The FINMA and the SROs freely exchange information about the fulfilment of their specific money laundering duties between each other.
In conjunction with the licensing and membership obligations of financial intermediaries pursuant to Art. 14 GwG, the SROs are obliged to notify the FINMA without delay about:
- terminations of memberships;
- decisions to refuse to accept a prospective member;
- exclusion decisions as well as the reasons for these;
- the opening of sanction proceedings which could end with an exclusion.
This is designed to ensure that the FINMA is able to instruct the respective financial intermediary either to join another SRO or to subordinate himself directly to the FINMA by means of a license application (attention: deadlines!).
Finally, SROs must submit annual reports to the FINMA about their activities in conjunction with the GwG. In addition, a list of the approved sanctions must be presented to the FINMA.
Insofar as a financial intermediary has not already issued a report pursuant to Art. 9 GwG, an SRO must notify the FINMA without delay if there are suspicions that:
- a criminal act pursuant to Art. 260ter Fig. 1 or 305bis StGB2 has been committed;
- assets are the proceeds of crime;
- assets are subject to the power of disposal of a criminal organisation; or
- assets are being used to finance terrorism (Art. 260quinquies Para. 1 StGB).
In respect of the above list of acts, it is important to note that reasonable suspicion about a criminal act pursuant to Art. 305ter StGB (due diligence shortcomings in conjunction with financial transactions) specifically does not oblige an SRO to report to the FINMA.
