KYC & File Preparation

Banks decline files, not people.

Every applicant a Swiss bank meets is read the same way: as a file. Identity, source of wealth, structure, story — a compliance officer reads the pages before anyone reads you. How deeply those pages are read depends on where you are from: European files pass through standard due diligence (SDD); files from higher-scrutiny origins go through enhanced due diligence (EDD) — a different journey with different stakes. We prepare both to the same end: a file the bank finds easy to approve.

Here is what happens to an application a Swiss bank never talks about publicly. Before your first franc arrives, the bank spends CHF 5,000–15,000 on enhanced due diligence — more if you come from the GCC, the CIS, or hold a complex structure. Then it keeps spending: monitoring, compliance infrastructure, a share of a senior banker’s time — CHF 10,000–20,000 a year for a non-resident relationship. At a standard fee, a file below roughly CHF 2 million earns the bank less than it costs to keep. An unprepared file is therefore declined by default — not because of who you are, but because of what reviewing you costs.

If you are from Europe

Your journey is the short one — standard due diligence (SDD), documentary and quick. But short does not mean automatic: a missing certification, an inconsistent figure, a source of wealth told loosely, and the quick yes becomes a slow correspondence. Our work for European clients — from the EU and EEA to Eastern Europe — is precision and speed: a complete file, first time, in the form Swiss compliance expects, so the answer comes fast and clean. For well-documented European wealth, Switzerland is closer than most people think.

If you are from the GCC, the CIS or another high-scrutiny origin

Your journey is enhanced due diligence (EDD): the bank verifies the source of wealth in depth, maps your structures and connections, and asks the questions its regulator expects it to ask. Reviewing such a file costs the bank five figures before it earns a franc — which is why an unprepared file is declined by arithmetic, not prejudice. Our work here is heavier: a source-of-wealth narrative matched document-by-document to how the money was actually made, ownership and control made obvious, and your origin’s specific questions answered inside the file — before the bank asks them in writing.

If you are a US person

Yours is a separate lane entirely. Under FATCA, most Swiss banks serve American clients only through SEC-registered units, typically from about USD 2 million. The file itself follows US-specific rules — and sending it to the wrong desk wastes months. We prepare it for, and route it to, the desks that actually take US files.

Not only where you are from — what kind of account

Due diligence is written not just by geography, but by the account itself. A personal account needs one file: yours. An operating company adds the business — registry documents, real activity, expected flows, and the ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) behind it all. A holding company adds the question every bank asks first — why does the structure exist? — and the ownership chain down to the person. A trust or foundation multiplies the file again: deed, settlor, trustees, beneficiaries, each layer documented in its own right. None of this is a barrier — structures are daily business in Switzerland. But a structure that arrives without its rationale reads as concealment, and dies in review. We document yours so it reads as what it is: governance.

Crypto wealth — Switzerland’s moment

Since 2026, Switzerland has stood among the most credible places in the world to bank crypto wealth — to cash out, and to have digital assets recognised as legitimate wealth by serious institutions. But the entry ticket is the file: exchange statements, an on-chain provenance trail, and the origin of the fiat that started it, assembled the way a Swiss compliance officer can verify. Done correctly, crypto opens doors here; done casually, it closes them.

One file, many doors

Whatever your journey, the dossier we build is not written for one bank. It is a single regulatory-grade file, reviewed once, then presented across institutions — so a second or third application does not mean starting over. In a market where every re-onboarding costs weeks, a transferable file is the difference between one shot and a strategy.

The financial institution always makes the final decision on any application.