Swissquote, a Swiss bank, has issued a red flag to Russian clients: around 600 accounts face closure

 

Swissquote and its subsidiary Yuh have begun sending account closure notifications to Russian citizens residing in Switzerland. **According to the Swiss financial portal Inside Paradeplatz, this action affects approximately 600 accounts.

A bank customer revealed that even Russians holding Swiss permanent residency are being targeted for contract termination. In rare cases, dual nationals with Swiss citizenship have also received warnings about account freezes.

Swissquote CEO Marc Bürki confirmed the news to the media. He stated that contracts must be terminated under certain exceptional circumstances, **“for example, when a client is listed on sanctions lists, or their financial assets are closely linked to Russia.”**

Mister Bürki added that Russian clients represent a “tricky issue.” He noted: “We don’t have many Russian clients, and accounts of clients living in Switzerland are not being systematically closed.”

However, sources at Inside Paradeplatz claim the scale of this wave of closures far exceeds what bank executives have described, with the root cause being **“the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) imposing higher monitoring requirements on banks.”**

In response to Frank Media, Swissquote stated that customer accounts have not yet been actually frozen, and financial institutions are currently communicating with clients to find solutions. Mr. Bürki said this situation mainly affects Yuh users and emphasized that the reason is purely economic.

He explained: “If we provide services to Russian citizens, we must assume additional monitoring obligations: we need to verify the economic origin of funds deposited by clients, screen them against sanctions lists, and comprehensively strengthen oversight of all banking transactions. Since the revenue generated from serving customers through the Yuh app is extremely low, while monitoring costs are excessively high, it becomes unsustainable to maintain such business relationships.”

Regarding Swiss citizens and permanent residents who have also been affected, Mr. Bürki believes this may be an error. He attributes it to the fact that banks do not always have complete information about a client’s second nationality.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1873551695758344/

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