The Swiss guard is looking for more tools to chase the evil bankers

ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland’s chief financial officer has called for more power to punish bad bankers after a series of scandals tarnished the sector’s international reputation.

Marlene Amstad, head of the board of directors of the Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FINMA), told SonntagsZeitung that the agency would welcome new tools to be held accountable for the mistakes made by bankers.

While FINMA can now remove bankers who make serious mistakes, the UK, for example, lacks a broader tool with its General Managers Regime, it said in an interview.

“We can’t introduce such tools ourselves, the legislature has to do that. Today, there are political initiatives that respond to the need to act in this direction. We are interested in having the most complete toolbox possible and we are basically open to new and effective instruments.” he said.

Overwhelmed Swiss credit (SIX 🙂 Switzerland in particular is urging top bankers to rethink the intangible system, Reuters reports https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/credit-suisse-scandals-prompt-switzerland-think- unthinkable-punished-bankers-2021-05-28 May.

The huge losses caused by the collapse of the Credit Suisse Archegos family office and the decimation of billions of investments backed by the insolvent British financier Greensill angered regulators and sparked a rare debate among lawmakers about the bank fine.

On other issues, Amstad said the risk of the mortgage market rose as they moved away from the red-hot economic bases of real estate prices, but said it was not up to FINMA to decide whether or not to reintroduce countercyclical capital suspended by the government. pandemic.

“What we can do is ask individual banks for risk surcharges if a bank takes too much risk when issuing mortgages. We have been using this tool regularly, as well as recently,” he said, without giving further details.