Strategic Priorities
Every year, the Swiss Bankers Association’s Board of Directors determines the Association’s priority areas with a view to ensuring attractive operating conditions for the banking sector.
The SBA’s priorities for 2026 are as follows:
Combating money laundering:
The SBA is committed to ensuring that Swiss legislation affecting the banking industry is compatible with international standards and to preserving Switzerland’s competitiveness. It will continue to conduct proactive and constructive dialogue with the relevant authorities.
Sanctions and neutrality
The SBA plays its part in the consistent implementation of sanctions and works to position the Swiss financial centre clearly in the international context while taking account of Switzerland’s enduring neutrality, which is fundamental to Swiss foreign policy. In doing so, it focuses on clarifying operational implementation and interpretation issues on an ongoing basis as well as on proactively monitoring international developments. This includes, among other things, continuing its established, regular dialogue with SECO.
Banking stability: competitiveness, proportionality and stability
The SBA is engaging in a constructive dialogue with politicians, authorities and the general public regarding the regulatory consequences of the Credit Suisse crisis. In particular, we are putting forward our views on the future of the “too big to fail” regulations to the Federal Department of Finance, the Swiss National Bank and FINMA. Our aim here is to ensure that any amendments to the regulation and supervision of banks are the result of effective, evidence-based prioritisation, a focus on international competitiveness and a practically oriented, proportionate approach. The top priority this year will be the consultation on the proposed measures concerning the relevant laws.
Digital currencies
The SBA endeavours to position Switzerland as an innovation leader in digital currencies. To this end, it empowers its members to grasp the potential of digital and programmable currencies and position themselves strategically within this ecosystem on the basis of robust decision-making input. These efforts should also ensure that their interests are represented effectively in this area. The aim here is to ensure that the Swiss financial centre – in particular the banks – can implement technological innovations in payments and currencies while preserving the two-tier banking system. The SBA therefore intends to continue its involvement in work on a Swiss deposit token and advocate for a world-leading regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Market access
The SBA’s aims are to secure the Swiss financial centre’s leading position in cross-border wealth management and to strengthen its international competitiveness. To this end, Switzerland must have access to markets in the European Union (EU) as well as growth regions outside Europe without facing discrimination. This is the only way to keep value added, tax revenues and jobs in Switzerland over the long term. In order to improve market access, the SBA campaigns for bilateral agreements with individual countries – e.g. Germany and the UK – and for progress in EU equivalence recognition. The banking industry is currently focused on the institution-specific approach in particular, which would enable individual Swiss banks registered with an EU authority to offer financial services proactively throughout the EU. The SBA is thus committed to ensuring that market access concerns are addressed in the Swiss-EU dialogue on financial regulation and that the EU authorities acknowledge the mutual benefits of the institution-specific approach.
Combating fraud
The SBA lobbies for the effective prevention and combating of payment fraud with a view to bolstering trust in digital payment solutions and financial services over the long term. The focus here is on three key measures: implementing joint awareness campaigns, analysing transaction data across institutions to enable more accurate identification of fraudulent payments, and promoting cross-product and cross-industry exchange among fraud experts at member institutions, authorities, telecommunications companies and technology providers in order to implement further targeted fraud prevention measures. The SBA and its members are thus making an important contribution to the security of bank customers as well as to the resilience and reputation of the Swiss financial centre.