FINMA Announces Organizational Restructuring to Enhance Integrated Supervision

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) announced today, April 1, 2025, a significant adjustment to its organizational structure, effective immediately. The changes aim to strengthen the authority's role as an integrated supervisor and enhance its ability to oversee financial and non-financial risks.

Source: Finma

A key element of the restructuring is the creation of a new cross-divisional function called "Integrated Risk Expertise." This division will consolidate risk-related functions, cross-divisional topics such as liquidity, capital, stress tests, credit risks, money laundering, and sustainable finance, as well as analysis, instruments, and on-site supervisory reviews. FINMA stated that pooling this knowledge will "strengthen integrated supervision" and provide supervisory divisions with deeper expertise gained from their own on-site reviews. Marianne Bourgoz Gorgé, the former Head of Asset Management, has been appointed to lead this new division.

Furthermore, FINMA is merging its "Markets" and "Asset Management" divisions under the leadership of Léonard Bôle, Head of the Markets division since April 2014. This merger is intended to leverage existing synergies between the two areas.

Other organizational changes include centralizing policy expertise in the "Supervisory Policy and Legal Expertise" division, consolidating digitalization aspects within the "Operations" division, and establishing a new FINMA Chief Risk Officer function to coordinate and optimize risk management processes across business divisions.

FINMA CEO Stefan Walter commented on the changes, stating: "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." He added that the new structure will allow FINMA to "build on our strengths of professionalism, expertise and motivation."

Marlene Amstad, Chair of the Board of Directors, explained that the restructuring addresses future challenges for FINMA as an integrated supervisory authority, including "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."

FINMA also announced that Birgit Rutishauser, Deputy CEO and Head of the Insurance division, will be leaving the authority. Vera Carspecken will assume leadership of the Insurance division on an interim basis from May 1, 2025.