A Swiss firm's practical guide to serving UK clients under the BFSA

First question: is the BFSA the right route?

The BFSA does not replace the existing ways into the UK market. A Swiss firm serving UK clients has, broadly, three options: full UK authorisation (typically through a branch or subsidiary with a Part 4A permission), reliance on the UK's Overseas Persons Exclusion where its conditions are met, and now registration under the BFSA. The FCA is explicit that the new access does not replace the OPE; and a firm cannot register under the BFSA for a service, financial instrument and client category for which it already holds a Part 4A permission. The routes are alternatives, chosen combination by combination.

The comparison is a business-model question as much as a legal one. The BFSA offers something the OPE does not: a public register entry, a treaty foundation, supervisory cooperation between FINMA, the FCA and the PRA under a dedicated Memorandum of Understanding and the ability to market and serve UK clients from Switzerland on a footing that counterparties, custodians and professional intermediaries can verify. What it demands in return is process: notification, registration, annual reporting and continuing eligibility. A firm with modest, passive UK exposure may reasonably stay where it is. A firm that wants to grow a UK client book from Switzerland now has an instrument built for that.

Eligibility: who can use it, and three qualifications

The threshold conditions are clear. The firm must be a Swiss entity, authorised and supervised by FINMA in one of five categories (bank, securities firm, fund management company, manager of collective assets, or portfolio manager), authorised to supply the relevant covered services in Switzerland, and actually supplying them there (Annex 5, Section IV.A.d): an unused Swiss permission does not qualify. Eligibility is verified by FINMA as part of the notification process, together with the firm's good standing.

Three qualifications deserve close attention before any filing:

• The no-overlap rule. A firm cannot register for a combination of service, instrument and client category already covered by its own UK Part 4A permission. The test looks at the Swiss entity's own permissions, typically held through a UK branch; a separately incorporated UK subsidiary's permissions do not count against the Swiss entity's registration. Groups with both should still map which combinations sit where, and keep the map current.
• The branch rule. A Swiss firm with an existing UK branch may use the BFSA, but where the firm is authorised in the UK under Part 4A FSMA, covered services must be supplied from the Swiss entity, not through the UK-authorised branch (Annex 5, Section III.A.c of the Agreement). Booking models, client documentation and internal reporting lines must reflect this: a client relationship that in substance runs through the London branch is not what was registered.
• The travelling-employee rule. Deference extends to covered activities of the Swiss firm's employees while temporarily present in the UK, provided the presence does not amount to a permanent establishment, but not to employees of the UK branch. Where the firm holds a Part 4A permission, the registered services also cannot be carried on from, or under the supervision or control of, its UK permanent establishment (Annex 5, Section III.A.c), so visiting Swiss staff should not run registered business out of the London branch's premises or under its reporting lines. Who employs the individual matters, and so do where and under whose control the work is done. Travel policies and secondment arrangements should be reviewed against that.

What is covered: services, clients and the fine print

The deference is granular by design: it applies service by service, financial instrument by financial instrument, client category by client category. Covered investment and ancillary services can be provided to three categories of UK clients: high-net-worth clients meeting the criteria set out in Annex 5 of the Agreement, per se professional clients, and eligible counterparties. Elective professional status under UK rules is not itself a qualifying category: a client who has opted up is covered only if it independently qualifies as a per se professional client, an eligible counterparty or a high-net-worth covered client on the Annex 5 test (Annex 5, Section V.A; FINMA's guidelines, section III.1.1.4), and retail clients who do not meet the high-net-worth test are not covered. The BFSA is a wholesale and sophisticated-client instrument, and marketing must be built accordingly.

Onboarding carries its own conditions: the Agreement prescribes client-classification requirements and a disclosure document that covered firms must provide (Annex 5, Sections IX.A.1 and IX.A.3, as the FCA and PRA guidelines describe at paragraphs 2.11–2.12 and 2.17–2.19), stating clearly and prominently that the firm is a Swiss entity authorised and supervised in Switzerland and not authorised or regulated in the United Kingdom (or, where it holds a Part 4A permission, not authorised for the notified services), the place of jurisdiction and applicable law of the contract, and that neither the UK compensation scheme nor the Financial Ombudsman Service is available. Before any covered service is supplied, the firm must also obtain the client's consent to the disclosure of relevant information, including personal data and confidential information, to UK regulators on request (Annex 5, Section IX.A.4). If the client withdraws that consent the firm may no longer supply covered services to it, so the consent belongs in the contract as a termination trigger, with a process for acting on withdrawal. These are among the conditions on which the deference rests.

Two further points. First, the Agreement does not itself authorise the marketing of alternative investment funds: the deference list carves marketing requirements for collective investment schemes and AIFs out of the marketing measures the UK defers to (Annex 5, Section VIII.A.1.b.ii.17), and the financial promotion exemption for registered Swiss firms in article 73ZB of the Financial Promotion Order does not extend to communications about funds. Marketing an AIF to a covered UK client therefore runs through the UK's national private placement regime on that regime's own conditions, and where the client is, for UK domestic purposes, a retail investor, which a high-net-worth covered client ordinarily is, the financial promotion and scheme promotion restrictions in sections 21 and 238 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 must separately be satisfied (regulation 46 of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations 2013). Second, beyond investment services, the Agreement also facilitates the recognition of central counterparties, strengthens cooperation on trading venues and simplifies certain requirements for OTC derivatives, as FINMA notes, which is relevant for firms whose UK business touches market infrastructure.

Notification, step by step

The BFSA route is a notification with verification, and the quality of the filing determines how long it takes.

• Step 1: Prepare. Define the exact covered services, instruments and client categories to be notified; confirm FINMA authorisation covers them in Switzerland and that the firm actually supplies them there; run the Part 4A overlap check; resolve the branch and booking-model questions above.
• Step 2: File via EHP. The notification is submitted through FINMA's survey and application platform (EHP), stating the firm's name and contact details, its authorised status, the services it intends to supply into the UK, a confirmation that it is authorised for those services and already offers them outside the Agreement, and a confirmation that it will meet all the conditions of the Agreement.
• Step 3: FINMA verification. FINMA verifies eligibility and good standing within 60 days and confirms the outcome to the FCA.
• Step 4: FCA registration. On receipt of FINMA's confirmation, the FCA places the firm on its public BFSA register within a further 30 days. The firm is notified, and only from that point may it begin supplying the covered services in the UK.

The practical corollary: onboarding UK clients before the register entry is confirmed is premature, and marketing timetables should build in the full 60-plus-30-day runway. FINMA has published guidelines for suppliers (January 2026), mirrored by the joint PRA/FCA guidelines; questions can be raised with FINMA directly at BFSA-questions@finma.ch. For the mechanics of all four BFSA routes, including the UK insurer route onto FINMA's register and the client-adviser notification, see BFSA notifications step by step.

Life on the register: the ongoing obligations

Registration begins a continuing supervisory relationship. Registered Swiss firms must submit annual reporting to the FCA, filed via FINMA's EHP platform, by 30 April each year, covering the preceding calendar year (Annex 5, Section IX.A.2 sets out the content). A transition rule softens the first year: a firm first registered between 1 January and 30 April does not report until the following year.

Beyond reporting, three continuing disciplines matter. The firm's eligibility must remain intact: the Swiss authorisation, the absence of overlapping Part 4A permissions, the branch discipline. The client-facing conditions (classification, disclosure, the boundaries of covered services) apply to every relationship throughout its life, from onboarding onwards. And the framework itself is being actively administered: supervisory cooperation runs under the FINMA–FCA–PRA Memorandum of Understanding, a Joint Committee oversees implementation under Article 23 of the Agreement, and the Agreement is reviewed every five years under Article 46. The joint FCA and PRA guidelines have been revised in December 2025 and on 23 January 2026, and FINMA's guidelines stand in their version of 8 January 2026; someone in the firm should own the task of tracking them.

The client file: what good documentation looks like

If the deference is ever questioned, whether by a supervisor, a counterparty or a court, the client file is where the answer has to be. For each UK relationship, it should evidence: the classification of the client into one of the covered categories and, where the high-net-worth route is relied on, the net-asset computation, the capability assessment addressed to the right person for the route, the signed declaration that the client wishes to be treated as a high-net-worth covered client for the particular covered service, the written warning of lost protections and the client's written statement acknowledging the consequences in a document separate from the contract (Annex 5, Section IX.A.3); delivery of the prescribed disclosure document; the regulator-disclosure consent, with a process for acting on its withdrawal; terms of business that reflect the actual service scope, the Swiss supervisory position and the treaty basis; and records sufficient to feed the annual EHP reporting without reconstruction. Built into onboarding from the start, the same file makes the April reporting cycle routine.

Six pitfalls

• Routing covered services through the UK branch because "that's where the relationship sits". The registration belongs to the Swiss entity.
• Registering for combinations already held under a Part 4A permission, or failing to re-check the overlap when the Swiss entity's own UK permissions change.
• Treating the HNW category as a marketing label when it is a classification exercise with Annex 5 criteria and evidence.
• Onboarding UK clients during the 60/30-day verification window, before the FCA register entry exists.
• Missing the 30 April reporting deadline in year two because the year-one exemption was mistaken for a standing rule.
• Assuming the BFSA covers what it does not: retail clients who fail the high-net-worth test, and cryptoassets that are not themselves covered financial instruments. A token that is legally a transferable security or a fund unit is inside the instrument list, as the FCA's cryptoasset perimeter guidance (PS19/22) explains; a payment or utility token is not.

Outlook

The BFSA was designed to grow. The Joint Committee structure, the five-yearly review and the standing UK–Switzerland Financial Dialogue give both governments the machinery to extend covered sectors over time, and both have signalled continuing ambition for the framework. For Swiss firms, the sensible course is to treat the BFSA as infrastructure and to get registration, documentation and reporting right now, so that later extensions can be used without rebuilding the base.

Isak Legal advises Swiss and UK firms on the BFSA end to end: route comparison, eligibility and perimeter analysis, notification, client documentation and the ongoing-obligations framework. See our United Kingdom page and Financial Regulation practice, or get in touch.

This client update is provided for general information only, reflects the position as at 26 September 2026 and does not constitute legal advice or create a lawyer-client relationship. For advice on a specific matter, please contact us.