The case
Prof. Dr Urs Zulauf has come up with part XIV in which he shares his ideas on the Federal Council and the Parliament proposal in a contribution entitled More resources for FINMA?
The commentary
The Federal Council expects FINMA to “equip itself with the required number and quality of resources, taking into account its new tasks.” The Parliament supports this and asks the Federal Council to look into measures “so that FINMA can meet the big banks on an equal footing.” Put simply: FINMA should hire more staff and pay them more. An analysis shows that FINMA’s staff growth since 2009 has been much higher than the one in the federal administration and that FINMA’s staff is paid highler salaries, roughly the same as the one of SwissBanking.
FINMA could certainly assume more tasks and duties, which would already be possible as they have been hiring more staff than ever before over the past two years. Despite all of this a sense of moderation is advisable as the supervisory authority should not be the only entity growing strongly in a financial market place.
Additional remarks: Supervision is getting more expensive and someone will have to pay for all of this.