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User guide

BF is a collection of online and offline resources that provide access to the current (and partly past) status of financial market regulation in Switzerland. BF covers the relevant acts, ordinances (Federal Council, FINMA, etc.), circulars and other important texts issued by the authorities, and a wide range of self-regulation by private organizations, whether this self-regulation is required by law, recognized as a minimum standard by FINMA, or is voluntary.

Quick access to online information – mybf.ch

All the information collected and catalogued in BF is available online on the website of the Center for Banking and Financial Law (www.cdbf.ch/bf). It can be accessed with the shortcut mybf.ch which allows to do simple searches such as

  • Mybf.ch/lfinma displays the current version in French of the Financial Market Supervision Act and all related information
  • Mybf.ch/en/lfinma or mybf.ch/en/finmag displays the English version of FINMASA
  • Mybf.ch/D-01-20  displays the Agreement on the Swiss banks’ code of conduct with regard to the exercise of due diligence in French
  • Mybf.ch/outsourcing displays all standards that include ‘outsourcing’ in their title
  • Mybf.ch displays the complete table of contents in the language of your browser
  • Mybf.ch/fr, mybf.ch/de et mybf.ch/it display the table of contents in French, German or Italian respectively

E-book BF23

From 1995 to 2020, we published a book (in two editions : French and German) that reproduced the most important standards from the database. BF 2022 is now available as two electronic books in PDF format, which can be freely downloaded from the www.cdbf.ch website, consulted and annotated on a computer or a tablet. The texts it contains are up to date as of 1 February 2023. How to check it ? At the beginning of each standard, you will find an icon that does this check for you. An electronic version of BF 2009 to BF 2020 is also available on the site.

Information about a standard

The search for a standard (e.g. mybf.ch/en/lefin) shows the current version of the Financial Institutions Act and various information about it.

In particular, the section ‘Other versions’ allows to consult all the successive versions of the act since its adoption in 2018, as well as the preparatory works of the most important versions. For example, the set of documents tracing the common history of the FinIA and the FinSA since 2010 is available in this way.

The acts are also assigned to categories that allow (here) to search for other acts and all other information (publications, comments, spotlights) of the www.cdbf.ch site assigned to these categories.

The self-regulation standards recognized as minimum standards by FINMA are designated as such. The list of these standards can be found under the heading ‘Self-regulation standards recognized by FINMA’.

Table of contents

The table of contents is a powerful tool for viewing regulations in effect today or at any point in time. The default list displays the current versions of all standards in effect on the current date.  The reader can select to view repealed standards (for example, the law on stock exchanges, repealed on December 31, 2019, will appear), or future versions when they are already available. The reader can also move in time by changing the display date (since 01.12.2019).