Horizon 2035: the challenges facing the financial centre — a part of the book Geneva as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos.
The ten preceding parts have retraced five centuries of history and described the current workings of the Geneva financial centre. Part K turns to the future, with the caution that the exercise demands. Without predicting anything, it identifies the open questions of 2026 whose outcome will determine what the financial centre will be in 2035, at the horizon of a decade that today’s decisions already commit. Six challenges have been selected. The first concerns crypto-assets and Digital Assets, for which the Swiss legal framework was one of the first in the world and whose tokenisation of traditional assets could transform the infrastructure of the financial centre. The second is sustainable finance, which within ten years has become a criterion of competitiveness and a field of regulation, and the third is international competition, in which Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg contest Geneva’s traditional functions. Then come technology and artificial intelligence, which are redefining the professions described in Part J, and relations with the European Union, where the package signed in March 2026 sets the framework for the coming decade without settling the question of financial services. The chapter closes with scenarios that combine these challenges.
The method remains that of the book. Each chapter starts from established facts, cites its sources, distinguishes the verified from the plausible, and ends with a summary in five sentences and a checklist. The author has endeavoured not to confuse his preferences with his forecasts. A financial centre is not a project that one directs. It is an ecosystem that one tends, and about which its players, the authorities and the public decide together, often without consulting one another. The challenges described here are those on which these decisions are being taken at this moment.
One thread links these challenges to the preceding parts: trust. The medieval fairs sold transactional security; the Protestant Bank sold the reliability of a network; modern private banking sold discretion and then, after the end of bank client secrecy, competence and compliance; commodity trading sells the organisation of flows. Crypto-assets and Digital Assets, sustainable finance, technology and international relations each pose the same question in a new form: in what respect will the world, in 2035, be willing to place its trust in Geneva?
This part belongs to Geneva as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
Crypto-assets and Digital Assets: from the DLT Act to tokenisation — overview and summary
Switzerland was one of the first states to give crypto assets and digital assets a complete legal framework. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Twenty years of crypto assets and digital assets in Switzerland
Although the first block of the Bitcoin chain was produced in January 2009, Switzerland became aware of the phenomenon only in the middle of the following decade. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The Swiss framework: ledger-based securities, trading systems, bankruptcy
The ledger-based security (droit-valeur inscrit) is the central piece of the framework. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Geneva in the ecosystem: Taurus, private banks and tokenisation
Geneva is not the Crypto Valley and has not sought to be. Its contribution to the Swiss ecosystem of crypto assets and digital assets has come from private banking and its providers. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Stablecoins, payment tokens and tokenised deposits
The most debated question in 2026 is that of stablecoins, tokens whose value is pegged to an official currency and which serve as a means of payment and a store of value within the ecosystem of… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Taxation and transparency: automatic exchange of information on crypto-assets
The end of banking secrecy, traced in Part E, finds its continuation in crypto-assets and digital assets. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Compliance: money laundering, sanctions and the travel rule
Crypto-assets and digital assets raise difficulties of their own in matters of money laundering and sanctions. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The tokenisation of traditional assets: the infrastructure question
Beyond cryptocurrencies, which the Geneva financial centre has made no more than an ancillary activity, the issue of the decade is the tokenisation of traditional assets: shares, bonds, fund units,… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Europe, the United States and the Swiss position
Switzerland does not regulate alone. In 2023 the European Union adopted a regulation on markets in crypto-assets, applicable in its entirety since the end of 2024, which creates a single… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Custody: keys, segregation and liability
The custody of crypto-assets and digital assets is the business in which Geneva private banking has the most to contribute and the most to lose. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Practical questions for advisers
The Geneva adviser faced with a client’s request concerning crypto-assets and digital assets must answer four questions. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Utility tokens, foundations and issuances
Beyond cryptocurrencies and tokenised assets, since 2014 Switzerland has hosted foundations and companies that issue tokens intended to finance technology projects and to give access to services… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What 2035 might bring
Three developments appear probable over the coming decade. The first is normalisation: crypto-assets and digital assets will be one asset class among others, regulated, declared, held by ordinary… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Checklist: integrating crypto-assets and digital assets into a Geneva institution
Define the institution’s strategy: simple access for clients, in-house custody and trading, issuance of tokenised assets, or a reasoned decision to abstain. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Sustainable finance: from the Protestant ethic to the Swiss Climate Scores — overview and summary
In some fifteen years, sustainable finance has moved from the margin to the centre. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Geneva origins
Part B described Calvin’s Geneva as a city in which the use of money was subject to moral judgement and collective discipline. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The figures: CHF 1,881 billion
The scale of the phenomenon is measured by the annual market study of Swiss Sustainable Finance. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The federal framework: transparency, Swiss Climate Scores, greenwashing
Switzerland has chosen a middle way between the detailed regulation of the European Union and abstention. The first pillar is corporate transparency. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Self-regulation by banks and asset managers
Self-regulation, as in the field of anti-money laundering since the 1977 Due Diligence Agreement described in Part E, is the financial centre’s instrument of choice. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The European Union: detailed rules and simplification
The European Union has chosen the path of detailed regulation. The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, applicable since March 2021, classifies products according to their sustainability… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Building Bridges and Geneva’s vocation
The Building Bridges summit was launched in 2019 by the Swiss public authorities, the financial community, the United Nations, non-governmental organisations and other international actors, and in… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Commodity trading and the transition
Commodity trading, described in Part G, occupies a paradoxical position in sustainable finance. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Impact, philanthropy and blended finance
Impact investing, which aims at a measurable social or environmental effect in addition to a financial return, grew by 27 per cent in Switzerland in 2024. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Institutional investors: pension funds, insurers, foundations
Swiss sustainable finance is driven first and foremost by institutional investors, a significant proportion of whom are based in Geneva. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Prudential supervision of climate risks
Climate- and nature-related risks have entered prudential supervision. From 2021 FINMA required the large banks and insurers to disclose their climate-related financial risks, and it subsequently… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Sustainable issuance: green, social and sustainability-linked bonds
The market for green, social and sustainability-linked bonds developed in Switzerland from the 2010s onwards, with issues by cantons, cities, cantonal banks, companies and, since 2022, the… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The Geneva houses: positioning
The major Geneva houses have made sustainability an element of their positioning, with differing emphases. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Measuring impact: methods, limits, verification
The credibility of sustainable finance depends on measurement. Exclusion approaches are easily verified. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Climate philanthropy and the Geneva foundations
Geneva is one of Europe’s capitals of foundations, and climate philanthropy has taken a growing place there. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The international organisations and sustainable finance
International Geneva provides sustainable finance with its standards and its counterparts. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The role of advisers: preferences, suitability, documentation
Sustainable finance has changed the daily work of the Geneva adviser. The Swiss Bankers Association’s self-regulation requires the adviser to ask each client whether they have sustainability… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What 2035 might bring
Three trends appear solid. The first is normalisation: sustainability will become an ordinary dimension of financial analysis, integrated into management and lending processes, with transparency… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Checklist: offering sustainable investments without promising the undemonstrable
Define the sustainability approaches on offer, from exclusion to impact, and then describe them in terms the client understands. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Competition between financial centres: Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, London — overview and summary
A financial centre is not measured against itself. It is measured against those that compete with it for its clients, its companies and its talent. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The rankings and what they measure
The most frequently cited ranking is the Global Financial Centres Index, published twice a year. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Dubai: the centre that never sleeps
Within a decade, the United Arab Emirates, and Dubai in particular, have become Geneva’s most visible competitor, in commodity trading as much as in wealth management. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Singapore and Hong Kong: Asian wealth at home
Singapore and Hong Kong compete for Asian wealth. Their growth accounts for a large part of Switzerland’s relative decline. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Luxembourg: funds and the European passport
Luxembourg is Geneva’s most direct European competitor in wealth management and the only French-speaking centre of comparable rank. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035London and the Berne Agreement
London remains the leading financial centre in Europe and the second in the world, despite the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The United States and Asia: innovation and capital
Beyond the competing centres in wealth management, two blocs weigh on Geneva’s future through their capacity for innovation and their depth of capital. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What Geneva retains
The picture would be incomplete without an inventory of what Geneva retains and its competitors lack. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Competition within Switzerland: Zurich, Lugano, Basel
Competition between financial centres does not stop at national borders. Zurich, eleventh in the Global Financial Centres Index of March 2026, is seven places ahead of Geneva and concentrates the… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Taxation compared
Taxation is the first argument of the competing centres. Here Geneva is both competitive and vulnerable. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The cost of living and housing
The most tangible constraint on the Geneva financial centre is housing. The canton is among the most densely populated in Switzerland, and its territory is bounded by the border and the lake. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Reputation and scandals: a comparison
Reputation is an asset that each financial centre builds and loses in its own way. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Marketing a financial centre
The competing centres invest in their own promotion. Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg have promotion agencies with considerable budgets, delegations in the main capitals and targeted… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The competition for family offices
Family offices have become the most hotly contested prize among financial centres. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Foreign banks in Geneva: arriving, staying, leaving
The Geneva financial centre has always welcomed foreign banks, drawn by the international clientele and by Switzerland’s reputation. Part E described their decline since 2008. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The forces at play on the horizon of 2035
Three movements will shape the decade. The first is geographical: global wealth will continue to grow faster in Asia, the Middle East and the emerging economies than in Europe, so that the financial… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Checklist: positioning a Geneva institution against competing financial centres
Identify the markets in which Geneva retains an advantage of its own, European and French-speaking clients, complex families and commodity trading, and those in which a local presence is necessary,… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Technology and artificial intelligence: the changing professions of the financial centre — overview and summary
Technology has always transformed Geneva’s finance: the bill of exchange of the fairs, the telegraph that linked Geneva to the European stock exchanges in the nineteenth century, the banking computer… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The state of play: a digitised financial centre without being a technological one
The Geneva financial centre has never been a technological centre and will not become one. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Artificial intelligence: uses and FINMA’s expectations
Generative artificial intelligence made its entry into Geneva’s institutions from 2023 onwards, first through individual uses and then through organised projects: document summaries, assisted… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The new infrastructures: instant payments, identity, open finance
Three new infrastructures are changing the environment of the financial centre. The first is instant payment. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Cybersecurity and operational resilience
Digitalisation has a counterpart: vulnerability. Financial institutions are the preferred targets of cyberattacks, whether by ransomware, phishing or the compromise of suppliers. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Digital sovereignty and the question of data
Technological dependence on a few foreign suppliers raises a question that the Geneva financial centre has known since the days of banking secrecy: that of the location and protection of client data. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Employment and skills: what automation changes
Artificial intelligence affects the substance of the financial centre’s professions, which raises the question of employment. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The system providers: Temenos and the others
Geneva, a financial centre with little technology of its own, nevertheless hosts one of the world’s leading providers of banking software. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The FlowBank case: digital banking without capital
Digitalisation does not exempt a bank from the prudential rules, as the Geneva financial centre learned in 2024. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035SIX and the Swiss infrastructures
The Geneva financial centre relies on national infrastructures headquartered in Zurich. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The digital client relationship
The financial centre’s clients now expect a high-quality digital relationship in addition to the human one. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The long term: cryptography and quantum computing
A longer-term question deserves mention. The security of payments, signatures and crypto and digital assets rests on cryptographic methods, some of which quantum computing could compromise if it… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Data and regulatory reporting: the automation of compliance
Compliance is the area in which automation is advancing fastest, because its tasks are numerous, repetitive and documented. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Trading and data: satellites, models, platforms
Commodity trading is the business of the financial centre in which data has transformed practice most profoundly. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Digital skills: training the financial centre
The transformation described in this chapter calls for skills that the financial centre possesses only in part. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Project governance: what failures teach
Technology projects at financial institutions frequently fail. The Geneva centre has had its share of delayed system migrations, abandoned platforms and unused tools. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What 2035 might bring
Three developments appear probable. The first is the general adoption of artificial intelligence assistants across all the professions of the financial centre, with governance imposed by FINMA and… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Checklist: governing technology and artificial intelligence in a Geneva institution
Establish an inventory of artificial intelligence applications, classify them by risk and designate a responsible person for each, in accordance with FINMA Guidance 08/2024. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Geneva and the European Union: the 2026 package and the question of financial services — overview and summary
Geneva is a border city, and its financial centre lives with the European Union in a relationship that Part J described from the angle of language and Part E from that of the clientele. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The Switzerland–EU package of 2026
The package for stabilising and developing relations between Switzerland and the European Union was initialled on 21 May 2025, approved by the Federal Council on 13 June 2025 and signed in Brussels… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Financial services: access without an agreement
The absence of financial services from the 2026 package confirms a long-standing situation. Switzerland and the Union have never concluded an agreement on market access for financial services. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What the Union requires and what Switzerland already applies
A substantial part of European financial law already applies in Switzerland, whether by choice of the legislature, by self-regulation or by commercial necessity. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Neighbouring France: cross-border workers, taxation and market
Within the Union, France occupies a place apart for Geneva, which Part J described from the angle of language. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The open questions
Several questions will remain open once the 2026–2028 process has run its course. The first is that of an agreement on financial services, which Switzerland will continue to request and which the… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Thirty-five years of relations: from 1992 to the 2026 package
The 2026 package forms part of a history that the Geneva financial centre has lived through at close quarters. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035European financial services law and its third-country regimes
European financial services law rests on the passport: an institution authorised in one member state may offer its services in all the others. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035From the taxation of savings to automatic exchange
The tax relationship between the Geneva financial centre and the Union has followed a path of its own. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Liechtenstein and the European Economic Area
A small neighbour of Switzerland offers the Geneva financial centre a gateway into the Union that Switzerland itself does not have. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The Geneva subsidiaries in the Union
The large Geneva houses serve the Union through subsidiaries whose organisation illustrates the constraints described above. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035International Geneva and the Union
Relations between the Geneva financial centre and the European Union also run through International Geneva. The Union is one of the leading contributors to the organisations established in Geneva. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Cooperation in supervision
Financial market supervision knows no borders, and FINMA accordingly cooperates with the European authorities independently of political relations. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The Union as de facto regulator
The Union’s influence on the Geneva financial centre also runs through channels other than the agreements. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Scenarios for 2035
Three scenarios are taking shape for the relationship between the Geneva financial centre and the Union. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Checklist: serving European clients from Geneva
Identify, for each Member State in which the institution has clients, the rules applicable to cross-border services and the exemptions available, and document the basis of each relationship. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Scenarios for 2035: what Geneva can become — overview and summary
This chapter brings together the developments described in the five preceding chapters. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The variables: what the future of the financial centre depends on
Seven variables emerge from the analysis conducted in this book. The first is the geography of global wealth: cross-border wealth is growing faster in Asia and the Middle East than in Europe. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035First scenario: the specialised and connected financial centre
In the first scenario, the Geneva financial centre accepts its rank and consolidates it. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Second scenario: the eroded financial centre
In the second scenario, several variables move in an unfavourable direction at the same time. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Third scenario: the transformed financial centre
In the third scenario, less probable but possible, the Geneva financial centre draws on the technological and regulatory transformations to reinvent itself. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What the scenarios mean for the professions
The scenarios have different consequences for the various professions of the financial centre. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Five crises of the financial centre and their lessons
The history recounted in this book offers five crises whose lessons shed light on the scenarios. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035A dashboard for the financial centre
The seventh robust decision, measurement, calls for an instrument. This book has repeatedly had to note the absence of data: on the language of client relationships, on Geneva’s share of sustainable… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What Geneva brings to the world
The scenarios reason from the point of view of the financial centre. It is useful to close with that of the world. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Disruptive shocks: geopolitics, sanctions, crisis
The scenarios presented assume gradual change, but the history of the financial centre shows that ruptures are possible. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What the canton can decide
The scenarios depend to a large extent on federal and international decisions, but the canton of Geneva has levers of its own. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035What the Confederation can decide
The Confederation holds the principal levers: financial regulation and supervision, relations with the European Union and international agreements, federal taxation and double taxation treaties,… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035A note on method
The scenarios presented here are constructions, and the reader is entitled to know their limits. They rest on seven variables chosen by the author, where other analysts would select a different list. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035The more distant horizons
Beyond 2035, a few longer-term trends deserve to be named. Europe’s population is ageing. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Weak signals to watch
Between the indicators of the dashboard and the disruptive shocks lie the weak signals, those events of limited scope that announce a change of trend. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Robust decisions
Some decisions are desirable in every scenario: these are the ones a prudent financial centre takes first. Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Conclusion of Part K and of the book
Part K has described six areas of work. The first concerns crypto-assets and digital assets, for which the Swiss framework is established and for which the tokenisation of traditional assets is the… Read more Geneva · Horizon 2035Checklist: preparing a Geneva institution for the scenarios of 2035
Identify the variables on which the institution depends, choose measurable indicators for each one and set warning thresholds. Read more