Newsletter 644: Update BOVV membership

Dear Sir or Madam

In the past months VQF has indicated that the BOVV membership no longer will be existing starting 2020. The reason for this communication was the assumption, that due to the new laws, the Financial Services Act (FinSA) and the Financial Institutions Act (FinIA) the legal basis for the BOVV status governed in the Collective Investment Schemes Act (CISA) would be omitted. The duties for members under the BOVV status would be replaced by the new requirements of the FinSA (albeit, as was assumed and supposed so far, only after a one-year transition period).

The latest information make it foreseeable that this transition period for the said obligations of FinSA will be extended to two years. According to the suggested, revised ordinance of FinSA every financial intermediary is acting within the law as long as it abides the known obligations of CISA during the transition period. Whether this revised provision will be implemented accordingly, we will know on 6 November 2019; on that day, the ordinances will be adopted and published in their final versions.

For our members in question, this has the following consequences : based on these changes we assume the BOVV status will continue to last for at least another two years. Every respective member who does not terminate its BOVV membership, will remain a respective member after 2019. We furthermore would like to draw your attention to the corresponding explanations in our latest edition of VQF Aktuell (in German: https://www.vqf.ch/de/publikationen/vqf-aktuell).

Since these news are brought to you at a delayed stage for a possible timely termination of the respective BOVV membership, we will consider requests for termination of the BOVV membership by the end of 2019 after the fact until mid of November 2019.

Kind regards,

VQF
Financial Services Standards Association