The New Advisor Category Under the 2026 Swiss AML Reform: Are Structuring Advisors Captured? | OwnMore

The classic Swiss anti-money-laundering regime attaches to the financial intermediary who accepts, holds or transfers money — the bank, the payment-service provider, the trustee who holds assets. This attachment point has a clear logic: the money has to pass through a gate at some point, and that gate is the most natural place for identification and due-diligence duties.

The new advisor category follows a different logic. It observes that an advisor who designs a structure, sets up a vehicle or arranges a transaction has substantial influence over the end result — often more than the settler who merely executes the already-arranged transaction afterwards. A structuring advisor decides into which vehicle funds flow, in what legal wrapper a participation is held, and through which chain of entities control is structured. That shaping power is the point at which opacity is created — not only at settlement.

The point of capture is moved upstream: not only when the money moves, but when the arrangement is shaped that enables the movement. That is the conceptual core of the advisor category. The precise scope — which activities are concretely captured, which thresholds apply, and which exceptions exist — is a matter of the enacted text and the follow-on ordinances; both must be reviewed with qualified legal counsel and the authoritative text.

The Federal Act implementing the FATF recommendations on combating money laundering and terrorist financing (commonly referred to in Swiss commentary as LETA — for «Loi fédérale sur la transparence des entités juridiques et la vérification des bénéficiaires effectifs»; the abbreviated label in German-language commentary varies) was adopted by the Federal Assembly on 26 September 2025. Entry into force is expected in the second half of 2026; no fixed date has been set. The implementing ordinances follow and may further specify details.

The statute broadens the material scope of the Anti-Money-Laundering Act in the direction of certain advisory activities. Concretely, it attaches to the activity — no longer only to the institutional quality of being a bank or depositary. Advisors who, in the course of their professional activity, arrange certain transactions, establish vehicles or shape structures can thereby fall within the circle of persons subject to the GwG. The precise delineation of covered activities, the thresholds and the exceptions are governed by the authoritative enacted text and the ordinances flowing from it.

A widely-discussed threshold of CHF 5 million in transaction value as a general trigger for advisory activities appears in the parliamentary debate and in early advisory documents — it was not, however, enacted as a general safe-harbour threshold in the adopted statute. The concrete trigger thresholds follow from the text of the adopted statute and the associated ordinances. Any planning that treats CHF 5 million as a safe harbour may not rest on public summaries but only on the authoritative text and qualified legal counsel.

Whether your own activity falls under the new advisor category is a question of law to be resolved with qualified Swiss counsel and the authoritative enacted text. Some guiding questions can provide a first orientation — not as a legal determination but as a starting point for the conversation with your own legal adviser.

Do you arrange or structure transactions in which another party performs the final settlement? Do you establish companies, trusts, foundations or other vehicles that are then used for participations or capital flows? Do you advise on or shape the ownership structure behind a transaction — not only the transaction itself but the wrapper in which it takes place? Do you act in a professional rather than a one-off or private capacity? Do the transactions you accompany or structure exceed value thresholds identified as relevant in the authoritative text?

If you must answer several of these questions with "yes," that is a signal that a deeper review by qualified counsel is indicated — before the statute enters into force. An answer resting on public summaries or professional commentary, including this article, does not suffice for a legally sound assessment. The broad overview article on the 2026 GwG revision and advisory intermediaries offers a complementary perspective on the overall revision picture; this page focuses on the conceptual logic and self-assessment of the advisor category in particular.

If an advisory activity falls under the GwG, the core duties of the Swiss anti-money-laundering regime follow. That means: identifying the contracting party before entering the relationship; determining the beneficial owner, the natural person who ultimately stands behind the client; establishing the source of funds — proportionate to the risk profile of the relationship; screening against sanctions lists and politically exposed persons; ongoing monitoring of the relationship and a duty to report on suspicion. Added to this is a duty to keep records for a prescribed period.

Additionally, for financial intermediaries affiliated with a self-regulatory organisation (SRO), there is an additional supervisory layer. Whether an advisor newly falling under the GwG is subject to the FINMA direct-supervision regime or the SRO regime depends on the authoritative text and must be determined with legal counsel. A more detailed exposition of these core duties is found in the article on the compliance stack for GwG 2026, as well as in the linked articles on KYC/AML onboarding.

For a financial intermediary serving only a few large clients, the duty program is manageable: one file per relationship, maintained over time. For a structuring or transaction advisor accompanying many deals simultaneously — different clients, different vehicles, different transaction values — an operational challenge of a different order arises.

The GwG requires not only that the due-diligence duties are fulfilled, but that they are demonstrably fulfilled. An auditor or supervisory authority expects, per relationship and per transaction, the evidence: who was identified, and when? Who is the beneficial owner, and when was that determined? Where do the funds originate, and what was done to assess plausibility? What was screened, and when? An advisor who reconstructs these records for every transaction in ad-hoc documentation has a structural risk that gaps will emerge — or that when it matters, the chronology is no longer traceable.

The resulting need is a per-deal audit trail maintained on a process-oriented basis — not a retrospective gathering of emails and PDFs. That is the operating-model gap that structurally anchored compliance infrastructure addresses, in contrast to a practice that depends on someone filing the right documents at the right moment.

OwnMore is compliance-native infrastructure for Swiss private-market and real estate transactions. That means: identification, beneficial ownership, source of funds and screening are treated as structural steps that must precede binding phases — not as optional additions. Each of those steps is recorded in an append-only SHA-256 audit chain, so that the per-deal evidence is machine-readable and time-stamped, not a retrospective reconstruction.

Four points deserve explicit clarification. First: OwnMore is not a FINMA-licensed financial intermediary, not an SRO member, and not a law firm. It is infrastructure — it makes no one compliant, and it does not replace qualified legal advice on whether your activity falls under the GwG. Second: SRO affiliation, screening-provider integration and the custody layer are in preparation (pre-launch) and are not live today. Third: OwnMore publishes no client names, assets under management, returns or track records; this article contains no invented figures or references. Fourth: "built for the standard" means the platform is built with the GwG 2026 standard as a design guideline — it does not mean OwnMore certifies or guarantees GwG compliance.

Professionals examining whether they fall under the new advisor category, or who want to build a verifiable per-deal audit trail, can reach out via the contact form. Qualified investors seeking access to transactions settled on this infrastructure can reach the access gate via /access.