Money laundering duties: from the OAD FCT to the reform of 2026

Fiduciari as financial intermediaries

The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 10 October 1997 (AMLA, SR 955.0) brought the fiduciari of Lugano under federal law long before FinIA did. The Act applies to financial intermediaries, which it defines in two groups. The first group, in Article 2 paragraph 2, consists of institutions supervised under special financial market laws: banks, fund management companies, insurers, securities firms and, since 2020, portfolio managers and trustees within the meaning of FinIA (Art. 2 para. 2 let. a bis AMLA).¹ The second group, in Article 2 paragraph 3, comprises all other persons who on a professional basis accept or hold assets belonging to others or help to invest or transfer them, including those who engage in credit transactions, payment services, trading in banknotes, currencies, precious metals or securities, investment advice and the safekeeping or management of securities.² A Lugano fiduciario who administers a domiciliary company and signs for its bank account, or who holds client money in a fiduciary account, belongs to the second group.

Financial intermediaries of both groups must identify their contracting party, establish the beneficial owner, clarify the background of unusual transactions or relationships, document their measures, take organizational precautions and report suspicions to the Money Laundering Reporting Office (MROS) (Art. 3–9 AMLA).³ The difference lies in supervision. Portfolio managers and trustees under FinIA are supervised for money laundering by their supervisory organisation. The other financial intermediaries must join a self-regulatory organisation (organismo di autodisciplina, OAD) recognized by FINMA, which issues regulations specifying the duties, audits its members and imposes sanctions (Art. 24–25 AMLA).⁴ Chapter G.III describes the duties in detail and the risks that they address on the Ticino border.

The OAD FCT

When the AMLA entered into force in 1998, Ticino's fiduciari created their own selfregulatory organisation, the Organismo di Autodisciplina dei Fiduciari del Cantone Ticino (OAD FCT), with its seat in Lugano. On 17 August 1999 the OAD FCT concluded a convention with the cantonal Department of Institutions under which the cantonal Financial Inspectorate acted as its auditing body, an arrangement that linked federal self-regulation with the cantonal supervision of the profession under the LFid. At the OAD's assembly in Vezia on 11 June 2002 the head of the department, Councillor of State Luigi Pedrazzini, praised self-regulation as a modern and preventive instrument that made the market participants responsible and allowed the state to intervene subsidiarily, and argued for maintaining the cantonal fiduciary law alongside it.⁵ The OAD FCT appeared on FINMA's list of recognized self-regulatory organisations alongside the VQF, PolyReg, ARIF, the ASG of the asset managers and the organisation of the Swiss Fiduciary Union.⁶

The OAD FCT was organized as an association under Articles 60 ff. of the Civil Code whose purpose was to ensure that its members complied with the anti-money laundering rules and with its professional code of conduct.⁷ It had operated under federal recognition since 2000. Its membership peaked at about 550 and stood at about 350 in 2021, when its representatives expected to lose some 200 members to the supervisory organisations under FinIA.⁸ FINMA's list of recognized self-regulatory organisations as at October 2026 no longer includes the OAD FCT. It names ten organisations: AOOS, ARIF, PolyReg, the self-regulatory organisation of the Swiss Leasing Association, the SRO of the Swiss Bar Association and the Swiss Notaries Association, the SRO of the Swiss Insurance Association, the SRO SVIG, SO-FIT, SRO- Treuhand Suisse and the VQF.⁹ None of them has its seat in Ticino. Ticino fiduciari who remain financial intermediaries under Article 2 paragraph 3 AMLA must therefore belong to one of these national organisations.¹⁰

Notes

1. AMLA (above), Art. 2 para. 2 let. a bis, https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/en-it/9/95/955.0-2-5.html. ↩
2. AMLA (above), Art. 2 para. 3. ↩
3. AMLA (above), Art. 3–9 (verification of the identity of the customer, establishing the identity of the beneficial owner, repetition of these steps, special duties of due diligence, duty to keep records, organisational measures, duty to report), article headings as shown at https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/en-it/9/95/955.0-index.html. ↩
4. AMLA (above), Art. 24–25 (recognition and regulations of self-regulatory organisations), https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/en-it/9/95/955.0-24-37.html; Art. 14 in the version amended by Annex No. II 15 of the Financial Institutions Act of 15 June 2018, in force since 1 January 2020, provides only for affiliation to a self-regulatory organisation, https://www.droit-bilingue.ch/en-it/9/95/955.0-14-24.html. ↩
5. Luigi Pedrazzini, address to the assembly of the OAD, Vezia, 11 June 2002, https://www3.ti.ch/DI/discorsi/20020611oad.pdf. ↩
6. FINMA (archive), Organismi di autodisciplina riconosciuti, https://www.finma.ch/FinmaArchiv/gwg/i/themen/institute/PDF/srolisti.pdf (listing the OAD FCT, Piazza Cioccaro 7, Lugano). ↩
7. Federal Criminal Court, Criminal Chamber, judgment SK.2025.37 of 13 May 2026, https://entscheidsuche.ch/docs/CH_BSTG/CH_BSTG_001_SK-2025-37_2026-05-13.pdf. ↩
8. Commissione Costituzione e leggi, Rapporto 7753 R (above). ↩
9. FINMA, Recognized self-regulatory organisations (SROs), as at 4 October 2026, https://www.finma.ch/en/~/media/finma/dokumente/bewilligungstraeger/pdf/sro.pdf. ↩
10. AMLA (above), Art. 14; FINMA, Recognized self-regulatory organisations (SROs) (above), which gives the seats of all ten organisations in Zurich, Geneva, Bern, Baar and Zug. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.