FINMA consultation: record why information crosses a border

The brief

FINMA opened a consultation on 30 September on revisions to its direct-transmission circular. Responses are due by 27 November 2026. The proposal reflects legislative changes distinguishing information transfers for financial-market supervision from transfers for other purposes.

Our take is that the reason for a disclosure belongs in the same record as the disclosure itself. A supervised institution should be able to reconstruct the request, the recipient’s authority, the assessed purpose, the approved information and the actual transmission. This article proposes a practical record for that process. It does not treat the consultation as a final rule or decide whether any particular request may lawfully be fulfilled.

The full record

A foreign authority’s request for information raises more than a delivery question. The institution receiving it needs to understand who is asking, for what purpose and under which applicable conditions. FINMA’s current consultation puts those distinctions back in focus.

What FINMA has announced

On 30 September, FINMA launched consultation on a partial revision of Circular 2017/6, “Direct transmission”, running until 27 November 2026. FINMA says the revision reflects amendments to Article 42c of the Financial Market Supervision Act adopted by Parliament in June.

The announcement distinguishes transfers for financial-market supervisory purposes from transfers for other purposes, with different conditions applying. It also describes a general legal presumption concerning confidentiality and purpose limitation for supervisory transfers. The release does not establish that any request bearing an official name can automatically be fulfilled.

Keep the request and its assessment together

Our analysis: the working record should begin with the actual request and any clarification. Identify the requesting body, the contact whose identity was checked, the stated purpose and the information sought. Record the route used to establish the request’s authenticity.

Then retain the assessment by the responsible legal or compliance function. If scope is narrowed or a question is unresolved, make that visible. A final exported file alone cannot show why one part of a request was accepted and another was excluded.

Preserve what was approved and what was sent

Our proposed record links the approved scope to the exact version of the material transmitted. It includes the approver, recipient, time, delivery route and outcome. If a revised package follows, retain the relationship between the versions instead of silently replacing the earlier file.

Separate technical delivery from the recipient’s acknowledgement and from any further legal assessment. A message can arrive successfully while an outstanding question about its scope remains unresolved. Conversely, a complete approval record does not prove that the intended recipient received the material.

A useful procurement exercise

Ask a prospective supplier to demonstrate the process with fictional documents and a fictional request. Can an authorised reviewer retrieve the original request, scope decision, approved version and transmission result together? Can access be limited to the people handling the matter? Can the record be exported in a form the institution can still use if it changes supplier?

Those are operational questions prompted by the consultation, not claims that the circular mandates a specific software product. A hosting location, encryption claim or audit-log feature cannot by itself settle whether a disclosure is permitted.

What to watch next

Watch for the consultation outcome, final circular and implementation information before describing the revised text as adopted practice. Institutions must assess a live request against the law and duties applicable to it; this article does not supply that assessment.

The contribution of formal communication is narrower and practical: keep the reasoning, authorised action and resulting exchange connected. Our Swiss data-control procurement analysis examines related questions about access, retention and usable exports.

We checked FINMA’s official announcement on 5 October 2026. We report the consultation status and high-level distinction described there, not a full interpretation of Article 42c or an assessment of a specific transfer. The proposed record and supplier exercise are our analysis. We have not tested a product or asserted that a particular format is legally required.

1. FINMA, consultation announcement and linked draft documents, 30 September 2026