Proportionality
FINMA conducts its supervision in a proportionate, risk-oriented and technology-neutral manner. Larger and riskier institutions are subject to more intensive and frequent inspections, while smaller and well-managed supervised entities benefit from regulatory relief. Through its regimes for small banks and small insurers, FINMA offers relief to small and solid institutions, such as fewer on-site inspections and regulatory relaxations.
In 2025, FINMA continued to focus its supervision most intensively on those financial service providers whose size and complexity posed the greatest potential risk to the financial centre and its clients. In the case of large and high-risk banks and insurance companies, it stepped up its inspections, maintaining direct contact with the board of directors, executive board and other key organisational units.
In the case of large supervised entities, FINMA monitored the requirements relating to capital, liquidity, risk control, compliance and the existence of independent control bodies, mostly through on-site inspections. It also examined the broader requirements for ensuring operational resilience, as well as climate-related financial risks and their impact on business strategy, business model and financial planning.
Supervision of smaller, lower-risk institutions, by contrast, was predominantly data-driven, with less extensive reporting requirements and fewer on-site inspections, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the total.
Small, particularly well-managed and stable institutions – for example the 56 banks that participate in the small banks regime – also benefited from regulatory relief and underwent fewer direct inspections in the year under review compared with larger institutions.