Legal Bases Considering Asset Protection in Switzerland

For many decades, the Swiss were known to have a very strong tradition of financial privacy.  The Swiss Constitution and the laws governing the handling and transactions of financial procedures provide a concrete legal basis to maintain the strict standards of confidentiality. For these reasons, Switzerland is highly popular for providing asset protection in the form of insurance policies.  The government has an insurance decree that generally protects insurance policies from debt settlement issues.  That is, if the insurance contract has a definite clause about the proceeds of the insurance no matter what, the law will respect the contract.  This is especially true if the policyholder has transferred all his rights to the insurance benefit to his beneficiary, if he has relinquished his copy to the beneficiary’s care, and if a legally valid contract has been drawn to say that he can no longer change the terms of the beneficiary. If the insurance contract names the policy owner’s immediate family members as his or her beneficiary, the seizure of financial assets would not include the insurance contract and its face value, for in such a scenario, ownership of the contract (with its responsibilities and benefits) automatically gets transferred to his or her family members without any condition or formal contracts of insurance rights transfer. There is probably only one imperfection of asset protection in Switzerland.  Remember that if correctly structured, your Swiss insurance policy can’t be seized unless you were found guilty of counterfeit transfer.  That is, if you are able to arrange for your insurance rights transfer to another person or if you designate your immediate family members as the beneficiaries of your insurance, then people to whom you owe money may not liquidate or freeze the contract.  However, if your creditors can prove that you have done this move in an attempt to evade the law, then they may be able to seize the policy.

 

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