Many foreign investors having accounts in Switzerland cannot estimate if the Swiss bank has done their home work according to the rules in place. More and more, the MIFID rules enacted in the European Union are taken into consideration also in Switzerland. That means that the protection of the foreign investor's interests is increasing in Switzerland from day to day.

Investors have lost money but they cannot exactly say why because the bankable assets are structured in a complex way. Often, a trust is holding underlying offshore companies holding different accounts. There are a lot of transactions between the offshore companies and the private accounts. There are investments made in the name of certain offshore companies and payouts are received at the end of the duration of a single investment. The structure is complicated and not sufficiently transparent.

We are committed to bank reconciliation, and we will reconcile the results. We are checking each debit and credit advice with the instruction given by the client to the bank. We are comparing and matching figures from the credit and debit advices with the account statements. We will make sure that each transaction appearing in the accounting records are found in the bank statements and vice-versa.

We are checking the bank account documentation on conflict of interests. We have had many clients being victims of a conflict of interest. Often, a relationship manager convinced the client to invest in exotic and risky products just because he earned a kick-back from the fund manager. If there is a lack on diversification we will hold the bank responsible for the damage. We will check if the selling orders are executed as fast as possible. If not, we will ask the bank for compensation.

In case you don't feel comfortable with your bank account in Switzerland, feel free to contact us. We are experienced in that field. It is our daily business. We will take a relatively small amount from you in order to undertake a first bank reconciliation and find out what happened. If we detect that the bank has made mistakes, we will agree a contingency fee with the foreign investor, and we will split the outcome paid out by the bank. It is notorious that a Swiss bank wants to avoid appearing in newspapers. In most cases we can reach a satisfactory settlement with the Swiss bank at the end, and we can avoid a bank litigation lasting years.

The current Swiss banking legislation has become very investor friendly. Due to the MIFID rules enacted in the EU, Switzerland becomes more and more under pressure to apply investor friendly rules, and the chance to detect mistakes made by the banking officers which can be converted into compensation payments has become high.

 

International
Legal & Tax Services

Talstrasse 20
Am Paradeplatz
8001 Zurich
Switzerland

P: +41 44 212 44 04
F: +41 44 212 44 05
enzo.caputo(at)swiss-banking-law.com

enzo.caputo
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Zurich
Baar / Zug
Milan

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