The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) has reportedly urged the government to ink deals with European governments to increase market access for asset and wealth managers to clients and to wipe out untaxed money in the country.
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The accords will also enable the Swiss banks to do business overseas, Patrick Odier, SBA chairman and partner at Swiss private bank Lombard Odier told Reuters.
The country has relaxed its rules on banking secrecy to share information with tax authorities around the world.
However, the country is held up in talks with several European countries about how to deal with undeclared client assets held in Swiss bank accounts.
Swiss has also entered into withholding tax deals with Britain and Austria, under which nearly 30,000 Swiss account holders last year agreed to pay tax on undeclared assets.
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By GlobalDataThe head of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) said that government is planning to strike deals with other key European countries to do business in these markets.
In February this year, Switzerland’s initiative to cap immigration has damaged Swiss wealth managers’ relationship with European Union markets.
Under the initiative, Swiss bankers were lobbying against separate EU proposals to ban them from marketing wealth-management services directly to residents of the union from Switzerland.
Odier said: "It is therefore in a first phase imperative for our political authorities to negotiate intergovernmental agreements with individual countries in the EU."
"Failure to resolve the situation may result in the Swiss financial industry being "marginalized or even excluded from its most important market," Odier added.
