Bei grossen Gesetzen wie OR und ZGB kann dies bis zu 30 Sekunden dauern

Ordinance of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority on Collective Investment Schemes

English is not an official language of the Swiss Confederation. This translation is provided for information purposes only and has no legal force.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA),

based on Articles 55 paragraph 3, 56 paragraph 3, 71 paragraph 2, 91 and 128 paragraph 2 of the Collective Investment Schemes Act of 23 June 20061 (CISA),

decrees:

Title 1 Collective Investment Schemes

Chapter 1 Securities Funds

Section 1 Securities Lending

Art. 1 Definition  

Se­cur­it­ies lend­ing means: a leg­ally bind­ing trans­ac­tion in which the fund man­age­ment com­pany or in­vest­ment com­pany with vari­able cap­it­al (SICAV), act­ing as lender, un­der­takes to tem­por­ar­ily trans­fer to the bor­row­er own­er­ship of spe­cif­ic se­cur­it­ies, and where:

a.
the bor­row­er is ob­liged to re­turn to the lender se­cur­it­ies of the same type, quant­ity and qual­ity at the end of the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing peri­od and to trans­fer any in­come earned dur­ing that peri­od to the lender; and
b.
the lender bears the price risk of the se­cur­it­ies for the dur­a­tion of the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing.
Art. 2 Principles  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may lend se­cur­it­ies in its own name and for its own ac­count to a bor­row­er («prin­cip­al»).

2The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may also ap­point an in­ter­me­di­ary to put the se­cur­it­ies at the dis­pos­al of the bor­row­er either on a fi­du­ciary basis («agent») or dir­ectly («find­er»), in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of this sec­tion.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall con­clude a stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment gov­ern­ing se­cur­it­ies lend­ing with each bor­row­er or in­ter­me­di­ary in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 7.

Art. 3 Authorised borrowers and intermediaries  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall con­duct se­cur­it­ies lend­ing trans­ac­tions ex­clus­ively with first-class su­per­vised bor­row­ers and in­ter­me­di­ar­ies which are spe­cial­ised in trans­ac­tions of this type, such as banks, brokers and in­sur­ance com­pan­ies, as well as li­censed and re­cog­nised cent­ral coun­ter­party clear­ing houses and cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies that guar­an­tee the prop­er ex­e­cu­tion of such trans­ac­tions.

2The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV must ob­tain the cus­todi­an bank's writ­ten con­sent should the lat­ter not be par­ti­cip­at­ing in the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing trans­ac­tion as either bor­row­er or in­ter­me­di­ary.

3The cus­todi­an bank may only with­hold its con­sent if there is no guar­an­tee that it can meet its stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al du­ties with re­gard to set­tle­ment, safe­keep­ing, pro­vi­sion of in­form­a­tion, and con­trol.

Art. 4 Securities eligible for lending  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may lend all types of se­cur­it­ies that are traded on an ex­change or oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic.

2It may not lend se­cur­it­ies ac­quired un­der a re­verse repo trans­ac­tion.

Art. 5 Termination dates and notice periods  

1It must be pos­sible to ter­min­ate in­di­vidu­al trans­ac­tions and the stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment for the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing trans­ac­tion at any time.

2Where the ob­ser­va­tion of a no­tice peri­od has been agreed, that peri­od may not ex­ceed sev­en bank­ing days.

Art. 6 Scope and duration  

1If the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV is re­quired to ob­serve a no­tice peri­od be­fore it may again have leg­al con­trol of the loaned se­cur­it­ies, it may not lend more than 50 per­cent of the eli­gible hold­ing of a par­tic­u­lar se­cur­ity.

2If, however, the bor­row­er or in­ter­me­di­ary provides a con­trac­tu­al guar­an­tee to the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV that the lat­ter may again leg­ally dis­pose of the loaned se­cur­it­ies on the same or fol­low­ing bank­ing day, the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may lend the en­tire eli­gible hold­ing of a par­tic­u­lar se­cur­ity.

Art. 7 Minimum contents of the standardised framework agreement  

1The stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment must meet the rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards.

2The stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment must in­dic­ate those se­cur­it­ies funds whose se­cur­it­ies are in prin­ciple eli­gible for se­cur­it­ies lend­ing, in ad­di­tion to the se­cur­it­ies which are ex­cluded from se­cur­it­ies lend­ing.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall stip­u­late in the stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment with the bor­row­er or in­ter­me­di­ary that they:

a.
pledge or trans­fer col­lat­er­al to the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV for the pur­poses of guar­an­tee­ing resti­tu­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 51;
b.
are li­able vis-à-vis the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV for:
1.
the prompt, un­con­di­tion­al pay­ment of any in­come ac­cru­ing dur­ing the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing peri­od,
2.
the as­ser­tion of oth­er pro­pri­et­ary rights such as con­ver­sion and sub­scrip­tion rights, and
3.
the con­trac­tu­ally agreed re­turn of se­cur­it­ies of the same type, quant­ity and qual­ity;
c.
as­sign all se­cur­it­ies avail­able for the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing trans­ac­tion to the in­di­vidu­al lenders on the basis of ob­ject­ive and trans­par­ent cri­ter­ia.

4The frame­work agree­ment should also set out:

a
agree­ment of an ap­pro­pri­ate col­lat­er­al value that at all times should amount to at least 100 per­cent of the mar­ket value of the loaned se­cur­it­ies;
b.
the loaned se­cur­it­ies are ex­cluded from the claims of the bor­row­er or in­ter­me­di­ary.
Art. 8 Special duties of the custodian bank  

The cus­todi­an bank has the fol­low­ing spe­cial du­ties in con­nec­tion with the set­tle­ment of the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing trans­ac­tion:

a.
It shall in­form the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV on a reg­u­lar basis of the lend­ing trans­ac­tions con­duc­ted.
b.
It shall, at least once a month, ac­count for any in­come earned on the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing.
c.
It shall en­sure that the se­cur­it­ies lend­ing trans­ac­tions are settled in a se­cure man­ner, in line with the agree­ments and, in par­tic­u­lar, it shall mon­it­or com­pli­ance with the re­quire­ments re­lat­ing to col­lat­er­al.
d.
In ad­di­tion, it shall carry out the ad­min­is­trat­ive du­ties as­signed to it un­der the safe-cus­tody reg­u­la­tions dur­ing the term of the lend­ing trans­ac­tion and as­sert all rights as­so­ci­ated with the loaned se­cur­it­ies, un­less such du­ties have been ceded un­der the terms of the stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment.
Art. 9 Inventory and statement of net assets, or balance sheet, inclusion in investment limits  

1Loaned se­cur­it­ies must be de­noted as be­ing «lent» in the se­cur­it­ies fund's in­vent­ory and must con­tin­ue to be in­cluded in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet.

2Loaned se­cur­it­ies must con­tin­ue to be taken in­to ac­count when en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory in­vest­ment re­stric­tions.

Section 2 Securities Repurchase Agreements (Repo, Reverse Repo)

Art. 10 Definitions  

The terms be­low are defined as fol­lows:

a.
«se­cur­it­ies re­pur­chase agree­ment» means a repo (or sale and re­pur­chase agree­ment) and re­verse repo (or re­verse sale and re­pur­chase agree­ment);
b.
«repo» means a leg­ally bind­ing trans­ac­tion in which one party (the bor­row­er or repo seller) tem­por­ar­ily trans­fers own­er­ship of se­cur­it­ies to an­oth­er party (the repo buy­er), and where:
1.
the repo buy­er un­der­takes to re­turn to the repo seller se­cur­it­ies of the same type, quant­ity and qual­ity at the end of the repo term to­geth­er with any in­come earned dur­ing such term;
2.
dur­ing the term of the re­pur­chase agree­ment, the price risk as­so­ci­ated with the se­cur­it­ies shall be borne by the repo seller;
c.
«re­verse repo» means a repo from the per­spect­ive of the lender;
d.
«repo in­terest» means the dif­fer­ence between the selling price and pur­chase price of the se­cur­it­ies.
Art. 11 Principles  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may con­clude re­pur­chase agree­ments in its own name and for its own ac­count with a coun­ter­party («prin­cip­al»).

2It may ap­point an in­ter­me­di­ary to con­clude re­pur­chase agree­ments with a coun­ter­party either in­dir­ectly on a fi­du­ciary basis («agent») or dir­ectly («find­er»), in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of this sec­tion.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall con­clude a stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment gov­ern­ing re­pur­chase agree­ments with each coun­ter­party or in­ter­me­di­ary in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 17.

Art. 12 Authorised counterparties and intermediaries  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall con­duct re­pur­chase agree­ments ex­clus­ively with first-class su­per­vised coun­ter­parties and in­ter­me­di­ar­ies that spe­cial­ise in these types of trans­ac­tions, such as banks, brokers and in­sur­ance com­pan­ies, as well as li­censed and re­cog­nised cent­ral coun­ter­party clear­ing houses and cent­ral se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­or­ies that can guar­an­tee the ex­e­cu­tion of trans­ac­tions in a due and prop­er man­ner.

2The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV must ob­tain the writ­ten con­sent of the cus­todi­an bank if the lat­ter is not to be in­volved in the re­pur­chase agree­ment as either coun­ter­party or in­ter­me­di­ary.

3The cus­todi­an bank may only deny its con­sent if there is no guar­an­tee that it can meet its stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al du­ties with re­gard to set­tle­ment, safe­keep­ing, pro­vi­sion of in­form­a­tion, and con­trol.

Art. 13 Securities eligible for repurchase agreements  

1For repo trans­ac­tions, the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may use all types of se­cur­it­ies that are traded on a stock ex­change or oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic.

2For repo pur­poses, it may not use se­cur­it­ies ac­quired un­der a re­verse repo.

Art. 14 Termination dates and notice periods  

1It must be pos­sible to ter­min­ate in­di­vidu­al trans­ac­tions and the stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment for the re­pur­chase trans­ac­tion at any time.

2Where the ob­ser­va­tion of a no­tice peri­od has been agreed, such peri­od may not ex­ceed sev­en bank­ing days.

Art. 15 Scope and duration of the repo  

1If the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV must ob­serve a no­tice peri­od be­fore it can again have leg­al con­trol of the se­cur­it­ies un­der the re­pur­chase agree­ment, it may not use more than 50 per­cent of its hold­ings of a par­tic­u­lar se­cur­ity eli­gible for repo trans­ac­tions.

2If, however, the coun­ter­party or in­ter­me­di­ary provides the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV with a con­trac­tu­al guar­an­tee that the lat­ter may again have leg­al con­trol of the se­cur­it­ies un­der the re­pur­chase agree­ment on the same or fol­low­ing bank­ing day, its en­tire hold­ing of a par­tic­u­lar se­cur­ity eli­gible for repo trans­ac­tions may be used.

Art. 16 Securing claims for money and securities  

1In or­der to se­cure claims for money and se­cur­it­ies arising from re­pur­chase agree­ments, the claims and ob­lig­a­tions must be val­ued daily at the cur­rent mar­ket price, tak­ing ac­count of ac­crued in­terest and the in­come due to the bor­row­er, and the dif­fer­ence must be marked to mar­ket daily.

2Com­pens­a­tion must be in cash or in se­cur­it­ies. The lat­ter must be com­par­able in type and qual­ity to the se­cur­it­ies used for the re­pur­chase agree­ment.

Art. 17 Minimum contents of the standardised framework agreement  

1The stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment must meet the rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards.

2The stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment must in­dic­ate both the se­cur­it­ies funds for which re­pur­chase agree­ments may in prin­ciple be con­duc­ted and the se­cur­it­ies which are ex­cluded from the re­pur­chase agree­ment.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall stip­u­late in the stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment with the coun­ter­party or in­ter­me­di­ary that:

a.
the lender is li­able vis-à-vis the bor­row­er for:
1.
the prompt, un­con­di­tion­al pay­ment of any in­come ac­cru­ing dur­ing the re­pur­chase agree­ment and the com­pens­at­ing pay­ments to be made pur­su­ant to Art­icle 16,
2.
the as­ser­tion of oth­er pro­pri­et­ary rights such as con­ver­sion and sub­scrip­tion rights, and
3.
the con­trac­tu­ally agreed re­turn of se­cur­it­ies of the same type, quant­ity and qual­ity;
b.
the bor­row­er is li­able vis-à-vis the lender for:
1.
the prompt, un­con­di­tion­al pay­ment of any com­pens­at­ing pay­ments to be made dur­ing the term of the re­pur­chase agree­ment pur­su­ant to Art­icle 16, and
2.
the re­pur­chase of the se­cur­it­ies un­der the repo trans­ac­tion in com­pli­ance with the terms of the agree­ment;
c.
claims for money and se­cur­it­ies arising from re­pur­chase agree­ments may not be net­ted with claims of the coun­ter­party or in­ter­me­di­ary.
Art. 18 Special duties of the custodian bank  

The cus­todi­an bank has the fol­low­ing spe­cial du­ties in re­la­tion to the set­tle­ment of the re­pur­chase trans­ac­tion:

a.
It en­sures that the re­pur­chase trans­ac­tion is settled in a se­cure and con­trac­tu­ally agreed man­ner.
b.
It en­sures that fluc­tu­ations in the value of the se­cur­it­ies used in repo trans­ac­tions are com­pensated for in cash or se­cur­it­ies (marked to mar­ket).
c.
For the dur­a­tion of the re­pur­chase trans­ac­tion it shall, in ad­di­tion, carry out the ad­min­is­trat­ive du­ties as­signed to it un­der the safe-cus­tody reg­u­la­tions and as­sert all rights as­so­ci­ated with the se­cur­it­ies used in the repo trans­ac­tion, un­less such du­ties have been ceded un­der the stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment.
Art. 19 Raising loans via repo agreements  

1Pur­su­ant to Art­icle 77 para­graph 2 CISO1, a re­pur­chase agree­ment rep­res­ents the rais­ing of a loan by the se­cur­it­ies fund.

2The money ob­lig­a­tions arising from re­pos, to­geth­er with all oth­er loans taken, must com­ply with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory lim­its on bor­row­ing.

3If, when con­duct­ing a repo trans­ac­tion, the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV uses the money re­ceived to ac­quire se­cur­it­ies of the same type, qual­ity, cred­it rat­ing and ma­tur­ity in con­junc­tion with the con­clu­sion of a re­verse repo, this is not deemed to be tak­ing a loan.


Art. 20 Distinction between reverse repos and the granting of loans  

1Pur­su­ant to Art­icle 77 para­graph 1 let­ter a CISO1, re­verse re­pos do not rep­res­ent the grant­ing of a loan.

2Pur­su­ant to Art­icle 75 CISO, money claims in con­nec­tion with the con­clu­sion of re­verse re­pos are deemed li­quid as­sets.


Art. 21 Inclusion in investment limits  

1Se­cur­it­ies sold through re­pos must con­tin­ue to be taken in­to ac­count when en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory in­vest­ment re­stric­tions.

2Money claims ac­quired through re­verse re­pos must con­tin­ue to be taken in­to ac­count when en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory in­vest­ment re­stric­tions.

Art. 22 Inventory, statement of net assets, or balance sheet and profit and loss account  

1Se­cur­it­ies sold through re­pos must be de­noted as be­ing «used in repo» in the in­vent­ory of the se­cur­it­ies fund's as­sets and must con­tin­ue to be in­cluded in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet.

2Money ob­lig­a­tions arising from re­pos must be dis­closed in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet, un­der «Li­ab­il­it­ies from re­pur­chase agree­ments» at the value as­signed on the cal­cu­la­tion date based on the as­sump­tion of a lin­ear de­vel­op­ment in value.

3In the case of re­pos, repo in­terest must be dis­closed in the profit and loss ac­count un­der «In­terest pay­able».

4Se­cur­it­ies pur­chased through re­verse re­pos are not in­cluded in the in­vent­ory of the se­cur­it­ies fund's as­sets, nor in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet.

5Money claims arising from re­verse re­pos must be dis­closed in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet, un­der «Claims from re­pur­chase agree­ments» at the value as­signed on the cal­cu­la­tion date based on the as­sump­tion of a lin­ear de­vel­op­ment in value.

6In the case of re­verse re­pos, repo in­terest must be dis­closed in the profit and loss ac­count un­der «In­come from re­verse re­pos».

Section 3 Derivative Financial Instruments

Art. 23 Definitions  

1The terms be­low are defined as fol­lows:

a.
«ba­sic type of de­riv­at­ive»:
1.
a call or put op­tion, the ex­pir­a­tion value of which is lin­early de­pend­ent on the pos­it­ive or neg­at­ive dif­fer­ence between the mar­ket value of the un­der­ly­ing and the strike price and is zero if the dif­fer­ence is pre­ceded by the op­pos­ite al­geb­ra­ic sign,
2.
a cred­it de­fault swap (CDS),
3.
a swap, the pay­ments of which are de­pend­ent on the value of the un­der­ly­ing or on an ab­so­lute amount in both a lin­ear and a path-in­de­pend­ent man­ner,
4.
a fu­ture or for­ward trans­ac­tion the value of which is lin­early de­pend­ent on the value of the un­der­ly­ing;
b.
«ex­pos­ure-in­creas­ing»: de­riv­at­ive ex­pos­ure, the fin­an­cial ef­fect of which is sim­il­ar to the pur­chase of an un­der­ly­ing (e.g. the pur­chase of a call op­tion, pur­chase of a fu­ture, sale of a put op­tion, ex­chan­ging of vari­able for fixed in­terest pay­ments or the con­clu­sion of a cred­it de­fault swap as pro­tec­tion seller);
c.
«ex­pos­ure-re­du­cing»: a de­riv­at­ive ex­pos­ure the fin­an­cial ef­fect of which is sim­il­ar to the sale of an un­der­ly­ing (in par­tic­u­lar, the sale of a call op­tion, sale of a fu­ture, pur­chase of a put op­tion, ex­chan­ging of fixed for vari­able in­terest pay­ments or the con­clu­sion of a cred­it de­fault swap as se­cured party);
d.
«exot­ic de­riv­at­ive» means a de­riv­at­ive with a mode of op­er­a­tion that can­not be de­scribed as a ba­sic form of de­riv­at­ive or a com­bin­a­tion of ba­sic forms of de­riv­at­ives (for in­stance, a path-de­pend­ent op­tion, an op­tion with sev­er­al factors or an op­tion with con­tract modi­fic­a­tions);
e.
«con­tract size»: num­ber of un­der­ly­ing se­cur­it­ies or nom­in­al value of a de­riv­at­ive con­tract;
f.
«con­tract value»:
1.
in the case of a swap, the product of the nom­in­al value of the un­der­ly­ing and the con­tract size,
2.
in the case of all oth­er de­riv­at­ives, the product of the un­der­ly­ing's mar­ket value and the con­tract size;
g.
«OTC (over the counter)»: the con­clu­sion of trans­ac­tions off an ex­change or any oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket which is open to the pub­lic;
h.
«syn­thet­ic li­quid­ity»: un­der­ly­ings whose mar­ket risk and po­ten­tial cred­it risk are hedged with de­riv­at­ives that have a sym­met­ric pay­ment pro­file;
i.
«over­all ex­pos­ure»: ex­pos­ure to the fund’s net as­sets, the net over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives and in­vest­ment tech­niques un­der Art­icle 55 CISA, in­clud­ing short-selling;
j.
«gross over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives»: total amount of cap­it­al re­quire­ments eli­gible from de­riv­at­ives, in­clud­ing de­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents;
k.
«net over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives»: total amount of cap­it­al re­quire­ments eli­gible from de­riv­at­ives, in­clud­ing de­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents, tak­ing ac­count of per­miss­ible net­ting, hedging trans­ac­tions and oth­er rules set out in Art­icles 35 and 36;
l.
«lever­age»: ef­fect of de­riv­at­ives, de­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents in­vest­ment tech­niques, in­clud­ing short-selling on the fund’s net as­sets, by build­ing up over-pro­por­tion­ally high po­s­i­tions in an un­der­ly­ing when com­pared to the cap­it­al in­ves­ted.
Art. 24 Principles  

De­riv­at­ives may be used only where, even in ex­cep­tion­al mar­ket con­di­tions, the ef­fect of us­ing de­riv­at­ives does not res­ult in a de­vi­ation from the in­vest­ment ob­ject­ives set out in the fund reg­u­la­tions, pro­spect­us and im­port­ant in­form­a­tion for in­vestors, or in a change in the in­vest­ment char­ac­ter of the se­cur­it­ies fund.

Art. 25 Umbrella funds  

The pro­vi­sions in this sec­tion ap­ply to the in­di­vidu­al se­cur­it­ies funds or, in the case of an um­brella fund, to each in­di­vidu­al sub-fund.

Art. 26 Structured products, derivative components and warrants  

1In or­der to com­ply with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory pro­vi­sions for risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion, the un­der­ly­ing and the is­sue of a struc­tured product must be taken in­to ac­count.

2If a struc­tured product has one or more de­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents, these must be treated in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions in this sec­tion.

3To es­tab­lish the amount eli­gible for the over­all ex­pos­ure and the risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion re­quire­ments, the struc­tured product is to be broken down in­to its com­pon­ents, if it has lever­age. The com­pon­ents are to be con­sidered in­di­vidu­ally. The break­down is to be doc­u­mented.

4If struc­tured products that can­not be broken down are used as a not neg­li­gible part of the fund’s as­sets, the mod­el ap­proach as a risk meas­ure­ment pro­ced­ure is to be ap­plied.

5De­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents of a fin­an­cial in­stru­ment must be taken in­to ac­count in com­pli­ance with stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion pro­vi­sions, and are eli­gible for the over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives.

6War­rants must be treated as de­riv­at­ives in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of this sec­tion. An op­tion be­long­ing to a war­rant bond is deemed a war­rant.

Art. 27 Credit derivatives  

1As defined in Art­icle 77 para­graph 1 let­ter a CISO1, an ex­pos­ure-in­creas­ing cred­it de­riv­at­ive is not deemed a guar­an­tee.

2The debt­or of ref­er­ence of a cred­it de­riv­at­ive must have out­stand­ing equity or debt se­cur­it­ies or rights to equity or debts that are traded on an ex­change or an­oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic.


Art. 28 Exotic derivatives  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV may only use an exot­ic de­riv­at­ive if:

a.
it can cal­cu­late the min­im­um and the max­im­um delta across the en­tire price spec­trum of the un­der­ly­ings; and
b.
it un­der­stands the de­riv­at­ive's mode of op­er­a­tion, as well as the factors that in­flu­ence its pri­cing.

2In the case of se­cur­it­ies funds, where the com­mit­ment ap­proach II is ap­plied, the exot­ic de­riv­at­ive must be weighted ac­cord­ing to its max­im­um pos­sible delta (ab­so­lute value) when con­ver­ted to its un­der­ly­ing equi­val­ent pur­su­ant to Art­icle 35 para­graph 2.

3The risk as­sess­ment mod­el used risk must be cap­able of re­flect­ing the exot­ic de­riv­at­ive in ac­cord­ance with its risk.

4If the max­im­um delta of the exot­ic de­riv­at­ive is pos­it­ive, it must be weighted by such max­im­um delta in or­der to com­ply with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory max­im­um lim­its. If the min­im­um delta is neg­at­ive, it must be weighted by this min­im­um delta in or­der to com­ply with the reg­u­lat­ory min­im­um lim­its.

Art. 29 Conclusion of the contract  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall con­clude de­riv­at­ive trans­ac­tions on an ex­change or oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket which is open to the pub­lic.

2Trans­ac­tions with OTC de­riv­at­ives (OTC trans­ac­tions) are per­mit­ted, provided the con­di­tions stip­u­lated in Art­icles 30 and 31 are met.

Art. 30 OTC transactions  

1OTC trans­ac­tions may only be con­cluded on the basis of a stand­ard­ised frame­work agree­ment which com­plies with the per­tin­ent in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards.

2The coun­ter­party must:

a.
be a reg­u­lated fin­an­cial in­ter­me­di­ary spe­cial­ised in such types of trans­ac­tions;
b.
en­sure prop­er ex­e­cu­tion of the con­tract; and
c.
meet the cred­it rat­ing re­quire­ments stip­u­lated in Art­icle 31 para­graph 1.

3It must be pos­sible to re­li­ably and veri­fi­ably value an OTC de­riv­at­ive on a daily basis and to sell or close out the de­riv­at­ive at mar­ket value at any time.

4If the mar­ket price for an OTC de­riv­at­ive is not avail­able, it must be pos­sible at all times to de­term­ine the price at any time us­ing ap­pro­pri­ate valu­ation mod­els that are re­cog­nised in prac­tice, based on the mar­ket value of the un­der­ly­ings from which the de­riv­at­ive was de­rived;

5Be­fore con­clud­ing a con­tract for a de­riv­at­ive un­der para­graph 4, spe­cif­ic of­fers must be ob­tained from at least two po­ten­tial coun­ter­parties. The con­tract is to be con­cluded with the coun­ter­party provid­ing the most fa­vour­able of­fer in terms of price. A de­vi­ation from this prin­ciple is pos­sible for reas­ons re­lat­ing to risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion, or where oth­er parts of the con­tract such as cred­it rat­ing or the range of ser­vices offered by the coun­ter­parties in an­oth­er of­fer seem are more ad­vant­age­ous over­all for the in­vestors.

6If it is in the in­vestors’ best in­terests, ob­tain­ing of­fers from at least two po­ten­tial coun­ter­parties may be dis­pensed with. The reas­ons for do­ing so must be clearly doc­u­mented.

7The con­clu­sion of the trans­ac­tion and pri­cing must be clearly doc­u­mented.

Art. 31 Credit rating  

1In the case of OTC trans­ac­tions, the coun­ter­party or its guar­ant­or shall have a high cred­it rat­ing.

2This re­quire­ment does not ap­ply to the cus­todi­an bank of the se­cur­it­ies fund.

Art. 32 Valuation  

1De­riv­at­ives for which mar­ket prices are avail­able shall be val­ued at the cur­rent prices paid on the main mar­ket. Prices are to be ob­tained from an ex­tern­al source spe­cial­ising in this type of trans­ac­tion and which op­er­ates in­de­pend­ently of the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV and its agents.

2If no cur­rent mar­ket price is avail­able for de­riv­at­ives, it must be pos­sible to de­term­ine the price at any time us­ing ap­pro­pri­ate valu­ation mod­els that are re­cog­nised in prac­tice, based on the mar­ket value of the un­der­ly­ings. Valu­ations are to be doc­u­mented clearly.

Art. 33 Risk measurement procedure  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall ap­ply com­mit­ment ap­proach I or II, or the mod­el ap­proach.

2The mod­el ap­proach re­quires the ap­prov­al of FINMA.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall align the risk as­sess­ment pro­cess se­lec­ted with the in­vest­ment ob­ject­ives.

4The mod­el ap­proach must be used where:

a.
the over­all ex­pos­ure of the se­cur­it­ies fund us­ing com­mit­ment ap­proach I or II can­not be ap­pro­pri­ately re­cor­ded and meas­ured;
b.
a not neg­li­gible amount is be­ing in­ves­ted in exot­ic de­riv­at­ives; or
c.
com­plex in­vest­ment strategies of a not neg­li­gible amount are be­ing used.
Art. 34 Commitment approach I  

1For a se­cur­it­ies fund ap­ply­ing com­mit­ment ap­proach I, only ba­sic de­riv­at­ive types are per­mit­ted. They may only be used where ac­count is taken of the ne­ces­sary cov­er­age set out in this art­icle and their use does not res­ult in a lever­age ef­fect on the fund’s as­sets nor does it in­volve short-selling.

2Ex­pos­ure-re­du­cing de­riv­at­ives must at all times be covered by the rel­ev­ant un­der­ly­ings. If the delta has been cal­cu­lated, it may be taken in­to ac­count when cal­cu­lat­ing the ne­ces­sary un­der­ly­ings. Art­icle 44 para­graph 3 also ap­plies mu­tatis mutandis.

3Cov­er­ing with oth­er in­vest­ments is per­mit­ted if the ex­pos­ure-re­du­cing de­riv­at­ive is in­dexed by an in­de­pend­ent ex­tern­al of­fice. The in­dex must be rep­res­ent­at­ive of the un­der­ly­ings and there must be an ad­equate cor­rel­a­tion between the in­dex and such in­vest­ments.

4The un­der­ly­ing equi­val­ents (Art. 35 para. 2) of ex­pos­ure-in­creas­ing de­riv­at­ives must at all times be covered by highly li­quid as­sets.

5The fol­low­ing as­sets are con­sidered highly li­quid:

a.
li­quid as­sets as defined in Art­icle 75 CISO1;
b.
money mar­ket in­stru­ments as defined in Art­icle 74 CISO;
c.
col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which in­vest ex­clus­ively in li­quid as­sets or money mar­ket in­stru­ments;
d.
debt se­cur­it­ies and rights with a time re­main­ing till ma­tur­ity of max­im­um twelve months and the is­suer or guar­ant­or have a high cred­it rat­ing;
e.
syn­thet­ic li­quid­ity;
f.
cred­it lim­its ac­cor­ded to, but not used by, the se­cur­it­ies fund, in line with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory max­im­um in­vest­ment lim­its;
g.
with­hold­ing tax cred­its as con­firmed by the Swiss Fed­er­al Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

6Ac­count can be taken of per­mit­ted net­ting rules and hedging trans­ac­tions un­der Art­icle 36 para­graphs 1, 2 and 4. Covered hedging trans­ac­tions by in­terest de­riv­at­ives are per­mit­ted. Con­vert­ible bonds do not have to be taken in­to ac­count when cal­cu­lat­ing the over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives.


Art. 35 Commitment approach II: determination of the overall exposure  

1To es­tab­lish the over­all ex­pos­ure of a se­cur­it­ies fund us­ing com­mit­ment ap­proach II, the fund man­age­ment com­pany shall de­term­ine the in­di­vidu­al con­ver­sion amounts of the re­spect­ive de­riv­at­ives and de­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents as well as the con­ver­sion amounts arising from in­vest­ment tech­niques.

2In the case of ba­sic types of de­riv­at­ives, the con­ver­sion amount for the over­all ex­pos­ure arising from de­riv­at­ives is nor­mally the un­der­ly­ing equi­val­ent, based on the mar­ket value of the un­der­ly­ing as­sets of the de­riv­at­ives. The un­der­ly­ing equi­val­ents are cal­cu­lated in ac­cord­ance with An­nex 1. The nom­in­al value or the for­ward price of fu­tures con­tracts cal­cu­lated on each trad­ing day may be taken as the basis, if the res­ult is a more con­ser­vat­ive cal­cu­la­tion.

3The con­ver­sion amount for the over­all ex­pos­ure is the ba­sic com­mit­ment from the net fund as­sets and the sum of the fol­low­ing ab­so­lute val­ues:

a.
con­ver­sion amounts of the in­di­vidu­al de­riv­at­ives and de­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents pur­su­ant to An­nex 1 that are not in­cluded in net­ting pur­su­ant to Art­icle 36;
b.
con­ver­sion amounts after per­mit­ted net­ting pur­su­ant to Art­icle 36; and
c.
con­ver­sion amounts from per­mit­ted in­vest­ment tech­niques.

4The fol­low­ing trans­ac­tions may be dis­reg­arded when de­term­in­ing the con­ver­sion amount for the over­all ex­pos­ure arising from de­riv­at­ives pur­su­ant to para­graph 3:

a.
swaps by means of which the per­form­ance of the un­der­ly­ings dir­ectly held by the se­cur­it­ies fund is swapped with the per­form­ance of oth­er un­der­ly­ings (total re­turn swaps), provided that:
1.
the mar­ket risk of the swapped un­der­ly­ings is com­pletely elim­in­ated from the se­cur­it­ies fund so that these as­sets have no im­pact on the change in the value of the se­cur­it­ies fund, and
2.
the swap does not grant op­tion rights or con­tain lever­age or oth­er ad­di­tion­al mar­ket risks that ex­ceed those of a dir­ect in­vest­ment in the rel­ev­ant un­der­ly­ings;
b.
de­riv­at­ives to which cor­res­pond­ing highly li­quid as­sets are as­signed so that the com­bin­a­tion of de­riv­at­ive and highly li­quid as­sets is equi­val­ent to a dir­ect in­vest­ment in the un­der­ly­ing as­set and neither an ad­di­tion­al mar­ket risk nor lever­age is gen­er­ated. The highly li­quid as­sets used to cov­er the de­riv­at­ive po­s­i­tion may not be used for more than one com­bin­a­tion sim­ul­tan­eously.

5Se­cur­it­ies lend­ing and re­pur­chase trans­ac­tions must be taken in­to ac­count when cal­cu­lat­ing the over­all ex­pos­ure if these gen­er­ate lever­age on the fund as­sets through the re­in­vest­ment of col­lat­er­al. Where col­lat­er­al is re­in­ves­ted in fin­an­cial as­sets that provide a re­turn in ex­cess of the risk-free in­terest rate, the amount re­ceived must be in­cluded when de­term­in­ing the over­all ex­pos­ure if cash col­lat­er­al is held.

Art. 36 Commitment approach II: rules on netting and hedging transactions  

1Counter po­s­i­tions in de­riv­at­ives based on the same un­der­ly­ing as well as counter po­s­i­tions in de­riv­at­ives and in in­vest­ments in the same un­der­ly­ing may be net­ted, ir­re­spect­ive of the ma­tur­ity date of the de­riv­at­ives, provided that:

a.
the de­riv­at­ive trans­ac­tion was con­cluded with the sole pur­pose of elim­in­at­ing the risks as­so­ci­ated with the de­riv­at­ives or in­vest­ments ac­quired;
b.
no ma­ter­i­al risks are dis­reg­arded in the pro­cess; and
c.
the con­ver­sion amount of the de­riv­at­ives is de­term­ined pur­su­ant to Art­icle 35.

2If the de­riv­at­ives in hedging trans­ac­tions do not re­late to the same un­der­ly­ing as the as­set that is to be hedged, the fol­low­ing ad­di­tion­al con­di­tions must be met for net­ting:

a.
The de­riv­at­ive trans­ac­tion is not based on an in­vest­ment strategy that serves to gen­er­ate a profit.
b.
The de­riv­at­ive res­ults in a demon­strable re­duc­tion in the risk of the se­cur­it­ies fund.
c.
The gen­er­al and spe­cial risks of the de­riv­at­ive are bal­anced out.
d.
The de­riv­at­ives, un­der­ly­ings or as­sets that are to be net­ted re­late to the same class of fin­an­cial in­stru­ments.
e.
The hedging strategy re­mains ef­fect­ive even un­der ex­cep­tion­al mar­ket con­di­tions.

3Where in­terest rate de­riv­at­ives are pre­dom­in­antly used, the amount to be in­cluded in the over­all ex­pos­ure arising from de­riv­at­ives can be de­term­ined us­ing in­ter­na­tion­ally re­cog­nised dur­a­tion-net­ting rules provided that:

a.
the rules res­ult in a cor­rect de­term­in­a­tion of the risk pro­file of the se­cur­it­ies fund;
b.
the ma­ter­i­al risks are taken in­to ac­count;
c.
the use of these rules does not gen­er­ate an un­jus­ti­fied level of lever­age;
d.
no in­terest rate ar­bit­rage strategies are pur­sued; and
e.
the lever­age of the se­cur­it­ies fund is not in­creased either by ap­ply­ing these rules or through in­vest­ments in short-term po­s­i­tions.

4Not­with­stand­ing para­graph 2, de­riv­at­ives that are used solely for cur­rency hedging pur­poses and do not res­ult in lever­age or con­tain ad­di­tion­al mar­ket risks may be net­ted when cal­cu­lat­ing the over­all ex­pos­ure arising from de­riv­at­ives.

Art. 37 Commitment approach II: documentation requirements  

All cal­cu­la­tions un­der Art­icles 35 and 36 must be clearly doc­u­mented.

Art. 38 Model approach: principles of value-at-risk (VaR)  

1Ap­ply­ing the mod­el ap­proach, the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall es­tim­ate the risks for a se­cur­it­ies fund as value-at-risk (VaR).

2The mod­el must be fully doc­u­mented. The doc­u­ment­a­tion must in par­tic­u­lar provide in­form­a­tion about the spe­cific­a­tion of the risk as­sess­ment mod­el, back-test­ing and stress tests.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall veri­fy the suit­ab­il­ity of the mod­el on a peri­od­ic basis, but at least once a year. The res­ults must be clearly doc­u­mented.

4The VaR of a se­cur­it­ies fund may at no time ex­ceed twice the VaR of the bench­mark port­fo­lio of such se­cur­it­ies fund (re­l­at­ive VaR lim­its)

5When us­ing the mod­el ap­proach, the fund man­age­ment or the SICAV must en­sure a peri­od­ic­al cal­cu­la­tion of the gross over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives of the se­cur­it­ies fund in ques­tion.

Art. 39 Model approach: calculation of VaR  

1The VaR may be de­term­ined us­ing vari­ance/co­v­ari­ance mod­els, his­tor­ic­al sim­u­la­tions and Monte-Carlo sim­u­la­tions. When se­lect­ing the mod­el, the in­vest­ment strategy is to be taken in­to ac­count.

2The VaR must be cal­cu­lated daily on the basis of the pre­vi­ous day's po­s­i­tions us­ing the fol­low­ing para­met­ers:

a.
a 99th per­cent­ile, one-tailed con­fid­ence in­ter­val;
b.
a hold­ing peri­od of 20 trad­ing days;
c.
an ef­fect­ive his­tor­ic­al ob­ser­va­tion peri­od of at least one year (250 bank work­ing days).

3The VaR factors in in­terest rate risk, cur­rency risk, share price risk and com­mod­ity risks. The fol­low­ing must also be taken in­to ac­count:

a.
gamma and vega risks in the case of op­tion po­s­i­tions;
b.
spe­cif­ic risks in the form of re­sid­ual risks;
c.
event, de­fault and li­quid­ity risks as part of stress tests.

4The cal­cu­la­tions must be clearly doc­u­mented.

5Vari­ance from the con­fid­ence in­ter­val, the hold­ing peri­od or the ob­ser­va­tion peri­od is pos­sible ow­ing to ex­cep­tion­al mar­ket cir­cum­stances, and must have the pri­or ap­prov­al of FINMA.

Art. 40 Model approach: benchmark portfolio  

1The bench­mark port­fo­lio of a se­cur­it­ies fund is as­sets without any lever­age and gen­er­ally without any de­riv­at­ives.

2The com­pos­i­tion of the bench­mark port­fo­lio cor­res­ponds to the in­form­a­tion in the fund reg­u­la­tions, pro­spect­us and in­form­a­tion ne­ces­sary for the se­cur­it­ies fund’s in­vestors, spe­cific­ally con­cern­ing its in­vest­ment ob­ject­ives, in­vest­ment policy and lim­its.

3It must be re­viewed peri­od­ic­ally, but at least once a quarter. The re­spect­ive com­pos­i­tion and any changes thereto must be doc­u­mented clearly.

4Where a bench­mark, such as an equity in­dex for bench­mark port­fo­li­os, is defined in the fund reg­u­la­tions or in the pro­spect­us and in­form­a­tion ne­ces­sary for the se­cur­it­ies fund’s in­vestors, it may be used for cal­cu­lat­ing the VaR of the bench­mark port­fo­li­os. The bench­mark must be:

a.
de­riv­at­ive-free and not have any lever­age;
b.
cal­cu­lated by an in­de­pend­ent, ex­tern­al of­fice; and
c.
rep­res­ent­at­ive of the in­vest­ment ob­ject­ives, in­vest­ment policy and lim­its of the se­cur­it­ies fund.
5The bench­mark port­fo­lio may in­clude de­riv­at­ives, where:
a.
ac­cord­ing to the fund reg­u­la­tions or pro­spect­us, the se­cur­it­ies fund is im­ple­ment­ing a long/short strategy, and in the bench­mark port­fo­lio the short ex­pos­ure is shown as de­riv­at­ives;
b.
ac­cord­ing to the fund reg­u­la­tions or pro­spect­us, the se­cur­it­ies fund is im­ple­ment­ing a cur­rency hedge in­vest­ment policy and a cur­rency hedge bench­mark port­fo­lio is used as a bench­mark.

6If it is not pos­sible to con­struct a rep­res­ent­at­ive bench­mark port­fo­lio on the basis of the spe­cif­ic in­vest­ment ob­ject­ives and in­vest­ment policy of a se­cur­it­ies fund, a VaR lim­it may be agreed upon with FINMA (ab­so­lute VaR lim­it). This must be stated in the pro­spect­us.

Art. 41 Model approach: reviewing the risk assessment model  

1In the case of a se­cur­it­ies fund, the fore­cast qual­ity of the risk as­sess­ment mod­el must be ex­amined by com­par­ing the ac­tu­al changes in the value of its net as­sets dur­ing the course of a trad­ing day with the rel­ev­ant one-day VaR (back-test­ing).

2The com­par­is­on must be doc­u­mented clearly.

3The sample to be used must be com­piled from the pre­vi­ous 250 ob­ser­va­tions.

4If back-test­ing shows the risk as­sess­ment mod­el to be im­prac­tic­able, the audit com­pany and FINMA must be no­ti­fied forth­with.

5If back-test­ing pro­duces more than six an­om­alies, the prac­tic­ab­il­ity of the risk as­sess­ment mod­el must be ex­amined in depth and the audit com­pany and FINMA no­ti­fied forth­with.

6If the mod­el is im­prac­tic­able, FINMA may de­mand a swift rec­ti­fic­a­tion of any short­com­ings of the mod­el and or­der tight­er re­stric­tions on the risk.

Art. 42 Model approach: stress tests  

1In the case of se­cur­it­ies funds, ex­treme mar­ket cir­cum­stances must be sim­u­lated peri­od­ic­ally, but at least monthly (stress tests).

2Stress tests must also be con­duc­ted where sig­ni­fic­ant changes to the res­ults of the stress test ow­ing to changes in the value or the com­pos­i­tion of the se­cur­it­ies fund’s as­sets, or to changes in the mar­ket cir­cum­stances can­not be ex­cluded.

3Stress tests in­clude all risk factors which may have a ma­ter­i­al in­flu­ence on the mar­ket value of the se­cur­it­ies fund. Spe­cial at­ten­tion must be paid to risk factors which are not or only in­suf­fi­ciently taken in­to ac­count by the risk as­sess­ment mod­el.

4The res­ults of the con­duc­ted stress tests and any ne­ces­sary res­ult­ing meas­ures must be clearly doc­u­mented

Art. 43 Model approach: changes under the model approach  

1FINMA may al­low vari­ances from the re­quire­ments stip­u­lated in Art­icles 39- 43.

2It may per­mit the use of oth­er risk as­sess­ment mod­els, provided they af­ford an ap­pro­pri­ate de­gree of pro­tec­tion.

3If changes are made to the risk as­sess­ment mod­el, back-test­ing or stress tests, these changes must be sub­mit­ted to FINMA for ap­prov­al in ad­vance.

Art. 44 Cover for a physical delivery obligation of an underlying  

1If the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV enters in­to a phys­ic­al de­liv­ery ob­lig­a­tion in re­spect of a de­riv­at­ive, this de­riv­at­ive must be covered by the cor­res­pond­ing un­der­ly­ings.

2Cov­er of such an ob­lig­a­tion with oth­er in­vest­ments is per­mit­ted if the in­vest­ments and the un­der­ly­ings are highly li­quid and, if de­liv­ery is re­ques­ted, they may be pur­chased or sold at any time.

3The fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV must have un­res­tric­ted ac­cess to these un­der­ly­ings or in­vest­ments at all times.

Art. 45 Covering a payment obligation  

1If the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV enters in­to a pay­ment ob­lig­a­tion in re­spect of a de­riv­at­ive, this pay­ment ob­lig­a­tion must at all times be covered by highly li­quid as­sets as defined in Art­icle 34 para­graph 5.

2In the case of se­cur­it­ies funds ap­ply­ing com­mit­ment ap­proach II or the mod­el ap­proach, the fol­low­ing shall ad­di­tion­ally be re­cog­nised as cov­er:

a.
debt se­cur­it­ies and rights the re­main­ing time to ma­tur­ity of which is more than twelve months and whose is­suer or guar­ant­or has a high cred­it rat­ing;
b.
shares traded on an ex­change or an­oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic.

3It must be pos­sible at all times to turn col­lat­er­al as defined in para­graph 2 in­to li­quid as­sets with­in sev­en bank­ing days.

4Shares may only be in­cluded as cov­er at mar­ket value less a se­cur­ity mar­gin. This se­cur­ity mar­gin must take ac­count of the volat­il­ity of the cor­res­pond­ing share and must amount to at least 15 per­cent.

5If an in­vest­ment may re­quire an ad­di­tion­al pay­ment, it is deemed an ob­lig­a­tion to pay.

Art. 46 General provisions for inclusion of investment restrictions  

1In com­ply­ing with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory in­vest­ment re­stric­tions on de­term­in­ing max­im­um and min­im­um lim­its, the fol­low­ing must be taken in­to ac­count:

a.
in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing de­riv­at­ives, in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 70 CISO1;
b.
li­quid as­sets as defined in Art­icle 75 CISO;
c.
claims against coun­ter­parties arising from OTC trans­ac­tions.

2Pur­su­ant to Art­icle 82 CISO, ex­cep­tions may be made for in­dex funds.

3Any over­run of an in­vest­ment lim­it due to a change in the delta must be rec­ti­fied with­in three bank­ing days; the rec­ti­fic­a­tion must en­sure that the in­vestors’ in­terests re­main safe­guarded.


Art. 47 Inclusion of derivatives  

1In com­ply­ing with the stat­utory and reg­u­lat­ory max­im­um and min­im­um lim­its, and in par­tic­u­lar the reg­u­la­tions on risk di­ver­si­fic­a­tion, un­der­ly­ing equi­val­ents as set out in An­nex 1 are de­cis­ive.

2A min­im­um lim­it may be tem­por­ar­ily un­der­cut with ex­pos­ure-re­du­cing de­riv­at­ives pur­chased as part of a hedging strategy if the in­terests of in­vestors re­main safe­guarded.

3De­riv­at­ive com­pon­ents are to be taken in­to ac­count with the cap­it­al re­quire­ment un­der Art­icle 35.

Art. 48 Inclusion of claims against counterparties at the maximum limits  

1Claims against coun­ter­parties arising from de­riv­at­ive trans­ac­tions must be cal­cu­lated on the basis of the cur­rent pos­it­ive re­place­ment val­ues.

2Pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive re­place­ment val­ues arising from trans­ac­tions in de­riv­at­ives with the same coun­ter­party may be net­ted if a net­ting agree­ment ex­ists that meets the cur­rent leg­al re­quire­ments and is leg­ally en­force­able.

3Claims arising from de­riv­at­ive trans­ac­tions against a cent­ral coun­ter­party of an ex­change or an­oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic must not be taken in­to ac­count if:

a.
such a unit is sub­ject to an ap­pro­pri­ate su­per­vis­ory body; and
b.
the de­riv­at­ives and col­lat­er­al are sub­ject to daily mark­ing to mar­ket and daily mar­gin­ing.
Art. 49 Disclosure  

1If the use of de­riv­at­ives is per­mit­ted for the man­age­ment of a se­cur­it­ies fund, such de­riv­at­ives must be de­scribed in the fund reg­u­la­tions and the pro­spect­us.

2The pro­spect­us must in­dic­ate wheth­er the de­riv­at­ives are used as part of the in­vest­ment strategy or solely to hedge in­vest­ment po­s­i­tions. In ad­di­tion, the pro­spect­us must ex­plain how the use of de­riv­at­ives af­fects the risk pro­file of the se­cur­it­ies fund.

3The fund reg­u­la­tions and pro­spect­us must state which risk as­sess­ment pro­cess is ap­plied to the se­cur­it­ies fund. The risk as­sess­ment pro­cess must also be de­scribed in the pro­spect­us. If the mod­el ap­proach is used, the gross over­all ex­pos­ure to de­riv­at­ives must be shown. If the re­l­at­ive VaR ap­proach is used, the bench­mark port­fo­lio must be dis­closed in the pro­spect­us.

4If a se­cur­it­ies fund ex­hib­its in­creased volat­il­ity or lever­age due to the use of de­riv­at­ives, spe­cial ref­er­ence must be made to this in the pro­spect­us and ad­vert­ising ma­ter­i­al.

5Ref­er­ence must be made to the coun­ter­party risks of de­riv­at­ives in the pro­spect­us.

Section 4 Management of Collateral

Art. 50 Scope of application  

As­sets re­ceived as col­lat­er­al as part of in­vest­ment tech­niques or OTC trans­ac­tions must sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments of this sec­tion.

Art. 51 Requirements for collateral  

Only col­lat­er­al that meets the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments may be ac­cep­ted:

a.
It is highly li­quid and is traded at a trans­par­ent price on an ex­change or oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic. It can be dis­posed of at short no­tice at a price close to the valu­ation un­der­taken pri­or to sale.
b.
It is val­ued at least on each trad­ing day. Where price volat­il­ity is high, suit­able con­ser­vat­ive se­cur­ity mar­gins must be ap­plied.
c.
It is not is­sued by the coun­ter­party or by a com­pany that be­longs to or is de­pend­ent on the coun­ter­party’s group.
d.
The cred­it qual­ity of the is­suer is high.
Art. 52 Management of collateral  

The fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV or their agents must com­ply with the fol­low­ing du­ties and re­quire­ments when man­aging the col­lat­er­al:

a.
They must di­ver­si­fy the col­lat­er­al ap­pro­pri­ately in terms of coun­tries, mar­kets and is­suers. Ap­pro­pri­ate di­ver­si­fic­a­tion of is­suers is deemed to have been achieved if the col­lat­er­al of a single is­suer held does not cor­res­pond to more than 20 per­cent of the net as­set value. De­vi­ation from this rule is per­mit­ted if the col­lat­er­al meets the re­quire­ments of Art­icle 83 para­graph 1 CISO1 or the ap­prov­al con­di­tions set out in Art­icle 83 para­graph 2 CISO are met. If col­lat­er­al is provided by more than one coun­ter­party, an ag­greg­ate per­spect­ive must be en­sured.
b.
They must be able to ob­tain power of dis­pos­al over, and au­thor­ity to dis­pose of, the col­lat­er­al re­ceived at any time in the event of de­fault by the coun­ter­party, without in­volving the coun­ter­party or ob­tain­ing its con­sent.
c.
They may not re-lend, re-pledge, sell or re­in­vest col­lat­er­al pledged or trans­ferred to them or use it as part of a re­pur­chase trans­ac­tion or to hedge ob­lig­a­tions arising from de­riv­at­ive fin­an­cial in­stru­ments. They may only use cash col­lat­er­al re­ceived in the cor­res­pond­ing cur­rency as li­quid as­sets or in­vest it in high-qual­ity gov­ern­ment bonds and dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly in short-term money mar­ket in­stru­ments or use it as a re­verse repo.
d.
If they ac­cept col­lat­er­al rep­res­ent­ing more than 30 per­cent of the fund as­sets, they must en­sure that the li­quid­ity risks can be cap­tured and mon­itored ap­pro­pri­ately. Reg­u­lar stress tests must be car­ried out that take ac­count of both nor­mal and ex­cep­tion­al li­quid­ity con­di­tions. The con­trols car­ried out must be doc­u­mented.
e.
They must take ac­count of the risks as­so­ci­ated with the man­age­ment of col­lat­er­al in their risk man­age­ment pro­cess.
f.
They must be in a po­s­i­tion to at­trib­ute any un­covered claims re­main­ing after the real­isa­tion of col­lat­er­al to the se­cur­it­ies funds whose as­sets were the sub­ject of the un­der­ly­ing trans­ac­tions.

Art. 53 Collateral strategy  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV and their agents must have in place a col­lat­er­al strategy that:

a.
provides for ap­pro­pri­ate se­cur­ity mar­gins;
b.
is geared to all types of as­sets re­ceived as col­lat­er­al; and
c.
takes ac­count of char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the col­lat­er­al such as volat­il­ity and the de­fault risk of the is­suer.

2They must doc­u­ment the col­lat­er­al strategy.

Art. 54 Safekeeping of collateral  

1The col­lat­er­al re­ceived must be kept at the cus­todi­an bank.

2Safe­keep­ing by a su­per­vised third-party cus­todi­an on be­half of the fund man­age­ment com­pany is per­mit­ted provided that:

a.
own­er­ship of the col­lat­er­al is not trans­ferred; and
b.
the third-party cus­todi­an is in­de­pend­ent of the coun­ter­party.

3In the case of col­lat­er­al de­livered to a coun­ter­party, a cus­todi­an ap­poin­ted by the lat­ter, or a cent­ral coun­ter­party, the cus­todi­an bank must en­sure that trans­ac­tions are settled in a se­cure man­ner and in line with the agree­ments.

Art. 55 Prospectus  

The pro­spect­us of the se­cur­it­ies fund must con­tain ap­pro­pri­ate in­form­a­tion on the col­lat­er­al strategy, in par­tic­u­lar de­tails of:

a.
the per­mit­ted types of col­lat­er­al;
b.
the re­quired level of col­lat­er­al­isa­tion;
c.
the de­term­in­a­tion of se­cur­ity mar­gins;
d.
the in­vest­ment strategy and the risks in the event that cash col­lat­er­al is re­in­ves­ted.

Section 5 Master-Feeder Structures

Art. 56 Principle  

In prin­ciple, the in­vestors in a mas­ter fund are its feed­er funds. Oth­er in­vestors may be ac­cep­ted provided the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV in­forms them in ad­vance of the fact that they are in­vest­ing in a mas­ter fund and en­sures that the oth­er in­vestors re­ceive equal treat­ment with the feed­er funds.

Art. 57 Requirements for the documents of a feeder fund  

1In ad­di­tion to the in­form­a­tion set out in Art­icles 35a and 62b CISO1, the fund con­tract or in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions of a feed­er fund or feed­er sub-fund shall in par­tic­u­lar con­tain the fol­low­ing:

a.
a state­ment that the fund is a feed­er fund which in­vests at least 85 per­cent of its as­sets in a spe­cif­ic mas­ter fund;
b.
the name of the mas­ter fund;
c.
the in­vest­ment ob­ject­ive and the in­vest­ment policy of the mas­ter fund;
d.
the nature, amount and meth­od of cal­cu­la­tion of all re­mu­ner­a­tion as well as in­cid­ent­al costs that res­ult from the in­vest­ment in the mas­ter fund and that are per­mit­ted to be charged to the fund as­sets or the in­vestors;
e.
a state­ment that the fund con­tract or in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions, the pro­spect­us, the key in­vestor in­form­a­tion doc­u­ment, as well as the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports of the mas­ter fund may be ob­tained free of charge;
f.
a state­ment that the feed­er fund may con­tin­ue to ex­ist after the dis­sol­u­tion of the mas­ter fund or after mer­ger, con­ver­sion or trans­fer of the as­sets of the mas­ter fund up un­til the ap­plic­a­tion is ap­proved pur­su­ant to Art­icle 63 or 64.

2In ad­di­tion to the in­form­a­tion set out in Art­icle 106 CISO, the pro­spect­us of a feed­er fund shall in par­tic­u­lar con­tain the fol­low­ing:

a.
a state­ment that the fund is a feed­er fund which in­vests at least 85 per­cent of its as­sets in a spe­cif­ic mas­ter fund;
b.
a de­scrip­tion of the mas­ter fund in­clud­ing the in­vest­ment strategy and risk pro­file;
c.
a sum­mary of the most im­port­ant con­tent of the agree­ments on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure con­cluded in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 58, 61 and 62;
d.
the loc­a­tion from which fur­ther in­form­a­tion about the mas­ter fund and the agree­ments on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure con­cluded may be ob­tained free of charge.

3The an­nu­al re­port of the feed­er fund shall in­dic­ate the loc­a­tion from which the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports of the mas­ter fund may be ob­tained free of charge.

4The mar­ket­ing doc­u­ments and the key in­vestor in­form­a­tion doc­u­ment on the feed­er fund shall in­clude a state­ment that it is a feed­er fund which in­vests at least 85 per­cent of its as­sets in a spe­cif­ic mas­ter fund.


Art. 58 Joint duties of the master and feeder fund / their fund management companies  

1The mas­ter fund shall provide the feed­er fund with all the doc­u­ments and in­form­a­tion it needs to ful­fil its du­ties. To this end, they shall con­clude an agree­ment on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure.

2The agree­ment on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure shall, as a min­im­um, gov­ern the fol­low­ing points:

a.
the prin­ciples re­gard­ing the trans­fer of the rel­ev­ant doc­u­ments and fur­ther in­form­a­tion by the mas­ter fund to the feed­er fund;
b.
the mas­ter fund’s duty of dis­clos­ure to the feed­er fund re­gard­ing the del­eg­a­tion of tasks to third parties;
c.
the vi­ol­a­tions of stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al pro­vi­sions which the mas­ter fund is re­quired to re­port to the feed­er fund and the form and tim­ing of such re­ports;
d.
the duty of the mas­ter fund to in­form the feed­er fund of the over­all ex­pos­ure arising from de­riv­at­ive fin­an­cial in­stru­ments;
e.
the mas­ter fund’s duty of dis­clos­ure to the feed­er fund if it con­cludes ad­di­tion­al agree­ments re­gard­ing the ex­change of in­form­a­tion with third parties;
f.
the ways in which the feed­er fund may in­vest in the mas­ter fund as well as de­tails of the costs and ex­penses to be borne by the feed­er fund;
g.
the prin­ciples and ar­range­ments for im­ple­ment­ing the meas­ures set out in para­graph 4;
h.
the ar­range­ments for re­port­ing the de­fer­ral of is­sues and re­demp­tions and for re­port­ing er­rors in the set­ting of prices by the mas­ter fund;
i.
the prin­ciples for re­con­cil­ing the audit re­ports of the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund.

3If the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund are man­aged by the same fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV, the agree­ment on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure may be re­placed by in­tern­al reg­u­la­tions. These must con­tain meas­ures to pre­vent con­flicts of in­terest. In all oth­er re­spects, the in­tern­al reg­u­la­tions must meet the re­quire­ments set out in para­graph 2 let­ters f–i.

4The mas­ter fund and feed­er fund shall take meas­ures to co­ordin­ate the sched­ules for cal­cu­lat­ing and pub­lish­ing the net as­set value in or­der to pre­vent mar­ket tim­ing and pos­sib­il­it­ies for ar­bit­rage.

Art. 59 Duties of the master fund / its fund management company  

1The mas­ter fund shall in­form FINMA without delay of the iden­tity of every feed­er fund that in­vests in its units.

2It shall not charge the feed­er fund an is­sue or re­demp­tion com­mis­sion for in­vest­ments in its units.

3It shall en­sure that all in­form­a­tion re­quired by law or con­tract is made avail­able in a timely man­ner to the feed­er fund, its cus­todi­an bank and the audit com­pany as well as FINMA. In so do­ing, it shall com­ply with its stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al ob­lig­a­tions re­gard­ing the dis­clos­ure of data and data pro­tec­tion.

Art. 60 Duties of the feeder fund / its fund management company  

1The feed­er fund shall provide its cus­todi­an bank with all the in­form­a­tion re­gard­ing the mas­ter fund that it needs in or­der to ful­fil its task.

2It shall take ef­fect­ive meas­ures to mon­it­or the activ­it­ies of the mas­ter fund.

3When cal­cu­lat­ing its over­all ex­pos­ure in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 72 para­graph 3 CISO1, it shall take ac­count of the over­all ex­pos­ure of the mas­ter fund in pro­por­tion to the feed­er fund’s in­vest­ments in the mas­ter fund.

4If the feed­er fund, its fund man­age­ment com­pany or an­oth­er per­son act­ing on be­half of the feed­er fund or its fund man­age­ment com­pany re­ceives a pe­cu­ni­ary be­ne­fit in con­nec­tion with the in­vest­ment in units of the mas­ter fund, this shall be cred­ited to the as­sets of the feed­er fund.


Art. 61 Duties of the custodian bank  

1If the mas­ter fund’s cus­todi­an bank iden­ti­fies ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies in the mas­ter fund that may have a neg­at­ive im­pact on the feed­er fund, it shall no­ti­fy its audit com­pany and the feed­er fund / the feed­er fund’s fund man­age­ment com­pany and cus­todi­an bank. This in­cludes, inter alia, the fol­low­ing events:

a.
er­rors in the cal­cu­la­tion of the net as­set value of the mas­ter fund;
b.
er­rors in trans­ac­tions, in the set­tle­ment of pur­chases and sales or of or­ders to is­sue or re­deem units of the mas­ter fund by the feed­er fund;
c.
er­rors in the dis­tri­bu­tion or re­in­vest­ment of in­come from the mas­ter fund;
d.
vi­ol­a­tions of stat­utory pro­vi­sions or of the in­vest­ment ob­ject­ives, lim­its, policy or strategy of the mas­ter fund de­scribed in the fund con­tracts or in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions, the pro­spect­us or the key in­vestor in­form­a­tion doc­u­ment.

2If the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund have dif­fer­ent cus­todi­an banks, the lat­ter shall, with the ap­prov­al of the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund, con­clude an agree­ment on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure to en­sure the ful­fil­ment of their du­ties. This agree­ment shall, as a min­im­um, con­tain the fol­low­ing points:

a.
a de­scrip­tion of the doc­u­ments and cat­egor­ies of in­form­a­tion that the two cus­todi­an banks ex­change on a reg­u­lar basis, in­clud­ing the ar­range­ments for and tim­ing of such ex­changes;
b.
the prin­ciples re­gard­ing the hand­ling of op­er­a­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing the cal­cu­la­tion of the net as­set value, pro­tec­tion against mar­ket tim­ing, and the pro­cessing of or­ders of the feed­er fund;
c.
the ar­range­ments for the re­port­ing of vi­ol­a­tions of stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al pro­vi­sions by the mas­ter fund;
d.
oth­er points that are ne­ces­sary for the co­oper­a­tion between the cus­todi­an banks.

3When ex­chan­ging data, the cus­todi­an banks shall com­ply with their stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al ob­lig­a­tions re­gard­ing the dis­clos­ure of data and data pro­tec­tion.

Art. 62 Duties of the audit company  

1In its short-form re­port for the feed­er fund, the audit com­pany shall take ac­count of the short-form re­port for the mas­ter fund. If the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund have dif­fer­ent ac­count­ing years, the mas­ter fund shall com­pile an in­ter­im fin­an­cial state­ment as of the re­port­ing date of the feed­er fund. Based on this, the audit com­pany shall com­pile an ad-hoc short-form re­port for the mas­ter fund as of the re­port­ing date of the feed­er fund.

2In its short-form re­port for the feed­er fund, the audit com­pany shall men­tion any de­vi­ations from the stand­ard word­ing con­tained in the short-form re­port for the mas­ter fund as well as any oth­er ma­ter­i­al in­form­a­tion, to­geth­er with any in­flu­ence on the feed­er fund.

3If the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund have dif­fer­ent audit com­pan­ies, the lat­ter shall con­clude an agree­ment on co­oper­a­tion and du­ties of dis­clos­ure to en­sure the ful­fil­ment of their du­ties. This shall con­tain, as a min­im­um:

a.
a de­scrip­tion of the doc­u­ments and cat­egor­ies of in­form­a­tion that the two audit com­pan­ies ex­change on a reg­u­lar basis, in­clud­ing the ar­range­ments for and tim­ing of such ex­changes;
b.
the co­ordin­a­tion of the role of the audit com­pan­ies in the pro­cess of com­pil­ing the an­nu­al fin­an­cial state­ments for the mas­ter fund and feed­er fund;
c.
a state­ment of the in­form­a­tion that must be in­cluded in the audit re­port for the mas­ter fund in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2;
d.
oth­er ar­range­ments gov­ern­ing the co­oper­a­tion between the audit com­pan­ies as well as the com­pil­a­tion and trans­fer of the short-form and ad-hoc re­ports.
Art. 63 Dissolution of the master fund  

1Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the dis­sol­u­tion of the mas­ter fund, the feed­er fund shall without delay de­fer re­pay­ments. With­in one month fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the dis­sol­u­tion of the mas­ter fund, it shall sub­mit to FINMA a re­port / an ap­plic­a­tion re­gard­ing:

a.
the dis­sol­u­tion of the mas­ter fund;
b.
an amend­ment to the fund con­tract or in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions due to the change of mas­ter fund; or
c.
an amend­ment to the fund con­tract or in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions due to the con­ver­sion in­to a non-feed­er fund.

2The li­quid­a­tion pro­ceeds of the mas­ter fund may not be paid out be­fore the ap­plic­a­tions set out in para­graph 1 let­ters b and c have been ap­proved un­less they are re­in­ves­ted solely for the pur­pose of ef­fi­cient li­quid­ity man­age­ment un­til the time of ap­prov­al.

Art. 64 Merger, conversion and transfer of assets  

1If the mas­ter fund de­cides on a mer­ger, con­ver­sion or trans­fer of as­sets, the feed­er fund must, with­in a month of the an­nounce­ment be­ing made by the mas­ter fund, no­ti­fy FINMA wheth­er it:

a.
is dis­solv­ing it­self;
b.
in­tends to re­tain the same mas­ter fund;
c.
is switch­ing to an­oth­er mas­ter fund; or
d.
is con­vert­ing it­self in­to a non-feed­er fund.

2Sim­ul­tan­eously with the no­ti­fic­a­tion, the feed­er fund shall sub­mit to FINMA any ne­ces­sary ap­plic­a­tion for ap­prov­al of amend­ments to the fund con­tract or in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions.

3If the mer­ger, con­ver­sion or trans­fer of as­sets of the mas­ter fund takes place be­fore the ap­plic­a­tion pur­su­ant to para­graph 1 let­ters c and d has been ap­proved, the feed­er fund may only re­turn the units of the mas­ter fund if the pro­ceeds re­ceived are re­in­ves­ted for the sole pur­pose of ef­fi­cient li­quid­ity man­age­ment un­til the amend­ments enter in­to force.

Chapter 2 Other Funds

Art. 65  

1The pro­vi­sions for se­cur­it­ies funds re­lat­ing to se­cur­it­ies lend­ing (Arts. 1–9), se­cur­it­ies re­pur­chase agree­ments (Arts. 10–22), de­riv­at­ives (Arts. 23–49), col­lat­er­al man­age­ment (Arts. 50–55) and mas­ter-feed­er struc­tures (Arts. 56–64) ap­ply to oth­er funds, mu­tatis mutandis.

2The above must be read sub­ject to Art­icles 100 and 101 CISO1.

3FINMA may per­mit de­vi­ations from these pro­vi­sions (Art. 101 CISO).


Title 2 Institutions

Chapter 1 Organisational Requirements relating to the Delegation of Tasks

Art. 66  

1For the pur­poses of this Art­icle, tasks are deemed to have been del­eg­ated if a li­censee pur­su­ant to para­graph 2 trans­fers ma­ter­i­al tasks to a third party and this res­ults in a change to the cir­cum­stances un­der which the au­thor­isa­tion was gran­ted.

2The fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV, as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes and rep­res­ent­at­ive of for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes shall set out the tasks del­eg­ated to third parties in writ­ten agree­ments. These shall in­clude a pre­cise de­scrip­tion of the del­eg­ated tasks as well as the powers and re­spons­ib­il­it­ies, any au­thor­it­ies in re­spect of fur­ther del­eg­a­tion, the agent’s duty to give an ac­count of its activ­it­ies, and the con­trol rights of the li­censee.

3The or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­ture shall not be deemed ap­pro­pri­ate with­in the mean­ing of Art­icle 14 CISA if a li­censee pur­su­ant to para­graph 2:

a.
does not pos­sess the de­cision-mak­ing au­thor­ity with re­spect to cent­ral tasks that is ac­cor­ded to the board of dir­ect­ors or ex­ec­ut­ive board;
b.
does not have the ne­ces­sary per­son­nel and ex­pert­ise to se­lect, in­struct and mon­it­or agents and man­age their risks; or
c.
does not have the re­quis­ite rights of in­struc­tion and con­trol in re­spect of the agents, or does so only to a lim­ited ex­tent.

4The del­eg­a­tion of tasks may not hinder the audit by the audit com­pany or su­per­vi­sion by FINMA.

5Where tasks are del­eg­ated abroad, the li­censee must be able to demon­strate that it, the reg­u­lat­ory audit com­pany and FINMA are able to ex­er­cise their re­spect­ive rights and en­force them un­der the law. The reg­u­lat­ory audit com­pany must re­view the con­firm­at­ory doc­u­ment­a­tion be­fore out­sourcing takes place.

6Li­censees pur­su­ant to para­graph 1 shall set out the del­eg­ated tasks as well as in­form­a­tion on the scope for fur­ther del­eg­a­tion in their or­gan­isa­tion­al reg­u­la­tions.

Chapter 2 Risk Management and Risk Control

Art. 67 Principles of risk management  

1The board of dir­ect­ors of the fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV or as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes shall put in place an in­tern­al con­trol sys­tem based on sys­tem­at­ic risk ana­lys­is and mon­it­or it in such a way as to en­sure that all ma­ter­i­al risks of the li­censee are ap­pro­pri­ately and ef­fect­ively cap­tured, as­sessed, man­aged and mon­itored.

2The ex­ec­ut­ive board of the fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV or as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes shall im­ple­ment the re­quire­ments of the board of dir­ect­ors with re­gard to the set­ting up, main­ten­ance and reg­u­lar re­view of the in­tern­al con­trol sys­tem. It shall de­vel­op suit­able pro­cesses to im­ple­ment the con­trol activ­it­ies that are to be in­teg­rated in­to work­ing pro­cesses and to con­trol risks.

Art. 68 Internal guidelines  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV and as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes shall set down ap­pro­pri­ate risk man­age­ment and risk con­trol prin­ciples as well as the or­gan­isa­tion of risk man­age­ment and risk con­trol in in­tern­al guidelines.

2They shall in­clude the risks that:

a.
they are or could be ex­posed to as a res­ult of the en­tirety of their busi­ness activ­it­ies;
b.
the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged by them as well as oth­er as­sets man­aged by them un­der the terms of man­dates are or could be ex­posed to.

3The in­tern­al guidelines shall set out:

a.
the or­gan­isa­tion of risk man­age­ment and risk con­trol, in­clud­ing the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies with­in the li­censee;
b.
the types of risk at the level of the activ­it­ies of the li­censee, the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged, and the as­sets man­aged un­der the terms of man­dates;
c.
the pro­cesses and sys­tems for as­sess­ing and man­aging all ma­ter­i­al risks of the li­censee and the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes, and in par­tic­u­lar their mar­ket, li­quid­ity and coun­ter­party risk;
d.
the tasks, re­spons­ib­il­it­ies and the fre­quency of re­port­ing to the board of dir­ect­ors and ex­ec­ut­ive board.

4When draft­ing the in­tern­al guidelines and struc­tur­ing the or­gan­isa­tion of risk man­age­ment, ac­count must be taken of the nature, scope and com­plex­ity of the trans­ac­tions car­ried out, the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged, and the as­sets man­aged un­der the terms of man­dates.

5The use of in­vest­ment tech­niques and de­riv­at­ives must be gov­erned by in­tern­al guidelines and re­viewed peri­od­ic­ally. With re­spect to the use of de­riv­at­ives, the in­tern­al guidelines shall also gov­ern the fol­low­ing areas, in ac­cord­ance with the struc­ture and risks of the li­censee:

a.
Risk policy:
1.
Per­mit­ted de­riv­at­ives,
2.
Re­quire­ments to be met by coun­ter­parties,
3.
Mar­ket li­quid­ity re­quire­ments,
4.
In re­la­tion to the use of in­dex products: re­quire­ments in terms of rep­res­ent­at­ive­ness and cor­rel­a­tion;
b.
Risk con­trol:
1.
Iden­ti­fic­a­tion, as­sess­ment and mon­it­or­ing (con­trolling) of risks,
2.
Au­thor­it­ies and lim­its,
3.
Risk as­sess­ment pro­ced­ures,
4.
Es­cal­a­tion pro­ced­ures in the event of lim­it over­runs,
5.
Ad­di­tion­ally, for the mod­el ap­proach:
Meth­od of veri­fy­ing the risk as­sess­ment mod­els, in par­tic­u­lar VaR
Es­cal­a­tion pro­ced­ures and meas­ures in the event of un­sat­is­fact­ory res­ults of veri­fic­a­tion tests
Com­pos­i­tion of the bench­mark port­fo­li­os and changes to them, mon­it­or­ing of the pro­cess used to de­term­ine the bench­mark port­fo­lio
Stress tests;
c.
Pro­cessing and valu­ation:
1.
Doc­u­ment­a­tion of trans­ac­tions,
2.
Valu­ation mod­els to be used,
3.
Data and data sup­pli­ers to be used.
Art. 69 Further duties relating to risk management  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV and as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes shall reg­u­larly re­view the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness and ef­fect­ive­ness of the risk man­age­ment prin­ciples as well as the defined pro­cesses and sys­tems.

2Com­pli­ance with the risk man­age­ment prin­ciples and defined pro­cesses as well as the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness and ef­fect­ive­ness of the meas­ures to rem­edy any short­com­ings in the risk man­age­ment pro­cess are part of the re­port­ing to the board of dir­ect­ors and ex­ec­ut­ive board.

3The use of in­vest­ment tech­niques and de­riv­at­ives, the man­age­ment of col­lat­er­al and the res­ult­ing risks must be ap­pro­pri­ately in­cor­por­ated in­to the risk man­age­ment of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged.

Art. 70 Risk control  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany, SICAV and as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes shall have suf­fi­ciently qual­i­fied spe­cial­ist per­son­nel to carry out risk con­trol.

2Risk con­trol shall identi­fy, as­sess and mon­it­or:

a.
the risks entered in­to by the li­censee;
b.
the risks of each in­di­vidu­al po­s­i­tion of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged and their over­all risk; and
c.
the risks of any oth­er man­age­ment man­dates.

3Risk con­trol shall be kept func­tion­ally and hier­arch­ic­ally sep­ar­ate from op­er­a­tion­al busi­ness units, in par­tic­u­lar the func­tion con­cerned with in­vest­ment de­cisions (port­fo­lio man­age­ment). It must be able to act in­de­pend­ently.

Art. 71 Conditions for the use of derivatives  

1When us­ing de­riv­at­ives, cal­cu­la­tion of the cur­rent over­all ex­pos­ure lim­its and on­go­ing com­pli­ance with them must be en­sured at all times.

2Risk con­trol shall re­view the valu­ation mod­els and pro­cesses.

3In the case of phys­ic­al de­liv­ery ob­lig­a­tions arising from de­riv­at­ives, risk con­trol shall reg­u­larly re­view and en­sure that cov­er in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 44 and 45 is avail­able in the ne­ces­sary amount.

4In the case of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes to which the mod­el ap­proach is ap­plied, the ex­ec­ut­ive board shall, in ac­cord­ance with their risk pro­file, ap­prove a doc­u­mented sys­tem of up­per lim­its for po­ten­tial risk amounts (VaR lim­its).

5In the case of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes to which the mod­el ap­proach is ap­plied, the risk con­trol func­tion of the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV shall be ac­count­able and re­spons­ible for the fol­low­ing tasks in re­spect of risk as­sess­ment pro­cesses:

a.
re­view­ing, main­tain­ing and re­fin­ing the risk as­sess­ment mod­el;
b.
en­sur­ing that the risk as­sess­ment mod­el is suit­able for the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme con­cerned;
c.
val­id­at­ing and im­ple­ment­ing the sys­tem of VaR lim­its for each col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme in ac­cord­ance with its risk pro­file;
d.
de­term­in­ing and ana­lys­ing the po­ten­tial risk amounts on an on­go­ing basis and mon­it­or­ing the up­per lim­its;
e.
reg­u­larly mon­it­or­ing the gross over­all ex­pos­ure of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme, in par­tic­u­lar its lever­age;
f.
re­port­ing reg­u­larly to the in­tern­al body re­spons­ible re­gard­ing the cur­rent po­ten­tial risk amounts, back-test­ing and the res­ults of stress tests.

Chapter 3 Fund Management Company and SICAV

Art. 72  

1The fund man­age­ment com­pany and self-man­aged SICAV shall en­sure that the valu­ation of in­vest­ments is sep­ar­ated from the func­tion con­cerned with in­vest­ment de­cisions (port­fo­lio man­age­ment), both func­tion­ally and in terms of per­son­nel.

2They shall have suf­fi­cient qual­i­fied spe­cial­ist staff to carry out the valu­ation.

Chapter 4 Asset Managers of Collective Investment Schemes

Section 1 De Minimis Approach

Art. 73 Assets to be taken into consideration  

1When cal­cu­lat­ing the thresholds for as­sets man­aged by the as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes, as­sets whose man­age­ment has been del­eg­ated by the as­set man­ager to third parties must also be taken in­to ac­count.

2Where an as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­ages a col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme that holds units of an­oth­er col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme man­aged by that as­set man­ager, the as­sets con­cerned need only be taken in­to ac­count once when cal­cu­lat­ing the thresholds.

Art. 74 Valuation of assets under management  

1The value of the as­sets un­der man­age­ment must be de­term­ined for each col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme man­aged on the basis of the leg­al pro­vi­sions ap­ply­ing in the state of dom­i­cile of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme as well as any valu­ation rules set down in the rel­ev­ant doc­u­ments of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme.

2The con­ver­sion amount for the over­all ex­pos­ure arising from lever­age fin­an­cing is cal­cu­lated in ac­cord­ance with com­mit­ment ap­proach II.

3The cap­it­al com­mit­ments in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 1b para­graph 1 let­ter d CISO1 are cal­cu­lated as the sum of all amounts that the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme / its fund man­age­ment com­pany can call from in­vestors on the basis of bind­ing com­mit­ments.

4The nom­in­al value of a col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 1b para­graph 1 let­ter d CISO is the sum of the cap­it­al com­mit­ments less the re­pay­ments already made to in­vestors.


Section 2 Professional Indemnity Insurance

Art. 75 Requirements  

1Pro­fes­sion­al in­dem­nity in­sur­ance for as­set man­agers of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 21 para­graph 3 let­ter b CISO1 must meet the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments:

a.
It must be taken out with an in­sur­ance com­pany with­in the mean­ing of the In­sur­ance Su­per­vi­sion Act of 17 Decem­ber 20042.
b.
The term must be at least one year.
c.
The no­tice peri­od must be at least 90 days.
d.
As a min­im­um, the pro­fes­sion­al in­dem­nity risks set out in Art­icle 76 must be covered.

2In­sur­ance cov­er­age for an in­di­vidu­al claim must cor­res­pond to at least 0.7 per­cent of the total as­sets of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged by the as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes.

3In­sur­ance cov­er­age for all claims in a year must cor­res­pond to at least 0.9 per­cent of the total as­sets of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes man­aged by the as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes.

4The re­quire­ments with re­gard to pro­fes­sion­al in­dem­nity in­sur­ance must be com­plied with at all times.


Art. 76 Professional indemnity risks  

1The pro­fes­sion­al in­dem­nity in­sur­ance pur­su­ant to Art­icle 21 para­graph 3 let­ter b CISO1 must cov­er the risk of loss or dam­age caused by the neg­li­gent per­form­ance of activ­it­ies for which the as­set man­ager of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes is leg­ally re­spons­ible.

2The pro­fes­sion­al in­dem­nity risks pur­su­ant to para­graph 1 in­clude, inter alia:

a.
the risk of the loss of doc­u­ment­ary evid­ence prov­ing the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme’s own­er­ship of as­sets un­der man­age­ment;
b.
the risk of mis­rep­res­ent­a­tions or mis­lead­ing state­ments to the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme man­aged or its in­vestors;
c.
the risk of con­duct that vi­ol­ates:
1.
stat­utory and con­trac­tu­al ob­lig­a­tions,
2.
du­ties of loy­alty, due di­li­gence and dis­clos­ure to the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme man­aged and its in­vestors,
3.
pro­vi­sions of the as­set man­age­ment agree­ment re­lat­ing to the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme, the fund con­tract or the art­icles of as­so­ci­ation of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme;
d.
the risk that ap­pro­pri­ate pro­cesses for pre­vent­ing dis­hon­est, fraud­u­lent or ma­li­cious ac­tions are not es­tab­lished, im­ple­men­ted or main­tained;
e.
the risk of as­sets not be­ing val­ued in ac­cord­ance with the rules;
f.
the risk of losses due to an in­ter­rup­tion of busi­ness, sys­tem out­ages or a fail­ure of trans­ac­tion pro­cessing or pro­cess man­age­ment.

Chapter 5 Custodian Bank

Art. 77 Organisation  

1The cus­todi­an bank shall en­sure that its premises, staff and func­tions are in­de­pend­ent of the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV.

2Where tasks are del­eg­ated to the cus­todi­an bank by the fund man­age­ment com­pany or the SICAV, meas­ures must be put in place to en­sure that no con­flicts of in­terest arise. Ma­na­geri­al in­de­pend­ence between the del­eg­at­ing fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV and/or its agents, on the one hand, and those en­trus­ted with the tasks of the cus­todi­an bank in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 73 CISA must be en­sured. Where con­flicts of in­terest are un­avoid­able, they must be dis­closed to the in­vestors.

3Those en­trus­ted with the tasks of the cus­todi­an bank in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 73 CISA may not sim­ul­tan­eously per­form tasks del­eg­ated by the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV.

Art. 78 Control function  

1In or­der to carry out its con­trol tasks in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 73 para­graph 3 let­ters a and b CISA, the cus­todi­an bank shall as­sess the risks in con­nec­tion with the nature, scope and com­plex­ity of the strategy of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme in or­der to de­vel­op con­trol pro­cesses that are ap­pro­pri­ate to the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme and the as­sets in which it in­vests.

2The cus­todi­an bank shall is­sue ap­pro­pri­ate in­tern­al guidelines to this ef­fect set­ting out, as a min­im­um:

a.
how it or­gan­ises its con­trol func­tion, in par­tic­u­lar what roles there are and who is re­spons­ible for what;
b.
the con­trol pro­cesses in ac­cord­ance with which the con­trols, in­clud­ing those car­ried out when trans­fer­ring safe­keep­ing to a third-party cus­todi­an or col­lect­ive se­cur­it­ies de­pos­it­ory with­in the mean­ing of Art­icle 105a CISO1, are to be car­ried out;
c.
the con­trol plan and the con­trol pro­cesses, in par­tic­u­lar the meth­ods, data basis and fre­quency of con­trols;
d.
the es­cal­a­tion pro­cesses that are triggered when ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies are iden­ti­fied, in par­tic­u­lar the pro­cess steps, dead­lines, con­tacts with the fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV and oth­er rel­ev­ant parties, pro­ced­ures for de­fin­ing meas­ures and du­ties of dis­clos­ure;
e.
the cus­todi­an bank’s re­port­ing on its con­trol activ­it­ies to the gov­ern­ing bod­ies, in par­tic­u­lar the fre­quency, form and con­tent there­of as well as any fur­ther ad­dress­ees.

3In re­spect of the fund man­age­ment com­pany, the cus­todi­an bank has the right and duty to in­ter­vene to pre­vent in­vest­ments that are not per­mit­ted. If, in the ex­er­cise of its con­trol func­tion, it be­comes aware of such in­vest­ments, it shall re­store com­pli­ance with the law by, for ex­ample, ar­ran­ging for the in­vest­ments to be re­versed.


Title 3 Accounting, Valuation, Financial Statements and Duty to Publish

Chapter 1 Accounting

Section 1 General Provisions

Art. 79 Principles  

(Arts. 87 and 91 CISA)

1Un­less the CISA and this Or­din­ance provide oth­er­wise, the pro­vi­sions set out in the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions1 (CO) in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 87 CISA ap­ply in re­spect of ac­count­ing.

2Ac­count­ing must com­ply with the stat­utory re­quire­ments for the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports (Art. 89 et seq. CISA) and be con­duc­ted in such a way that the ac­counts provide a true and fair view of the fin­an­cial situ­ation and in­come.

3Trans­ac­tions, in­clud­ing off-bal­ance-sheet trans­ac­tions, must be re­cog­nised im­me­di­ately after con­clu­sion of the con­tract. Con­cluded trans­ac­tions that have not yet been ex­ecuted must be ac­coun­ted for by us­ing the clos­ing date prin­ciple.

4The ac­count­ing must take ac­count of the tax law re­quire­ments.


1 SR 220

Art. 80 Unit of account  

(Arts. 26 para. 1, 108 CISA; Art. 35a para. 1 let. o CISO1)

1A for­eign cur­rency may be des­ig­nated as the unit of ac­count for:

a.
an in­vest­ment fund or its sub-funds in the fund reg­u­la­tions;
b.
the sub-funds of a SICAV in the in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions;
c.
a lim­ited part­ner­ship for col­lect­ive in­vest­ment in the part­ner­ship agree­ment.

2In its in­vest­ment reg­u­la­tions, a SICAV must also spe­cify the cur­rency which will serve as the unit of ac­count for the over­all ac­counts (Art. 98), as well as the con­ver­sion pro­cess.

3If a for­eign cur­rency is used in ac­count­ing, the val­ues must not also be giv­en in the loc­al cur­rency.


Section 2 Open-Ended Collective Investment Schemes

Art. 81 Sub-funds and unit classes  

(Arts. 92–94 CISA; Arts. 112 and 113 CISO1)

1In the case of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which in­clude sub-funds, the pro­vi­sions of this title ap­ply to each in­di­vidu­al sub-fund.

2The sub-funds must be presen­ted sep­ar­ately in the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports.

3The ac­count­ing year ends on the same date for all sub-funds.

4In the case of unit classes, the net as­set value must be dis­closed for each class.


Art. 82 Control of units and unit certificates  

(Arts. 11 and 73 para. 1 CISA)

1The cus­todi­an bank shall re­cord the is­sue and re­demp­tion of units, in­clud­ing frac­tions there­of, on a con­tinu­ous basis. It shall re­cord the fol­low­ing de­tails:

a.
the date of is­sue or re­demp­tion;
b.
the num­ber of units is­sued or re­deemed;
c.
the gross amount paid by the in­vestor or net pay­ment made to the in­vestor;
d.
the fees and in­cid­ent­al costs in re­la­tion to the is­sue or re­demp­tion;
e.
the amount cred­ited or deb­ited to the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme;
f.
the net as­set value of the unit.

2In the case of re­gistered units, the iden­tity of the in­vestor must also be re­cor­ded.

3The cus­todi­an bank shall re­cord the is­sue and re­demp­tion of unit cer­ti­fic­ates sep­ar­ately.

Art. 83 Real estate funds  

(Arts. 59 para. 1 let. b, 83 CISA; Arts. 86 para. 3 let. b and 93 CISO1)

1The real es­tate fund and real es­tate com­pan­ies owned by it must close their ac­counts on the same day. FINMA may grant ex­emp­tions provided con­sol­id­ated fin­an­cial state­ments are pro­duced.

2The cal­cu­la­tion of the net as­set value must take ac­count of taxes (in­come and real es­tate gains tax and, if ap­plic­able, real es­tate trans­fer tax) in­curred in con­nec­tion with any li­quid­a­tion of the real es­tate fund.

3De­pre­ci­ation of build­ings, in­clud­ing fix­tures, may be charged to the profit and loss ac­count provided it is eco­nom­ic­ally reas­on­able.


Chapter 2 Valuation

Section 1 General Provisions

Art. 84 Investments  

(Arts. 88 and 89 para. 2 CISA)

1In­vest­ments are val­ued at mar­ket value (Art. 88 CISA).

2In the notes to the state­ment of net as­sets, or bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count (Arts. 94 and 95), the in­vest­ments are to be sum­mar­ised in a table ac­cord­ing to the fol­low­ing three valu­ation cat­egor­ies:

a.
trad­ing of in­vest­ments lis­ted in a stock ex­change or in an­oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic and val­ued ac­cord­ing to the prices in the primary mar­ket (Art. 88 para 1 CISA);
b.
in­vest­ments that are not priced ac­cord­ing to let. a whose value is based on mar­ket-ob­served para­met­ers;
c.
in­vest­ments whose value can­not be based on mar­ket-ob­served para­met­ers and are val­ued with suit­able valu­ation mod­els tak­ing ac­count of the cur­rent mar­ket cir­cum­stances.
Art. 85 Private equity  

(Arts. 88 para. 2 and 108 CISA)

1Private equity in­vest­ments are val­ued in ac­cord­ance with re­cog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards, provided the valu­ation is not gov­erned by this Or­din­ance.

2The stand­ards ap­plied must be de­scribed in de­tail in the pro­spect­us or reg­u­la­tions.

Art. 86 Real estate fund  

(Arts. 88 and 90 CISA)

Build­ings un­der con­struc­tion must be re­cog­nised at mar­ket price in the state­ment of net as­sets. The fund man­age­ment or SICAV provides an es­tim­a­tion of build­ings un­der con­struc­tion re­cog­nised at mar­ket price at the clos­ing of the fin­an­cial year.

Section 2 Open-Ended Collective Investment Schemes

Art. 87  

1The tan­gible and in­tan­gible as­sets of the com­pany share­hold­ers of a SICAV must be val­ued at ac­quis­i­tion or pro­duc­tion cost less any eco­nom­ic­ally ne­ces­sary de­pre­ci­ation.

2The valu­ation prin­ciples for the tan­gible and in­tan­gible as­sets must be dis­closed un­der ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion. If they are amended, the re­stated data for the pre­vi­ous year must also be dis­closed for in­form­a­tion pur­poses.

3The oth­er as­sets of a SICAV shall be val­ued in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 84 to 86.

Section 3 Closed-Ended Collective Investment Schemes

Art. 88 Limited partnership for collective investment  

(Arts. 88 para. 2 and 108 CISA)

Art­icles 84–87 ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to the valu­ation pro­cess.

Art. 89 Investment company with fixed capital (SICAF)  

(Art. 117 CISA)

1The valu­ation meth­ods ap­plied to pre­pare the single en­tity fin­an­cial state­ments (Art. 109 para. 1) shall be in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of ac­count­ing. In ad­di­tion, the mar­ket val­ues of the in­vest­ments must be in­dic­ated for in­form­a­tion pur­poses.

2The valu­ation meth­ods ap­plied to pre­pare the con­sol­id­ated fin­an­cial state­ments (Art. 109 para. 2) are as stip­u­lated in the or­din­ance in ac­cord­ance with in­ter­na­tion­ally re­cog­nised ac­count­ing stand­ards of 21 Novem­ber 20121 (VASR).


Chapter 3 General Provisions on Accountability

Art. 90 Private equity  

(Arts. 88, 108 CISA)

1The valu­ation meth­ods ap­plied (Art. 85) must be dis­closed in the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports.

2If an in­vest­ment is re­cog­nised be­low cost, this fact must be dis­closed.

3In the case of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which can in­vest more than 10 per­cent of their as­sets in private equity, the fol­low­ing min­im­um in­form­a­tion on the in­di­vidu­al private equity in­vest­ments, clas­si­fied by type and phase of de­vel­op­ment, must be provided if they ac­count for more than 2 per­cent of the as­sets of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme:

a.
de­scrip­tion of the in­vest­ment (name, re­gistered of­fice, pur­pose, cap­it­al stock and equity stake);
b.
de­scrip­tion of the busi­ness activ­ity and any sig­ni­fic­ant de­vel­op­ments;
c.
in­form­a­tion on the board of dir­ect­ors and ex­ec­ut­ive board;
d.
cat­egor­isa­tion by de­vel­op­ment phase (such as seed, early stage or buy­out);
e.
scope of com­mit­ments entered in­to.
Art. 91 Subsidiary companies  

(Art. 90 para. 1 CISA; Art. 68 CISO1)

1If sub­si­di­ary com­pan­ies are used to im­ple­ment the in­vest­ment policy, a trans­par­ent sub­stance-over-form ap­proach must be ap­plied to the ac­counts (such as in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count, in­vent­ory, buy and sell trans­ac­tions).

2The com­pan­ies must be con­sol­id­ated in ac­cord­ance with a VASR2 stand­ard. There­fore, the ac­count­ing prin­ciples ap­plied to them must be for con­sol­id­a­tion pur­poses.


Chapter 4 Accounting for Open-Ended Collective Investment Schemes

Section 1 Annual Accounts

Art. 92 SICAVs  

(Art. 36 para. 1b CISA; Arts. 68, 70, 86 and 99 CISO1)

1The an­nu­al ac­counts of a SICAV com­prise the an­nu­al ac­counts re­lat­ing to the in­di­vidu­al pools of in­vestor as­sets (sub-funds) and the an­nu­al ac­counts re­lat­ing to the share­hold­ers’ as­sets, and the over­all ac­counts of the SICAV.

2The an­nu­al ac­counts dis­close the per­mit­ted in­vest­ments pur­su­ant to Art­icles 70, 86 and 99 CISO in re­spect of the in­vestors' as­sets.

3In re­spect of the share­hold­ers' as­sets, the an­nu­al ac­counts dis­close the fol­low­ing:

a.
per­mit­ted in­vest­ments with­in the mean­ing of para­graph 2 and the mov­able, im­mov­able and in­tan­gible as­sets es­sen­tial for im­me­di­ate busi­ness op­er­a­tions of the SICAV;
b.
the per­mit­ted li­ab­il­it­ies.

4Short-term li­ab­il­it­ies and li­ab­il­it­ies se­cured by mort­gage, entered in­to in con­nec­tion with the SICAV's im­me­di­ate busi­ness op­er­a­tions, are per­mit­ted.

5The an­nu­al ac­counts re­lat­ing to one or more se­lec­ted pools of in­vestor as­sets may only be pub­lished to­geth­er with the over­all ac­counts of the SICAV.

6The an­nu­al ac­counts form part of the an­nu­al re­port, which re­place the busi­ness re­port un­der the CO2. A man­age­ment re­port and a cash flow state­ment are not re­quired.


1 SR 951.311
2 SR 220

Art. 93 Minimum breakdown of statement of net assets, or the balance sheet and profit and loss account for investment funds and SICAVs  

(Art. 91 CISA)

The state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count for in­vest­ment funds and sub-funds must be pub­lished in the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports, whereby a min­im­um break­down un­der Art­icles 67-71 must be en­sured.

Art. 94 Securities funds  

(Arts. 53–57 and 89 CISA; Arts. 70–85 CISO1

For se­cur­it­ies funds, the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count, have the min­im­um struc­ture set out in An­nex 2.


Art. 95 Real estate funds  

(Arts. 58–57 and 67 CISA; Arts. 86-98 CISO1)

For real es­tate funds, the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count, have the min­im­um struc­ture set out in An­nex 3.


Art. 96 Other funds  

(Arts. 68–71 and 89 CISA; Arts. 99–102 CISO1)

The pro­vi­sions on the min­im­um break­down for se­cur­it­ies funds (Art. 67) ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to oth­er funds. They also in­clude the in­vest­ments per­mit­ted for oth­er funds.


Art. 97 Minimum breakdown of balance sheet and profit and loss account relating to the shareholders’ assets  

(Art. 53 et seq. CISA; Art. 68 CISO1)

1The share­hold­ers’ as­sets must be broken down in­to:

a.
in­vest­ments;
b.
busi­ness as­sets.

2For the break­down of in­vest­ments, Art­icles 94–96 ap­ply.

3For the break­down of the busi­ness as­sets, Art­icles 959 and 959a CO2 ap­ply mutatis mutandis.

4For the notes, Art­icle 959c CO ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis. In ad­di­tion, the valu­ation prin­ciples for the tan­gible and in­tan­gible as­sets of the com­pany share­hold­ers must be dis­closed. The notes must also provide in­form­a­tion on the risk as­sess­ment pro­cess.

5Com­pany share­hold­ers and share­hold­er as­so­ci­ations with aligned vot­ing rights hold­ing 5 per­cent or more of the shares must be lis­ted in the an­nu­al re­port as fol­lows:

a.
name or com­pany;
b.
place of res­id­ence or dom­i­cile;
c.
per­cent­age of shares held.

1 SR 951.311
2 SR 220

Art. 98 Overall accounts of a SICAV  

(Art. 91 CISA)

1The over­all ac­counts of a SICAV con­sist of the bal­ance sheet, profit and loss ac­count and the notes pur­su­ant to the CO1 and in­clude the in­vestors' as­sets and the share­hold­ers' as­sets.

2For the pur­pose of pre­par­ing the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count, the po­s­i­tions con­sti­tut­ing the in­vestors' as­sets must be ag­greg­ated. Clas­si­fic­a­tion is in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 94–96.

3The share­hold­ers’ as­sets must be dis­closed sep­ar­ately in the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count. Items are broken down mu­tatis mutandis in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 94–96 in the case of in­vest­ments, and Art­icle 959, 959a and 959b CO in the case of busi­ness as­sets.

4The over­all ac­counts of a SICAV must be struc­tured in­to in­vestors' as­sets, the share­hold­ers' as­sets and the over­all as­sets of the SICAV.

5The in­form­a­tion stated in Art­icle 97 para­graph 5 must also be dis­closed in the over­all fin­an­cial state­ment.


1 SR 220

Section 2 Further Information

Art. 99 Inventory of the collective investment scheme  

(Art. 89 para. 1 let. c CISA)

1As a min­im­um, the in­vent­ory must be broken down by type of in­vest­ment such as se­cur­it­ies, bank cred­it bal­ances, money mar­ket in­stru­ments, de­riv­at­ive fin­an­cial in­stru­ments, pre­cious metals and com­mod­it­ies and, with­in such types of in­vest­ment, in ac­cord­ance with the in­vest­ment policy by in­dustry, geo­graph­ic­al loc­a­tion, type of se­cur­ity (An­nex 2 let. 1.4) and cur­ren­cies.

2The total amount and the per­cent­age of the over­all as­sets of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme must be in­dic­ated for each group or sub­group.

3The share in the over­all as­sets of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme must be in­dic­ated for each in­di­vidu­al value dis­closed in the in­vent­ory.

4Se­cur­it­ies must also be broken down as fol­lows:

a.
traded on an of­fi­cial stock ex­change;
b.
traded on an­oth­er reg­u­lated mar­ket open to the pub­lic;
c.
as defined in Art­icle 70 para­graph 3 CISO1;
d.
as defined in Art­icle 71 para­graph 2 CISO;
e.
se­cur­it­ies that do not cor­res­pond to cat­egor­ies a–d above.

5The valu­ation cat­egory must be in­dic­ated for each value re­cog­nised in the in­vent­ory in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 84 para­graph 2.

6In re­la­tion to the se­cur­it­ies lis­ted in para­graph 3, only the sub­total per cat­egory need be in­dic­ated and each item de­noted ac­cord­ingly.


Art. 100 Inventory of real estate funds  

(Art. 89 para. 1 let. c and 90 CISA)

1As a min­im­um, the in­vent­ory must be broken down in­to:

a.
res­id­en­tial build­ings;
b.
com­mer­cially used prop­er­ties;
c.
mixed-use prop­er­ties;
d.
build­ing land, in­clud­ing prop­er­ties for de­moli­tion, and build­ings un­der con­struc­tion;
e.
units in oth­er real es­tate funds and real es­tate in­vest­ment com­pan­ies;
f.
mort­gages and oth­er ad­vances se­cured by mort­gage.
2For prop­erty in build­ings with de­vel­op­ment rights and con­domin­i­ums, the cir­cum­stances for each prop­erty and the total for each item in para­graph 1 let­ters a–d are to be in­dic­ated in the in­vent­ory.

3The in­vent­ory must in­clude in­form­a­tion on each item of land and build­ings:

a.
ad­dress;
b.
pur­chase price;
c.
es­tim­ated mar­ket value;
d.
gross in­come gen­er­ated.

4Any in­vest­ments in short-term fixed-in­terest se­cur­it­ies, real es­tate cer­ti­fic­ates or de­riv­at­ives must also be dis­closed.

5Any mort­gages and oth­er li­ab­il­it­ies se­cured by mort­gage out­stand­ing at the end of the year, as well as loans and ad­vances must be lis­ted stat­ing their in­terest terms and ma­tur­ity peri­ods.

6A list of the real es­tate com­pan­ies owned must be pub­lished for each real es­tate fund, in­clud­ing an in­dic­a­tion of the equity stake (vot­ing rights/cap­it­al).

7The items in the in­vent­ory must be in­dic­ated in ac­cord­ance with the three valu­ation cat­egor­ies un­der Art­icle 84 para­graph 2. If all the in­vest­ment prop­erty have the same valu­ation cat­egory, they can be put to­geth­er and sum­mar­ised un­der the total prop­erty port­fo­lio.

Art. 101 Itemisation of buy, sell and other transactions  

(Art. 89 para. 1 let. e CISA)

1All changes in the com­pos­i­tion of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme, in par­tic­u­lar buy, sell, off-bal­ance-sheet ex­pos­ures, bo­nus shares, sub­scrip­tion rights and splits, must be dis­closed in the an­nu­al re­port. The in­di­vidu­al as­sets must be de­scribed in pre­cise terms.

2In the case of real es­tate funds, each prop­erty ac­quired or sold must be lis­ted in­di­vidu­ally. The agreed price must be dis­closed at the re­quest of any in­vestor.

3In the case of real es­tate funds, trans­ac­tions between col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which are man­aged by the same or an as­so­ci­ated fund man­age­ment com­pany or SICAV must be dis­closed sep­ar­ately.

4Mort­gages and ad­vances se­cured by mort­gage which have been gran­ted over the course of the fin­an­cial year and re­deemed pri­or to the end of that fin­an­cial year must be lis­ted, in­clud­ing in­terest terms and ma­tur­ity peri­ods.

5Mort­gages and oth­er li­ab­il­it­ies se­cured by mort­gage, as well as loans and ad­vances which have been taken up and re­paid with­in the fin­an­cial year, must be lis­ted, in­clud­ing in­terest terms and ma­tur­ity peri­ods, or sum­mar­ised per cat­egory with an av­er­age ma­tur­ity peri­od and an av­er­age in­terest rate.

Art. 102 Changes in the fund's net assets  

(Art. 89 CISA)

1For each col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme, any changes in the fund's net as­sets must be itemised and con­tain at least:

a.
the fund's net as­sets at the be­gin­ning of the re­port­ing year;
b.
dis­tri­bu­tions;
c.
bal­ance from unit trans­ac­tions;
d.
over­all net in­come;
e.
the fund's net as­sets at the end of the re­port­ing year.

2The unit stat­ist­ics for the re­port­ing year must also be dis­closed (Art. 89 para. 1 let. b CISA).

Art. 103 Figures from previous years  

(Art. 91 CISA)

1In the an­nu­al and semi-an­nu­al re­ports, the pre­vi­ous year’s fig­ures must also be dis­closed in the state­ment of net as­sets, or the bal­ance sheet and profit and loss ac­count.

2The fund's net as­sets and the net as­set value per unit for the past three re­port­ing years must also be itemised in the an­nu­al re­port. The key date shall be the last day of the re­port­ing year.

Section 3 Appropriation of Net Income and Distributions

Art. 104 Appropriation of net income  

(Art. 89 para. 1 let. a CISA)

1The ap­pro­pri­ation of net in­come has the fol­low­ing min­im­um struc­ture:

a.
net in­come for the ac­count­ing year;
b.
cap­it­al gains gen­er­ated dur­ing the ac­count­ing year in­ten­ded for dis­tri­bu­tion;
c.
cap­it­al gains from pre­vi­ous ac­count­ing years ear­marked for dis­tri­bu­tion;
d.
bal­ance brought for­ward from the pre­vi­ous year;
e.
net in­come avail­able for dis­tri­bu­tion;
f.
net in­come ear­marked for dis­tri­bu­tion to in­vestors;
g.
net in­come re­tained for re­in­vest­ment;
h.
bal­ance brought for­ward to new ac­count.

2No re­serves may be cre­ated.

Art. 105 Distributions  

(Art. 91 CISA)

1In­ter­im dis­tri­bu­tions of net in­come are only per­mit­ted if spe­cified in the fund reg­u­la­tions.

2Cap­it­al gains may only be dis­trib­uted if the fol­low­ing con­di­tions are met:

a.
The fund reg­u­la­tions must provide for the dis­tri­bu­tion.
b.
The cap­it­al gains must be real­ised.
c.
They do not con­sti­tute in­ter­im dis­tri­bu­tions.

3The dis­tri­bu­tion of cap­it­al gains is also per­mit­ted if there are cap­it­al losses from pre­vi­ous years.

4No share in profit may be dis­bursed.

Section 4 Duty to Publish

Art. 106 Publication of issue and redemption prices, or of net asset value  

(Arts. 26 para. 3, 79, 80, 83 para. 4 CISA; Art. 35a para. 1 let. 1 and 39 CISO1)

1The is­sue and re­demp­tion price, or net as­set value, must be pub­lished in the print me­dia or elec­tron­ic plat­forms cited in the pro­spect­us each time units are is­sued and re­deemed.

2Prices for se­cur­it­ies funds and oth­er funds must also be pub­lished at least twice a month.

3Prices of the fol­low­ing col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes must be pub­lished at least once a month:

a.
real es­tate funds;
b.
col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes for which the right to re­deem at any time is re­stric­ted pur­su­ant to Art­icle 109 para­graph 3 CISO.

4The weeks and week­days on which pub­lic­a­tion takes place pur­su­ant to para­graphs 2 and 3 must be stated in the pro­spect­us.

5If the net as­set value is pub­lished, it must be flagged «ex­clus­ive of com­mis­sion».


Art. 107 Simplified prospectus for real estate funds  

(Art. 76 CISA; Art. 107 CISO1)

1Col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes, or sub-funds there­of, which com­prise sev­er­al unit classes, must dis­close the in­form­a­tion pur­su­ant to An­nex 2 point 3.3 CISO for each unit class.

2Col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which com­prise sev­er­al sub-funds may pub­lish a sep­ar­ate sim­pli­fied pro­spect­us for each sub-fund. If all sub-funds are lis­ted in one sim­pli­fied pro­spect­us, the in­form­a­tion pur­su­ant to An­nex 2 point 3.3 of the Col­lect­ive In­vest­ment Schemes Or­din­ance must be dis­closed in­di­vidu­ally for each sub-fund.

3Col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes or sub-funds com­pris­ing sev­er­al unit classes shall pub­lish the in­form­a­tion for all unit classes in the same sim­pli­fied pro­spect­us.


Chapter 5 Accounting for Closed-Ended Collective Investment Schemes

Art. 108 Limited partnership for collective investment  

(Art. 108 CISA)

1Ac­count­ing shall be based on the pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to open-ended col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes mu­tatis mutandis.

2Par­ti­cip­a­tions which are held purely for in­vest­ment pur­poses may not be con­sol­id­ated, ir­re­spect­ive of the per­cent­age of votes and cap­it­al held in the com­pany con­cerned.

Art. 109 SICAFs  

(Art. 117 CISA)

1The ac­count­ing meth­ods ap­plied to in­di­vidu­al fin­an­cial state­ments shall in prin­ciple be based on the pro­vi­sions of the open-ended col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes.

2The duty to con­sol­id­ate un­der the CO1 is not ap­plied. Con­sol­id­a­tion may be ef­fected in ac­cord­ance with a re­cog­nised VASR2 stand­ard.


1 SR 220
2 SR 221.432

Title 4 Audits and Audit Reports

Chapter 1 Audits

Art. 110 Separation of financial and regulatory audits and scope of audits  

(Art. 126 para. 2 CISA; Art. 24 FIN­MASA1)

1An­nu­al audits are sep­ar­ated in­to a fin­an­cial audit and a reg­u­lat­ory audit.

2The audit com­pany shall con­duct at least one in­ter­im audit of li­censees, ex­cept­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives, every year.


1 Fin­an­cial Mar­ket Su­per­vi­sion Act of 22 June 2007 (SR 956.1).

Art. 111 Financial audit  

(Art. 126 paras. 5 and 6 CISA; Art. 137 CISO1

1For a fin­an­cial audit of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes, the in­form­a­tion is audited in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 89 para­graph 1 let­ters a-h and 90 CISA.

2The fin­an­cial audit of fund man­age­ment com­pan­ies, as­set man­agers of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes, gen­er­al part­ners of a lim­ited part­ner­ship for col­lect­ive in­vest­ment and rep­res­ent­at­ives of for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes is con­duc­ted in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 728 et seq. CO2.

3FINMA may al­low ex­cep­tions for rep­res­ent­at­ives of for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes.


1 SR 951.311
2 SR 220

Art. 112 Regulatory audit  

(Art. 126 paras. 1–4 CISA; Art. 24 FIN­MASA1; Arts. 2–8 FMAO2)

1The reg­u­lat­ory audit com­prises ex­am­ine the li­censee’s com­pli­ance with the reg­u­lat­ory pro­vi­sions ap­plied un­der Art­icle 13 para­graph 2 let­ters a-d, f and h CISA in­clud­ing col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes.

2For audit scope is to in­clude the gen­er­al part­ner of a lim­ited part­ner­ship for col­lect­ive in­vest­ment.

3The reg­u­lat­ory audit also ex­am­ines the pro­spect­us, the in­form­a­tion it provides for in­vestors and the sim­pli­fied pro­spect­us.

4The reg­u­lat­ory audit may also in­clude oth­er in­form­a­tion spe­cified by FINMA.


1 SR 956.1
2 Fin­an­cial Mar­ket Audit­ing Or­din­ance of 15 Oct. 2008 (SR 956.161).

Diese Seite ist durch reCAPTCHA geschützt und die Google Datenschutzrichtlinie und Nutzungsbedingungen gelten.

Feedback
Laden