Applicable regime
Since 1 January 2024, the revised Insurance Supervision Act (ISA) has been in force in Switzerland. The revision was primarily intended to strengthen customer protection and the competitiveness of Switzerland as a business location. The scope of the ISA and the provisions on insurance intermediation, however, mean that insurance undertakings may only cooperate with untied insurance intermediaries if they have complied with their registration obligation with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA (FINMA). This also applies to reinsurance undertakings, which means that reinsurance intermediaries are currently, in principle, subject to supervision and to the registration requirement under the ISA.
Issue
The revised ISA has led to unintended consequences in the reinsurance business:
- Highly specialised foreign reinsurance brokers are not always registered in Switzerland. They avoid working with Swiss reinsurance undertakings. Certain businesses with reinsurance clients in Switzerland is shifting abroad.
- From the opposite perspective, Swiss reinsurance undertakings may no longer cooperate with these foreign reinsurance intermediaries. The latter also suffer competitive disadvantages.
Proposal
Prompted by a motion, the Federal Council proposes deregulation. Intermediaries of reinsurance contracts (both untied and tied) should in future be excluded from the scope of the ISA. They would therefore be subject neither to FINMA supervision nor to the registration requirement. The prohibition on cooperation with unregistered untied intermediaries would no longer apply to reinsurance.
Under the proposed solution, the current competitive disadvantage of Swiss reinsurance undertakings in business with Swiss cedents compared with foreign reinsurance undertakings would be eliminated. In addition, untied reinsurance intermediaries would no longer incur, for example, FINMA's annual supervisory fees. It should be noted that reinsurance intermediaries would still have the possibility to request entrance in the Swiss register if they can demonstrate that they intend to take up activities abroad where the respective state requires an entry in the Swiss register.
Outlook
On 5 December 2025, the Federal Council adopted the dispatch on the amendment of the ISA. Parliamentary deliberations will follow. As the consultation has shown, the amendment is likely to be uncontroversial. Against this background, swift parliamentary deliberations can be expected. Subsequently, after the (unused) expiry of the referendum period, the Federal Council will determine the date of entry into force of the amendment.
