The fu­ture of Swiss-UK fi­nan­cial ser­vices re­la­tions be­gins now

Switzer­land's bi­lat­eral re­la­tions with the United King­dom can be de­scribed as highly dy­namic for some time now. This is also ev­i­dent in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor: in­ten­sive ne­go­ti­a­tions are cur­rently un­der­way on a bi­lat­eral fi­nan­cial ser­vices agree­ments. The focus is on mu­tual recog­ni­tion of the re­spec­tive na­tional reg­u­la­tions in the sec­tors con­cerned to the great­est pos­si­ble ex­tent. In con­trast to the EU regime, the focus is pri­mar­ily on the equiv­a­lence of reg­u­la­tory out­comes rather than on con­crete legal texts.

Fi­nan­cial ser­vices agree­ment is only the be­gin­ning

The Swiss and British fi­nan­cial in­dus­tries have ac­tively fol­lowed the ne­go­ti­a­tions from the be­gin­ning and have jointly voiced their in­ter­ests at an early stage. At a joint meet­ing on 23 June 2022 in Zurich, the lead­ing work­ing groups of the um­brella or­gan­i­sa­tions economiesu­isse and TheCityUK, ex­changed their as­sess­ment on the sta­tus of the ne­go­ti­a­tions. Dis­cus­sions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the au­thor­i­ties also in­cluded an over­all view of the bi­lat­eral work cur­rently un­der­way.

The nu­mer­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the bank­ing/in­vest­ment, in­sur­ance, asset man­age­ment and fi­nan­cial mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture sec­tors agreed that the fi­nan­cial ser­vices agree­ment, which is ex­pected to be con­cluded this year, should not mark the end, but rather the be­gin­ning of an even more ex­ten­sive co­op­er­a­tion. The con­fer­ence of­fered the op­por­tu­nity for ini­tial joint re­flec­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, new tech­no­log­i­cal trends and reg­u­la­tory de­vel­op­ments in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor were dis­cussed - and the op­por­tu­ni­ties that could re­sult for two of the world's most im­por­tant fi­nan­cial cen­tres.

Re­la­tion­ships with a model func­tion

The im­por­tance of the cur­rent ne­go­ti­a­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as the in­ten­sive ex­change be­tween the eco­nomic sec­tors con­cerned, has im­pli­ca­tions be­yond the bi­lat­eral re­la­tion­ship be­tween Switzer­land and the UK. This is es­pe­cially true at a time of in­creased global geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, grow­ing pro­tec­tion­ism, and na­tion­al­is­tic ten­den­cies. To­gether, the UK and Switzer­land give a strong sig­nal that open mar­kets, a lib­eral eco­nomic order and mu­tual trust con­tin­ues to be the es­sen­tial basis for deep­en­ing re­la­tions and sus­tain­able eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment.