Sure, the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) says that it's still possible "in principle" for any adult to open an account at a Swiss bank (ideally in person) so long as the person verifies his or her identity with a valid passport and presents documents that demonstrate who owns the deposited funds and where they originated. (Note: When you arrive in Zurich, the bank's compliance officials will probably want to make sure that your assets don't stem from criminal activities and that you're not a so-called "politically-exposed person" -- think a Qaddafi -- or someone with close ties to such a figure.)
I'm not, of course. But SBA spokesperson Sindy Schmiegel Werner explained that small Swiss retail banks are still unlikely to grant me a simple checking or savings account because securing my deposit just isn't worth incurring the expenses involved in complying with the regulations of multiple jurisdictions -- costs that are only rising with new laws such as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which the U.S. Congress passed in 2010. When big Swiss banks offer accounts to U.S.-based clients these days, it's typically in the form of private banking and wealth management services for rich Americans.
Take UBS, for example. The Swiss bank ended all cross-border business with the United States in 2009 after reaching a settlement with the U.S. government in a tax-evasion investigation. Now, according to UBS Wealth Management spokesperson Yves Kaufmann, the only way U.S. citizens living in the United States can open a bank account with UBS is through its Swiss Financial Advisers (SFA) unit. Kaufmann notes that prospective clients for the bank's wealth management arm must have roughly $1 million in investable assets and that U.S. citizens who participate in SFA often do so as a way to diversify their assets outside the United States. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that UBS's U.S. wealth management business more than doubled new assets from clients in the first quarter of 2012, indicating that the "bank's strategy of shifting its focus to managing assets for wealthy clients and reducing risk is starting to pay off."
But if new regulations mean that Swiss bank accounts don't hold as much allure for American tax cheats anymore, there seems to be another solution that's coming into vogue. According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, there's a sevenfold increase in Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship since 2008:
The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside, is searching for tax cheats in offshore centers, including Switzerland, as the government tries to curb the budget deficit. Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport.
In other words, we could have a larger problem than wealthy Americans such as Mitt Romney stashing money in Swiss bank accounts. They might just pack up and head off to Switzerland for good. Maybe that's what the Obama campaign was hoping for?
Thanks to Yves Kaufmann, spokesperson for UBS Wealth Management, and Sindy Schmiegel Werner, spokesperson for the Swiss Bankers Association.
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