FINMA licensed trustee: what authorisation and SO-FIT supervision mean for you

If you are weighing up a trustee in Switzerland, you will soon meet the phrase "FINMA licensed trustee", often followed by the name of a supervisory body. The phrase sounds reassuring, and it is meaningful, but it is also easy to over-read. This guide explains who grants the authorisation, who checks it from one year to the next, what the approval tells you about the firm in front of you, and what it cannot tell you.

It is general information, not advice. How much weight the status should carry in your decision depends on your trust deed, the countries where you and the beneficiaries live, and the kind of assets involved. An individual analysis is the right place to settle that.

Why a trustee in Switzerland needs an authorisation at all

For many years a trustee in Switzerland worked in a loosely regulated corner of the financial sector. That changed with the Financial Institutions Act, known as FinIA in English, LEFin in French and FINIG in German. Under it, a trustee is a financial institution in the same way as an asset manager, a manager of collective assets, a fund management company or a securities firm. The trustee is named in the list of financial institutions in Art. 2 para. 1 let. b LEFin.

The definition matters because it decides who must be authorised. Art. 17 para. 2 LEFin treats as a trustee anyone who, on a professional basis, manages a separate pool of assets, or disposes of it, for a beneficiary or for a defined purpose, on the basis of a trust deed within the meaning of the 1985 Hague Convention on trusts. Art. 3 LEFin adds that an activity is professional when it is an independent economic activity carried on to earn a regular income.

Two practical consequences follow for you as a client:

• A friend or relative who acts as trustee on an occasional, unpaid basis is generally not a professional trustee in this sense. The authorisation regime is aimed at those who do the work as a business. Where the line falls in a particular case depends on the facts.
• A firm that earns its living by acting as trustee for others cannot simply rely on a good reputation. It needs to be authorised, and it needs to stay under supervision.

If you are still deciding between a person and a company, the guide on choosing between an individual and a corporate trustee covers that question from the other side.

Two layers: FINMA and the supervisory body

The most common misunderstanding about Swiss trustee supervision is that one authority does everything. In fact there are two layers, and they do different jobs.

FINMA grants the authorisation. Under Art. 61 LEFin, asset managers and trustees are subject to FINMA supervision, but FINMA involves a supervisory body in the process. The day-to-day supervision is carried out by supervisory bodies that themselves hold an authorisation from FINMA.

The supervisory body checks, on an ongoing basis, that the conditions are still met. FINMA describes it plainly: it issues the authorisation, while the routine verification of compliance is carried out by a supervisory body, which is itself authorised and overseen by FINMA. A trustee must report changes in the facts to its supervisory body in advance, not after the event.

SO-FIT is one of these bodies. It is a non-profit association authorised by FINMA, and it acts both as a self-regulatory organisation for anti-money-laundering purposes and as a prudential supervisory body for asset managers and trustees. The FINMA list of authorised and supervised asset managers and trustees, printed on 31.10.2026 and running to 69 pages, names several supervisory bodies, among them OSFINcontrol AG, AOOS, SO-FIT and OSIF.

The diagram shows how the layers fit together.

Notice what the diagram does not show: an arrow from the supervisory body to you. The supervisor looks at the trustee as an institution. It is not your representative, and it does not step into the trust relationship on your behalf.

What the authorisation actually checks

The conditions in the law give a good picture of what a supervisor looks at. They concern the firm, not the quality of the advice in any single case. Taken from the Act, they include:

• Legal form. Under Art. 18 LEFin, a trustee with its seat or domicile in Switzerland must be a sole proprietorship, a commercial company or a cooperative, and must be entered in the commercial register.
• Capital and protection. Art. 22 LEFin sets the minimum capital of asset managers and trustees at CHF 100,000, paid up in cash. Appropriate guarantees or professional liability insurance are also required.
• People. Under Art. 20 LEFin, the management must include at least two qualified persons, meaning people with suitable training and enough professional experience.
• Conduct of the mandate. Art. 19 para. 2 LEFin states the core duty: the trustee manages the separate assets, looks after maintaining their value and uses them in line with their purpose.
• Audit. Art. 62 LEFin provides for an annual audit by an audit firm.

Taken together, these are conditions of organisation: a stable legal entity, some financial substance, qualified management, a duty of care framed in law, and an external check. A trustee that meets them has passed a threshold. That is useful, and it is more than many jurisdictions require of trustees. It is still a threshold, not a ranking.

You will find the practical side of these obligations, including know-your-client files, beneficial owner records and automatic exchange reporting, in the page on compliance and reporting duties. Those duties apply to the trust itself and sit alongside, rather than inside, the institutional authorisation described here.

A short history that explains today's wording

You may see trustees describe themselves as "newly authorised", "transitional" or "affiliated to a self-regulatory organisation". These labels come from the way the regime was introduced.

Under the transitional rule in Art. 74 para. 2 LEFin, institutions that had not needed an authorisation under the former law had to register with FINMA within six months of the Act entering into force. They then had to meet the new requirements and apply for an authorisation within three years. In the meantime they could carry on if they belonged to a self-regulatory organisation for anti-money-laundering purposes. Para. 4 allows FINMA to extend these periods in certain cases.

On 7 July 2020 FINMA announced that asset managers and trustees had until the end of 2022 to apply for authorisation and to prove their affiliation to a supervisory body. The first two supervisory bodies authorised, with effect from 6 July 2020, were OSIF in Geneva and OSFIN in Neuchâtel. At 30 June 2020, 1,934 asset managers and 272 trustees had registered with FINMA.

Why does this history matter to you? Because the transitional period is over. Today, a professional trustee that tells you it is "in the process of being authorised" or that it relies on an old self-regulatory affiliation alone deserves a direct follow-up question. The answer should be on the public record, and you should not have to take it on trust.

What the approval does not tell you

Because the status is easy to read as a quality mark, it helps to be specific about what it leaves out.

Three limits deserve a line of explanation.

Authorisation is not a judgment on a particular decision. A supervisory body checks that the firm is organised properly and keeps to its obligations. It does not review each distribution, each investment choice or each exercise of discretion. If a beneficiary thinks a decision was wrong, the route is the trust deed, the trustee's duties and, where necessary, the courts. The page on what a trustee owes the beneficiaries sets out those duties.

Authorisation does not set the trustee's remuneration. Supervision does not fix how trustees are paid, and a licence is not a promise about cost. How a trustee is paid depends on the structure and the work, and it is something to ask about openly. The guide to how trustees are paid explains the common models.

Authorisation is a snapshot of a firm, not of a team. A firm may hold a valid authorisation while the people you actually deal with change. Continuity of the relationship is something you assess separately.

Reading a status statement: an example

Here is how this looks in practice. The family in this example is fictional and is used only as an illustration.

Example: a family established in Lausanne is considering moving a trust from a trustee who has gone quiet. A candidate sends a one-page note describing itself as "a FINMA licensed trustee, supervised by a recognised supervisory body and a member of a professional association". The adviser helping the family reads it line by line.

• "FINMA licensed trustee." Is the firm on the FINMA list of supervised trustees, under the name shown on the proposal? Is it the same legal entity that would sign the trust deed or the deed of appointment? Group companies often share a brand, and the authorisation belongs to a specific legal entity.
• "Supervised by a recognised supervisory body." Which one? There are several, and the name should match the FINMA list. The adviser asks what the body checks and how often the trustee reports to it.
• "Member of a professional association." This is a different kind of membership. An association may offer training and a code of conduct, but it is not the supervisory body and it does not replace FINMA authorisation. It is worth reading as a bonus, not as a substitute.

The adviser notices that the note says nothing on the audit, on the people who would actually handle the trust, or on how conflicts are handled. None of these is a red flag in itself. They are the questions the family should add to the file, and the trustee due diligence questionnaire gives a structure for doing that.

Three questions to put to a trustee about its status

If you remember only one part of this guide, make it this one. Before you go further with any trustee, put these three questions in writing and keep the answers.

1. Which exact legal entity is authorised, and where do I find it on the public list? You want the full name of the entity that will act as trustee for your trust, not a brand or a group name. You can then check the entry yourself on the FINMA list.
2. Which supervisory body oversees you, and what changed in your authorisation or organisation recently that you were required to report to it? The first half checks the affiliation. The second half tests whether the trustee understands that changes in the facts must be reported to the body in advance, and whether it can talk about that without embarrassment. A firm with nothing to report will say so plainly.
3. What does your status not cover, and who deals with my concerns if they arise? A confident trustee does not hide behind the licence. It will tell you that supervision is institutional, that it does not replace the duties under the trust deed, and who in the firm, and above it, would handle a complaint.

These questions take a few minutes to ask. The answers, especially to the third, tell you about the culture of the firm as much as about its status.

How the status fits into the wider choice

The status is a starting filter. It sits at the beginning of a decision, and a sound decision goes well beyond it. A sensible order is:

1. Confirm authorisation and supervision, using the three questions above.
2. Check experience with your own kind of structure: a trust holding a business, property or a mixed pool of assets.
3. Assess people and continuity: who will handle the trust, and what happens if they leave.
4. Look at how the trustee will work with a protector, with advisers and with the family.
5. Understand how the trustee will be paid, in writing.

The method in how to choose a trustee in Switzerland takes you through these steps, and the due diligence guide goes deeper on what to verify and which documents to request.

If you already have a trustee and are not sure it is performing, the same status check is a good first step of an independent review of an existing trust and its trustee. A lapse in status, or an unexplained change of supervisory body, is the kind of fact that should prompt a closer look. If the relationship has already broken down, replacing a failing trustee describes what happens next.

What changes for foreign settlors and beneficiaries

If you live outside Switzerland, the Swiss status does not change the rules of the country where you are resident. It tells you about the Swiss trustee as an institution; it does not decide how your home country treats the trust, the settlor or the beneficiaries. Reporting under automatic exchange of information (AEOI, also called CRS or EAR) and beneficial owner records are part of a trustee's compliance work. Their consequences for you personally depend on your residence and on the nationality and residence of the beneficiaries.

That is why a status statement works best when it is read next to a clear description of how the trustee handles cross-border questions. Ask whether it has experience of your home country's reporting practice, and whether it will work with your own advisers. The status will not answer that for you.