GwG 2026: Duties for Real-Estate Advisors & Intermediaries

The Swiss Anti-Money-Laundering Act (GwG) has long imposed know-your-customer and due-diligence duties on financial intermediaries. The revision — adopted by Parliament on 26 September 2025 as the Federal Act on the Transparency of Legal Entities and the Identification of Beneficial Owners (TJPG) — adds two things: a non-public federal transparency register of beneficial owners and the extension of due-diligence duties to certain higher-risk advisory activities. Entry into force: 1 October 2026.

For the real-estate world the second change is the consequential one. Captured are certain advisory and intermediary activities that present an elevated money-laundering risk — the gatekeeping point moves upstream of settlement, to the person who shapes or arranges a transaction. Whether a specific activity is captured depends on the adopted text and the ordinances and should be clarified with qualified Swiss counsel.

The reform targets advisors and intermediaries who — without holding client funds the way a bank does — take part in higher-risk real-estate transactions or structuring. A statutory threshold helps determine the transaction size from which the formal due-diligence duties apply; its exact level is being finalised in the ordinances and must be verified against the definitive text. It would be wrong to assume every broker automatically becomes an obligated party — and equally wrong to wait for the final text instead of building the operating capability now.

TJPG establishes a non-public federal register of beneficial owners. Swiss legal entities — and certain foreign entities, including those that own real estate in Switzerland — must report their beneficial owners. Access is restricted to competent authorities and certain obliged parties; it is not a register open to the public. A beneficial owner is anyone who directly or indirectly holds at least a quarter of the shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises control.

The disciplines are familiar from the existing regime, now extended to a new professional category: identify the contracting party; determine the beneficial owner (the natural person behind a company, trust or foundation); establish the source of funds and, where risk is elevated, apply enhanced due diligence including PEP and sanctions screening; and monitor and record the relationship over time. What matters is evidence: records must be sequenced, transaction-linked and immutable — not scattered across email and drives.

In the Swiss system, financial intermediaries subject to the GwG are supervised either directly by FINMA or through membership in a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation (SRO). Whether a particular advisory or intermediary activity falls under such supervision, and what affiliation it requires, depends on the final enacted scope and the ordinances, and should be clarified early with qualified Swiss counsel. OwnMore itself is not FINMA-licensed and not an SRO and places no one under supervision.

With a fixed entry into force on 1 October 2026, preparation time is limited. The first move is legal, not technical: establish with qualified Swiss counsel whether and how your activity is captured and what supervision it carries. Then build the operating capability — identity, beneficial ownership, source of funds and screening as structural gates that produce a sequenced, transaction-linked record. Those who set this up early can evidence their diligence when it matters, rather than reconstruct it under time pressure.

OwnMore is the compliance-native operating layer: identity, beneficial ownership and source of funds are captured as structural gates and sealed into an append-only SHA-256 audit trail, so a captured professional has a verifiable, per-deal record. Three clarifications: OwnMore makes no one legally compliant and replaces neither the legal determination nor SRO affiliation. It is not FINMA-licensed, not an SRO and not a broker or law firm; SRO affiliation, FINMA-supervised custody and integrated AML screening are in preparation, not live; OwnMore is pre-launch. Qualified investors, project developers and intermediaries are invited to view the role-adaptive pitch.