On 20 September 2018, the Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) submitted a position paper to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), within the framework of a consultation that a working group established by the Swiss Federal Department of Finance initiated in August 2018.

In its submission, the CMTA insists on the potential of the decentralized ledger technology (DLT) for simplifying the functioning of the financial markets, lowering the financing costs of businesses and creating alternative sources of financing for companies. It identifies certain areas in which the Swiss legal framework could be improved to facilitate the use of the DLT in the financial sector. It argues, however, that existing Swiss law already makes it possible for Swiss issuers to tokenize their securities. The association refers in this respect to a legal opinion that it received from Prof. Dr. Hans Caspar von der Crone from the University of Zurich.

The CMTA warns the working group against creating the perception that the use of the DLT in financial markets raises issues under existing Swiss law, which would, it indicates, “represent an own goal of historical proportion for Switzerland”.