Bank secrecy in Switzerland: what still exists in 2026

What Article 47 of the Banking Act still protects

Article 47 of the Banking Act (BankA, SR 952.0) still criminalises the intentional disclosure of client information by anyone entrusted with it as a bank employee, agent, auditor or liquidator. The base penalty is up to three years' imprisonment or a monetary penalty. Since 1 July 2015 the provision also catches third parties who pass on or exploit leaked bank data, and the penalty rises to five years where the offender acts for financial gain. Even negligent disclosure is punishable, with a fine of up to CHF 250,000. The duty does not lapse when the banker changes jobs or retires.

What this buys a client is protection from private curiosity. A Swiss bank cannot lawfully answer questions from an ex-spouse, a competitor, a journalist or a foreign private investigator, and an employee who sells client data commits an offence prosecuted ex officio. Alongside the criminal rule, Article 28 of the Civil Code gives the client a civil claim for breach of privacy. The supervisory structure behind these duties is described in our guide to the Swiss banking system.

How Swiss banking secrecy changed between 1934 and 2026

Secrecy towards foreign tax authorities was dismantled in stages over roughly one decade, while the domestic criminal rule never moved. These are the dates that matter.

How the automatic exchange of information works

Under the AEOI, a Swiss bank establishes each account holder's tax residence through a self-certification collected at onboarding. If the holder is tax-resident in a partner jurisdiction, the bank reports the relationship to the Federal Tax Administration, which forwards the data once a year, by the end of September, to the partner authority. As of June 2026 Switzerland exchanges with around 108 partner jurisdictions; the official list is maintained by the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters.

The data set is fixed by the Common Reporting Standard: name, address, jurisdiction of tax residence, taxpayer identification number, date of birth, account number, the year-end account balance, and gross interest, dividends, other income and proceeds from sales of financial assets. Entities are covered as well as individuals, and passive holding companies are looked through to their controlling persons. What this means at onboarding is set out in our Swiss bank account guide.

Who is not reported under the AEOI

Swiss residents with Swiss accounts are not reported. The CRS applies only to clients who are tax-resident abroad, so data on a Swiss-resident client never leaves the bank, and the Swiss Federal Tax Administration receives no automatic feed of domestic accounts. Domestic enforcement runs instead through the 35% withholding tax on interest and dividends, which a Swiss taxpayer recovers only by declaring the asset.

Two honest nuances. Safe-deposit boxes are not financial accounts under the CRS, so their contents are not reportable, but the rental contract and any linked account pass full identification under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, and large cash movements trigger clarification duties. Residents of jurisdictions with no activated exchange relationship are not reported either, but that list shrinks almost every year, and the Swiss AEOI rules contain an anti-avoidance provision: arrangements made primarily to circumvent reporting are disregarded, and deliberate circumvention exposes both the client and any assisting intermediary. Structuring around the CRS is not a privacy strategy; it is a liability.

Are numbered Swiss bank accounts anonymous?

No. A numbered account replaces the client's name with a number or code in day-to-day operations, so fewer bank employees see who stands behind it. The bank itself always knows. Identification of the contracting party and of the beneficial owner is mandatory under Articles 3 and 4 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act before any account opens, numbered or not, and under the CRS a numbered account is reported exactly like a named one. The product costs more, narrows internal visibility, and changes nothing towards any authority. How identification actually runs is the subject of our AML and KYC compliance practice.

What Swiss banking secrecy never protected

Banking secrecy was never absolute, and several disclosure routes predate the AEOI by decades. In Swiss criminal proceedings, prosecutors and courts have always been able to compel banks to produce records; Article 47 expressly reserves the federal and cantonal provisions on the duty to testify and to provide information to the authorities. Foreign authorities have obtained Swiss bank records through international mutual legal assistance under the Mutual Assistance Act of 20 March 1981, in force since 1983, including in tax-fraud cases. US persons lost banking privacy earlier than everyone else: the Swiss–US FATCA agreement has applied since 30 June 2014.

Secrecy also gives way in debt-enforcement and bankruptcy proceedings, where administrators obtain account information, and on death, when heirs acquire a statutory right to information about the deceased's banking relationships. Where a bank suspects money laundering, it must file a report with MROS under Article 9 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, and secrecy is no defence.

What this means for a legitimate client in 2026

For a compliant client the position is stable and, on balance, favourable. Confidentiality towards private parties is real and criminally enforced: Swiss courts have convicted bank employees and data resellers under Article 47. Towards your own tax authority there is no confidentiality, and there has not been since the first exchange in 2018, so the only durable strategy is an account declared from day one; the annual CRS exchange then confirms what your tax return already states. In the account files we prepare, the point clients most often miss is not whether the data is reported — it is — but how exactly the CRS feed mirrors the return, so any gap between the two is what later draws a question. Voluntary-disclosure regimes become less generous over time, not more. We prepare exactly this kind of file in our Swiss bank account opening service, and the wider context sits in our Swiss banking guides.