Federal Act on the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority

¹FINMA ex­er­cises its reg­u­lat­ory powers by is­su­ing:

a.

or­din­ances, where so provided in the fin­an­cial mar­ket le­gis­la­tion; and

b.

cir­cu­lars on the ap­plic­a­tion of the fin­an­cial mar­ket le­gis­la­tion.

²It is­sues or­din­ances and cir­cu­lars only to the ex­tent re­quired for the pur­poses of su­per­vi­sion, lim­it­ing it­self as far as pos­sible to the defin­i­tion of prin­ciples. In do­ing so, it takes ac­count of over­rid­ing fed­er­al law and in par­tic­u­lar of:¹

a.

the costs that the su­per­vised per­sons and en­tit­ies in­cur due to reg­u­la­tion;

b.

the ef­fect that reg­u­la­tion has on com­pet­i­tion, in­nov­at­ive abil­ity and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­it­ive­ness of Switzer­land’s fin­an­cial centre;

c.²

the dif­fer­ent sizes, com­plex­it­ies, struc­tures, busi­ness activ­it­ies and risks of the su­per­vised per­sons and en­tit­ies; and

d.

the in­ter­na­tion­al min­im­um stand­ards.

³It sup­ports self-reg­u­la­tion and may re­cog­nise and im­ple­ment the same as a min­im­um stand­ard with­in terms of its su­per­vis­ory powers.

⁴It provides for a trans­par­ent reg­u­lat­ory pro­cess and the ap­pro­pri­ate par­ti­cip­a­tion of the parties con­cerned.

⁵It is­sues guidelines on the im­ple­ment­a­tion of these prin­ciples. In do­ing so, it acts in agree­ment with the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Fin­ance (FDF)³.