On 22 April 2026 the Federal Council adopted its dispatch on the Banking Act revision. As far as the legislative proposal itself is concerned, it contains a single new obligation: systemically important banks must fully back their holdings in foreign financial subsidiaries with Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital. Everything else that had been on the table since the collapse of Credit Suisse remains, for now, outside the bill: an accountability regime for senior managers, bonus clawbacks, early intervention powers, reform of the resolution framework. FINMA welcomed the proposal the same day and, in the same press release, noted what it considers to be missing.

The capital measure is the long-standing demand, and it falls almost exclusively on UBS. It ends the double-leverage arrangement under which the bank has so far covered its foreign subsidiaries with only roughly half their value in CET1 capital — an abolition that FINMA describes as “now recommended for the second time since 2012”. UBS puts the additional capital requirement at approximately USD 37 billion; that figure is its own calculation. The Federal Department of Finance considers the actual additional requirement to be considerably lower. The transition period is seven years; the accompanying Capital Adequacy Ordinance enters into force largely on 1 January 2027 — the tightened software rules not until 1 January 2029.

Anyone who stops at the headline “FINMA welcomes” is taking on board a more limited endorsement than it sounds. The authority writes in the same statement that the proposal to strengthen the capital base is “only one of many elements”. It calls for four instruments: an accountability regime for senior managers, the power to impose fines on institutions, a statutory power to communicate proactively about concluded enforcement proceedings, and earlier intervention. None of these features in the dispatch. FINMA demands that the measures proposed in the Federal Council’s framework paper be implemented “in their entirety”.

What currently stands in their place

The accountability regime is designed to bind individual executives by name to defined areas of responsibility. Under current law, the BankG provides only the fit-and-proper requirement (Gewähr für eine einwandfreie Geschäftstätigkeit) for this purpose (Art. 3 para. 2 lit. c BankG). That requirement applies to the institution and its governing bodies collectively. It does not assign any named individual a distinct, delimited responsibility. This person-specific allocation is what FINMA is seeking. Current law does not provide for it.

The gap in sanctioning powers is sharper. FINMA can today order the disgorgement of unlawfully obtained profits (Art. 35 FINMAG) and publish its rulings (Art. 34 FINMAG). It cannot impose a monetary sanction on the institution itself. The proposed fine would be an administrative penalty with a deterrent effect — one that current law withholds from the supervisory authority. Where a breach has generated no profit for the institution, it carries no financial consequence.

Proactive communication about concluded proceedings runs up against the supervisory duty of confidentiality under current law. Early intervention is designed to engage before insolvency is imminent, at which point the resolution framework only then applies (Art. 25 et seq. BankG). Compensation arrangements also remain where they are for now: the law permits clawback in principle only where a systemically important bank receives state support (Art. 10a BankG). A general clawback and deferral regime, independent of state assistance, belongs to the deferred round. The resolution framework went untested in March 2023 — and remains so.

The capital question commands the broadest consensus because it concerns, in practical terms, a single institution and directly addresses the lessons of March 2023; that is why it comes first. The four instruments, by contrast, touch management organisation, compensation, and enforcement practice, and were contested during the consultation. By deferring them to a second legislative package, the Federal Council buys time — and accepts the consequence that FINMA would enter the next crisis with the tools it has today.

What is settled now, what is still in motion

For the legal department of a systemically important bank, the reform breaks down into two speeds. The capital requirement is fixed in its direction, even if the numbers remain disputed: CET1 build-up begins now, with the seven-year transition period running from the date of entry into force. The governance obligations, by contrast, do not yet exist in a single statutory provision. Anyone who draws up an accountability map today or drafts clawback clauses into employment contracts is working against a bill that does not yet exist. More useful this week is to identify which individuals an accountability regime would cover and where a state-independent clawback would cut into existing contracts — as groundwork for the consultation response, not for implementation.

What remains open is how precisely the Federal Council will frame the four instruments and whether the sanctioning power that the legislature has never yet granted will survive. That will not be decided in today’s dispatch but in the consultation draft that the Federal Council has announced for summer 2026. The legal basis is Art. 52 BankG, which obliges the Federal Council to review the rules for systemically important banks periodically and to report to parliament. Today’s proposal is the response to the report of 10 April 2024; which part of FINMA’s list follows will only become clear with the next draft. That is what the legal department’s submission should target — not today’s dispatch.