film is considered the first motion picture to reference banking in Switzerland.
- Swiss banking has been mentioned by James Bond in film and in literature dozens of times, it plays a central role in:
- Goldfinger (1964): James Bond (Sean Connery) thwarts Goldfinger's plans to rob a U.S. gold depository frequently citing Swiss underground gold bunkers and bank accounts numbers as motivation. This film was written after Switzerland's role in World War II was at the forefront of international critique on bank secrecy.
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): supervillian Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas) tells James Bond (George Lazenby) that unless a large sum of money is deposited into a Swiss bank account, a bomb will detonate and kill thousands of people. Mentions of Swiss banking in the James Bond novels have been viewed as "reinforcing a stereotype".
- The World Is Not Enough (1999): James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) visits a Swiss bank in Spain called La Banque Suisse de L'Industrie to meet an associate before jumping out of a five-story window.
- Casino Royal (2006): After a high stakes poker game is completed, the winnings of James Bond (Daniel Craig) is transferred to a Swiss bank account for security.
- The Godfather Part III (1990): Frederick Keinszig (Helmut Berger), a Swiss banker for the Vatican, gets into a shootout with the Corleone family over technicalities over bank-client confidentiality. The movie was seen as establishing the "Swiss banker trope" within mainstream culture.
- The Bourne Identity (2002): Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), a secret operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suffering from retrograde amnesia, begins to recall life events after opening a bank deposit box containing a gun, large amounts of international currency and a variety of passports. The scene was seen as unduly "[emphasizing] the issue of [bank] secrecy".
- The Da Vinci Code (2006): Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) opens a Swiss bank account at the Paris-based "Depository Bank of Zürich", a high-tech bank that allows clients to deposit and withdraw assets with complete anonymity. The usage of this type of numbered bank account is illegal both in France and Switzerland.
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013): Jordon Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) travels to the Genva-based Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) to meet with private banker Jean Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) who advises Belfort to open an account in the name of a relative with a European passport to avoid U.S. taxation. This is technically legal in Switzerland as Belfort was not charged with a financial crime (at the time of meeting) and extra banking secrecy is afforded to European citizens. Belfort's bank-client confidentiality was waved because Saurel traveled outside of Switzerland and was arrested on U.S. soil for a crime (money laundering) illegal in both countries. The fictional interaction was called "a bit ridiculous and exaggerated" and "not very Swiss" by the Swiss Bankers Association.
See also
- List of Swiss financial market regulation
- List of banks in Switzerland
References
Bibliography
External links
- The Swiss Financial Center, from swissworld.org
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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