The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) announced on Tuesday a comprehensive reorganisation of its structure to strengthen its supervisory capabilities, effective from 1 April 2025.

The regulator is creating a new cross-divisional function called "Integrated Risk Expertise" that will consolidate risk functions and cross-divisional topics such as liquidity, capital, stress tests, credit risks, money laundering and sustainable finance. This division will be led by Marianne Bourgoz Gorgé, previously head of asset management at FINMA.

In another significant change, FINMA is merging its "Asset Management" and "Markets" divisions under the leadership of Léonard Bôle to capitalise on existing synergies. Bôle has been a member of the executive board and head of the markets division since April 2014.

The reorganisation will also see policy expertise centralised in the Supervisory Policy and Legal Expertise division, while all aspects of digitalisation will be brought together in the Operations division. A new FINMA chief risk officer function is being established to coordinate risk management processes across business divisions.

Stefan Walter, chief executive officer of FINMA, said: "This new structure promotes our goal for FINMA of preventive supervision that achieves maximum impact at the supervised institutions while continuing to supervise them in a risk-based and proportionate manner."

Marlene Amstad, chair of the board of directors, commented: "By taking this step, we are addressing the challenges that we will face as an integrated supervisory authority in the future. These include not only new realities in the banking sector, but also challenges for the entire Swiss financial centre such as non-financial risks and conduct issues, money laundering and cybercrime."

Independently of the organisational changes, Birgit Rutishauser, member of the executive board, deputy chief executive officer and head of the insurance division, has decided to leave FINMA. Vera Carspecken will assume leadership of the insurance division on an interim basis from 1 May 2025.

The restructuring aims to enable more intensive and effective supervision in banking, insurance and asset management sectors, with an emphasis on allowing the authority to conduct more of its own on-site supervisory reviews.

According to FINMA, the new organisational structure will strengthen its position as an integrated supervisory authority, enhance expertise in financial and non-financial risks, and support more direct supervision of financial institutions.

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