Title 1: General provisions (Art. 1 – 5 FIDLEG)
Purpose, subject matter and scope. This section defines, in particular, financial instruments, financial services and financial service providers, as well as customer segmentation.

Title 2: Requirements for the provision of financial services (Art. 6 – 34 FIDLEG)
Regulation of the requirement for the provision of financial services concerning (Chapter 1)) knowledge required, (Chapter 2) rules of conduct, (Chapter 3) organisation and (Chapter 4) the register of advisers.

Title 3: Offering of financial instruments (Art. 35 – 71 FIDLEG)
Regulations concerning the offer of a financial instrument and the obligation to publish a prospectus.

Fourth title: Publication of documents (Art. 72 – 73 FIDLEG)
Right to receive a copy of the customer dossier.

Title 5: Ombudsman services (Art 74 – 86 FIDLEG)
Rules concerning the principle and the procedure before the ombudsman.

Title 6: Supervision and exchange of information (Art. 87 – 88 FIDLEG)

Title 7: Penal provisions (Art. 89 – 92 FIDLEG)
Consequences of breaches of the rules of conduct, breaches of the rules governing prospectuses and basic information leaflets and the consequences of unauthorised offers of financial instruments.

Title 8: Final provisions (Art. 93 – 96 FIDLEG)
In particular, the final provisions contain provisions on transitional periods.

Pursuant to Art. 2 para. 1 FIDLEG, the scope of application of the law refers – irrespective of its legal form – to financial service providers, client advisors, as well as creators and providers of financial instruments. Pension funds are not regarded as financial service providers. In particular, the investment foundations, the sole purpose of which is to manage pension assets, could be qualified on the basis of their function as financial service providers.

What is a financial services provider or client advisor?

• All persons providing financial services on a commercial basis are deemed to be financial service providers within the meaning of Art. 3 lit. d FIDLEG. The new regulations thus cover supervised market participants such as banks, investment firms, fund management companies, insurance companies as well as all asset managers.
• Client advisors within the meaning of Art. 3 lit. e FIDLEG are all employees of a financial service provider who provide financial services for clients. In other words, natural persons who provide financial services in their own name or in the name of a financial service provider. For example, employees of a bank who carry out transactions with financial instruments for bank customers or advise them on the investment of their assets are customer advisors within the meaning of this provision.

Art. 2 para. 2 FIDLEG determines to which legal entities the FIDLEG does not apply.

Commercial activity exists if the financial service provider carries out an independent economic activity aimed at permanent acquisition within the meaning of Art. 2 lit. b of the Commercial Register Ordinance of 17 October 2007 (HRegV).

A commercial activity is presumed to have taken place on the basis of the previous regulation in the Banking Ordinance if the financial services provider provides financial services for more than 20 customers or advertises the provision of financial services in advertisements, prospectuses, circulars or electronic media.

Financial instruments within the meaning of Art. 3 lit. a FIDLEG are deemed to be financial instruments:

• Equity and debt securities: The term equity security covers securities that confer equity and voting rights in public limited companies, i.e. in addition to shares in their various forms (cf. Art. 622 ff. OR), participation and dividend-right certificates (Art. 656a ff and Art. 657 OR), as well as securities such as convertible bonds, which contain the right to acquire shares or securities equivalent to these;
• Units in collective investment schemes pursuant to Art. 7 and 119 CISA, derivatives pursuant to Art. 2 FinfraG and structured products;
• Risk or price-dependent deposits: Initially, deposits are recorded where the redemption value is risk or price-dependent, as is the case with precious metal accounts, for example;
• Bonds as financial instruments: Bond obligations are portions of a total loan with uniform conditions with regard to interest rate, issue price, maturity, subscription period, hedging, etc.